Boot Indicators

The Spectralite Node uses its own LED strips as a startup display, so you can diagnose the device without a serial console or a running copy of Studio. Watching the strips on power-up tells you whether the LEDs are wired correctly, whether the wiring order matches the configured color order, and whether the Node has reached the network. This page describes every pattern the Node shows during boot, in the order you see them.

Each pattern drives all eight output strips in unison. If one strip fails to show a color the others are showing, that strip has a wiring, power, or controller problem rather than a device fault.

Stage 1: Self-test

Immediately after power-on, the Node runs a channel self-test. Every connected LED on every strip lights to the same color, held for 500 milliseconds per step:

1. Solid red
2. Solid green
3. Solid blue
4. Solid white (only on 4-channel RGBW strips)
5. All off

A healthy Node shows each color uniformly across all pixels on all strips. Common failure symptoms:

• A color looks wrong (for example, what should be red comes out green). The configured color order does not match the physical strip. Connect to the Node from Studio and change Color Order until red, green, and blue appear correctly during the next boot.
• The last N pixels stay dark on one strip. Either that strip is shorter than the configured LEDs per Strip value, or the data line has broken past that point.
• A whole strip stays dark. Check the strip's data and ground connections. The Node's output is not short-circuit protected, so a bad connection simply produces no output.

If you have 3-channel (RGB-only) strips, the white step looks identical to "all off". That is expected; the Node still runs the step because the timing is shared across both strip types.

Stage 2: Network connection

After the self-test, the Node attempts to join the network. The result is signaled by a double flash across all strips. Each flash holds for 200 milliseconds on, then 200 milliseconds off, and the color tells you how the Node acquired its address.

A green flash and a cyan flash both mean the Ethernet link is up; the difference is in which address the Node is reachable at. If you see cyan, look in the Spectralite Controllers panel: the device will have an address starting with 169.254. That indicates no DHCP server answered, and Art-Net output will only work if the host running Studio is also on the same link-local subnet.

Stage 3: Hardware failure

If the Ethernet controller does not come up, the Node halts in an error loop. All strips flash red with a 500 millisecond on / 500 millisecond off cadence, and the pattern continues indefinitely. This is not a network problem; the Node cannot see its own Ethernet hardware. Power-cycling is the first step. If the red pattern repeats, the device needs service.

Stage 4: Idle

Once the network is up and setup has finished, all strips go dark. The Node is now listening for Art-Net data. As soon as a valid Art-Net packet arrives, the strips render it. If no Art-Net traffic is seen for five consecutive minutes, the strips clear back to black to prevent stuck pixels.

Quick reference