Status LED
Every IgorBox controller has a status LED on the front panel. It's how the controller tells you what state it's in without needing a screen or a laptop.
The LED communicates with two things together: a color (green, blue, orange, purple, red) and a pattern (solid, slow breathing, fast blinking). The same color can mean different things at different patterns — green solid is "ready", green blink is "show playing" — so always read color and pattern together.
Patterns at a glance
| State | Color & pattern | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Booting | Orange, slow breath (~2 s cycle) | The controller is starting up. |
| No network | Blue, slow breath (~3 s cycle) | The controller has no working network connection. This shows during first-time setup (no ethernet link and no saved WiFi yet), and also when a controller that was online has lost its connection and is trying to reconnect. Either plug into ethernet, set WiFi credentials in Studio Settings before powering on, or set its WiFi over Bluetooth with the IgorBox Connect app. |
| Authorizing setup | Blue, fast blink | The controller is waiting for you to press the front button to authorize WiFi setup over IgorBox Connect. Press it within 30 seconds. |
| Idle / Ready | Green, solid (dim) | All systems nominal. Idle, waiting for a trigger or a scheduled show. |
| Show playing | Green, fast blink | A show or routine is actively playing. |
| Degraded | Blue, slow blink (about once a second) | The controller is online locally but can't reach the cloud. Your show keeps running — you just can't push updates or see live telemetry until connectivity is restored. |
| Manual Control | Orange, fast blink | Someone in IgorBox Studio is driving the channels live. |
| Lockout | Purple, fast blink | The controller is doing administrative work — firmware update, downloading a new show, or held by an operator. Playback is paused. |
| Hard Lock (E-stop) | Purple, fast blink — every pixel on the device | A hard E-stop has been triggered. Nothing plays. The controller stays this way until it's rebooted. |
| Error | Red, blink code (a burst of N blinks, ~2 s pause, repeat) | An unrecoverable problem. The number of blinks in each burst is the error code — see Error Codes. |
Lockout vs. Hard Lock — both are purple, fast-blinking. The visual giveaway is how many pixels are blinking:
- Lockout — only the status pixel goes purple. The channel indicators stay live, showing their normal channel state.
- Hard Lock (E-stop) — every pixel on the front panel goes purple. The channel indicators stop reflecting channel state and join the lockdown blink. There's no missing it.
A Lockout clears on its own once the controller finishes its task (or when an operator releases it). A Hard Lock keeps blinking until you reboot the controller — see Front Button and Front Button Modes for what triggers it.
What "degraded" really means
When the status LED shows degraded, your show keeps running. IgorBox is designed to work without internet — losing connectivity is a degraded state, not a failed state. You'll just lose the ability to push new shows, see live telemetry in Studio, or receive remote triggers until connectivity is restored.
To diagnose:
- Cable / WiFi link — is the network indicator on the back panel lit?
- Local network — can other devices on the same network reach the internet?
- Firewall — is outbound HTTPS to
*.igorbox.studio,*.igorbox.io, and*.igorbox.comallowed?
See Connectivity for the full network requirements.
Resetting the controller
The front button can reset the controller if you hold it during boot. As you keep holding, the status LED gives a quick flash each time you reach the next action — so you can watch the LED and let go at the one you want. When you release, the LED gives one longer flash to confirm the action it locked in:
- Forget WiFi — the saved WiFi credentials are cleared. The controller reboots and stays connected to your account.
- Factory reset — the controller wipes its local show, media, and config files, then reboots locked and ready to be re-paired.
If you let go before the first flash, no action is taken and the controller boots normally.
See Front Button for the exact hold times, and Boot Sequence for the full power-on light progression.
A full factory reset removes the controller's authentication and wipes its local content (shows, media, configuration files). You don't need to re-add it to Studio — the controller stays registered in your Studio and Magic Provisioning will re-pair it automatically as soon as it's back on the network. Show data and configuration in Studio are preserved.
If you're sending the controller to a different organization, the original Studio's admin needs to delete the controller from Studio to release the binding before the new Studio can add it.
About the indicator lights
The status light and the channel indicator lights show what the controller intends to be doing — they follow the controller's commands, not a direct reading of the wiring. That means:
- A channel indicator shows the channel's intended on/off state. If you've set a channel as "normally closed", its light is on when the channel is "active" — even though that's when its contacts are open.
- You can turn the indicators off entirely from Studio if your install needs to be dark.
- Manual Control drives the indicators in real time, so you can verify wiring without a multimeter.
- During a Hard Lock, every light on the front panel switches to the purple blink, so the E-stop is visually unmissable.