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. |
| Setup Mode | Blue, slow breath (~3 s cycle) | No network is configured — the controller has no ethernet link and no saved WiFi credentials. Plug into ethernet, or set WiFi credentials in Studio Settings before powering on. |
| 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.ioand*.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. The status LED is off while you're holding the button — that's expected. When you release the button, the LED flashes a count to confirm which action it took:
- 2 quick flashes — WiFi credentials cleared. The controller reboots and stays connected to your account.
- 3 quick flashes — Full factory reset. The controller wipes its local show, media, and config files, then reboots locked and ready to be re-paired.
If you release too early, no action is taken and the controller boots normally.
See Front Button for the exact hold times.
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 Provision 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.
Indicators are software-controlled
The status LED and the channel indicators are all part of the same software-driven LED strip — they aren't wired directly to the relays. That means:
- The channel indicator shows the channel's intended state, not the raw relay state. If you've configured a channel as "normally closed", the indicator is on when the channel is "active" even though the relay is open.
- You can turn the indicators off entirely from Studio if your install needs to be dark.
- Manual Control mode drives the indicators in real time so you can verify wiring without a multimeter.
- During a Hard Lock, the firmware overrides every indicator with the purple blink so the E-stop is visually unmissable.