Congo reliability

Hi Chris -

I'm sorry to hear you have been having trouble with your Congo jr. There are a few issues that have been found in the v4.2.1 software that are resolved in the upcoming v4.3.0 release, expected very soon. Please keep an eye out for an announcement of the release here on the forum in the next few days. It is highly recommended that Congo and Congo jr users update to this new version as soon as possible, based on the needs of the venue (for example, I rarely recommend upgrading software during the middle of a show's run - it may be better to stay with what you know and change after the current show comes down. Every venue needs to make that decision on their own.) 

Thanks much -

Sarah
 

I accept the apology, but these crashes have cost me a whole lot of time and i even had to delay one show by 20mins! just so i could sort a crash related problem.

Has anyone had this issue with this DMX problem-

When the console is shut down and turns off, I some times find that as congo turns off it some how manages to send a faulty DMX signal to my dimmers there for leaving the dimmers holding the last state. Not so bad with stage lights because i can turn them off, but my house light dimmer stays on, and that is a problem because i have to power up the desk and shut it down again, and even then it sometimes happens again.

Ive also had a problem similar to the desk turning off, but instead lights flicker on the first 2-3secs of startup.

 just one of my many problems at the moment.

let me know.

 

So there is some problem there. If that happens now - will the DMX fail in the future? (I know that sounds like a worse case situation, just concerned)

Its not really me that it affects with this problem - its the other users (EG the staff that just use a few masters for a wedding), through i do find it very annoying.
Since out house lights are also on DMX and out house dimmer stays on, it leaves a state. This really confuses the other staff and at the end of the day wastes alot of time. (we use chili net dimmers and chili control panels)

The key point is that is shouldn't be doing it, and i shouldn't have to put up with it. I have passed the problem on to ETC and they are looking into it. All im doing is seeing if anyone else is having the same problem.
 

As far as I understand the problem; when you turn off the console some lights go back on again even if they were at 0% when the console was shut off. Correct?

When I was writing dimmer software many years ago (I was with Avab at that time), we always protected against this on the dimmer side. It can happen in cases where the DMX transmission between the console and dimmer is interrupted for various reasons and the dimmer gets a partial or corrupted DMX message.

The only way to really make sure that this never happens is to build this type of protection into the dimmer software. In my opinion, this is something that dimmer manufacturers should consider to have in their products. But this may not always be the case.

(Another positive side effect of this protection was that our dimmers were totally immune against flicker and noise problems on the DMX line.)

The reason that dimmers will turn on occasionally turn on when powering down a DMX console is this:  When a console is powered down the console doesn’t stop sending DMX then power down the rest of the console.  What happens is that when the power switch is flipped the DMX is abruptly stopped and sometimes a dimmer rack interprets this as: turn a dimmer on, however since no DMX is present, depending on how your rack is setup this dimmer will stay on for 3 min then fade out.

You can change the Hold Last Look time to less than 3 min however this time was put in place in case you loose DMX (ie someone unplugs the DMX cable, trips over a power strip, etc.)  This 3 min will allow you to scramble around and get your board back up and running with out lights going out onstage. 

You can make modifications on the Sensor Dimmer Side however you need to way this annoyance with lights going out too early if something happens to your console DMX.

Hope this information helps.

I always thought it was a dimmer issue, now I know for sure, thanks for clearing that up.  And, yes, the dimmers staying on has saved us several times(once had a show where my board op kicked out the power cord three times during one production!), that's why the occasional light coming on has never bothered me that much.

J. R. 

ok thats cleared it up partly, but im just taken back by all this. ive been doing lighting for a long time and have used many different consoles - strand, avo, zero88 etc etc, and this has never happened to me before.

After speaking to ETC about this, they said it was because the console was always DMX data until it is powered off. But surely there must be a way (in shutdown) to program the DMX device to turn off before the desk fully powers down?

Chris. 

ok thats cleared it up partly, but im just taken back by all this. ive been doing lighting for a long time and have used many different consoles - strand, avo, zero88 etc etc, and this has never happened to me before.

After speaking to ETC about this, they said it was because the console was always DMX data until it is powered off. But surely there must be a way (in shutdown) to program the DMX device to turn off before the desk fully powers down?

Chris. 

FYI in my experience I've had it happen more often with Colortran i Series dimmers and old Strand CD80 installation packs--nothing with my current (2) Congos and Sensors.