ION an Volk Licht RGB ZOOM

A twitching fixture, is almost always a bad DMX cable.

First step, fit a terminator. 120 Ohm resistor between pins 2 and 3 of an XLR-5 connector. (Data - and Data +)

In many cases this will either fix the problem, or you'll completely lose DMX signal in part of the DMX line.

If signal is lost when fitting a terminator, then the fault is usually a broken cable/connector (XLR-5 plug not soldered properly, cable snapped internally etc).
Find the break and fix/replace it. Quite often the break is easy to find once a terminator is fitted.

If it doesn't fix the problem, then it's more subtle.

Eliminate everything except the Ion, a single length of DMX cable and the fixture. Does it work?
Then work up from there.

Couple of final notes:

There are quite a few fixtures with "DMX" written on the side of them that don't fully comply with the DMX512 specifications.

The most common is that they can't cope with some frame rates. Ion can adjust its DMX output rate to assist these fixtures: Exit Ion and look in Settings > Local I/O.
Some of these actually put weird signals onto the DMX line, causing other devices to stop working or get twitchy. If you find that you have some of those, you may need to put those on a separate, isolated DMX splitter/DMX Gateway output port to the rest of the rig.

Putting a long cable on the end will make DMX signal reflections considerably worse. Don't do that, fit a terminator.
(Maxim have some nice oscilloscope traces showing what happens to the signal with bad cabling, if you search their website for RS485.)

(One of the more fun things with DMX is that being a digital signal, it will work almost perfectly in terrible conditions, and a tiny worsening can make it unusable. The goal is to keep your systems as far away from that 'cliff edge' as you can.)

A twitching fixture, is almost always a bad DMX cable.

First step, fit a terminator. 120 Ohm resistor between pins 2 and 3 of an XLR-5 connector. (Data - and Data +)

In many cases this will either fix the problem, or you'll completely lose DMX signal in part of the DMX line.

If signal is lost when fitting a terminator, then the fault is usually a broken cable/connector (XLR-5 plug not soldered properly, cable snapped internally etc).
Find the break and fix/replace it. Quite often the break is easy to find once a terminator is fitted.

If it doesn't fix the problem, then it's more subtle.

Eliminate everything except the Ion, a single length of DMX cable and the fixture. Does it work?
Then work up from there.

Couple of final notes:

There are quite a few fixtures with "DMX" written on the side of them that don't fully comply with the DMX512 specifications.

The most common is that they can't cope with some frame rates. Ion can adjust its DMX output rate to assist these fixtures: Exit Ion and look in Settings > Local I/O.
Some of these actually put weird signals onto the DMX line, causing other devices to stop working or get twitchy. If you find that you have some of those, you may need to put those on a separate, isolated DMX splitter/DMX Gateway output port to the rest of the rig.

Putting a long cable on the end will make DMX signal reflections considerably worse. Don't do that, fit a terminator.
(Maxim have some nice oscilloscope traces showing what happens to the signal with bad cabling, if you search their website for RS485.)

(One of the more fun things with DMX is that being a digital signal, it will work almost perfectly in terrible conditions, and a tiny worsening can make it unusable. The goal is to keep your systems as far away from that 'cliff edge' as you can.)

Richard, 

 

Thank you for the ideas, today I tried to plug in a Terminator to no success.

I  also using Net3 Gateway for te DMX signals. I tried both universes using the Nodes, both would make the lights twitch. 

I then took a light an plugged it directly into the Universe on the board. Success it works! Could the light have an issue with the ETC Nodes? 

Thank you again!

Mike

It's possible that the DMX output rate on your Ion is set differently than on the Gateway. By checking both the Gateway Configuration Editor & the Local I/O you should be able to determine what's different.