Ion DMX outputs to input nodes

"I am using my Ion in a black box which also has a proscenium space with an Eos installed next door. The two spaces have their networks tied together, so for the sake of confusion with the Eos system,"

I have to ask why are the 2 theaters networked together. 

Seems to be asking for trouble, as you are possibly discovering.

SB

You'll have to ask the theatre consultant that. Many things about this place confuse me. I am sure when they put the system in the thought never crossed their mind that you would ever use anything in that space except for the Express console. Here's the wacky part: I ended up just giving up on the DMX ports and hooking up the network port. I sopke to tech support and they told me what to disable with respect to the network settings. I already knew that the 1st port starts at 10,001. Fair enough. One would then surmise that the second port would be 10,513. Nope. It was actually vport 22 (11,264). Lucky for me it was pretty easy to get Lightwright to do all the translating for me, then I just exported the acsii softpatch as always. It would have been easier to just look at the node through NCE to figure all this out but I was having trouble getting it to see the nodes. I am running a beta of Windows 7 on my laptop, which tomorrow will get partitioned and get XP so I won't have any other problems.

Just another normal day for me! I actually like these sorts of things, because I usually get to learn something new along the way!

You'll have to ask the theatre consultant that. Many things about this place confuse me. I am sure when they put the system in the thought never crossed their mind that you would ever use anything in that space except for the Express console. Here's the wacky part: I ended up just giving up on the DMX ports and hooking up the network port. I sopke to tech support and they told me what to disable with respect to the network settings. I already knew that the 1st port starts at 10,001. Fair enough. One would then surmise that the second port would be 10,513. Nope. It was actually vport 22 (11,264). Lucky for me it was pretty easy to get Lightwright to do all the translating for me, then I just exported the acsii softpatch as always. It would have been easier to just look at the node through NCE to figure all this out but I was having trouble getting it to see the nodes. I am running a beta of Windows 7 on my laptop, which tomorrow will get partitioned and get XP so I won't have any other problems.

Just another normal day for me! I actually like these sorts of things, because I usually get to learn something new along the way!

I admit to being a tad confused mostly as you are not telling us everything as to how the entire system is configured, but that's understandable and I wouldn't bother in any case.  It sounds like ETC has you running the Ion into EDMX land above the outputs of the Eos to avoid conflict, assuming the Eos isn't already sending null data there to begin with. But where are the racks listening ?

First thing I would do when you get a chance is buy a separate PoE switch (maybe $120 ?) to stick in the electronics rack (if there's room) and patch the Express/Ion space cat5 cables/system to that switch, getting the 2 theaters isolated.  Otherwise you end up potentially having to configure the Eos to really, really not be talking to the racks in the smaller space. 

I have never seen this behavior on Net2 nodes and I use them all the time in various configs on a Net2 system.  What you described seems like the racks trying to figure out which console is to get priority at certain moments when a move of DMX values is happening, possibly if the DMX node you were inputting from Ion (or Express) was at a lower or same priority as the Eos.  If Ion's DMX values move, the racks may well be determining if Eos has any thoughts on the subject.  If Eos has nothing to say (No valid DMX values) then the system restores the values from the Node.  I have seen this once with a Unison CMEi on my Net2, where I released from Express/Emphasis and got a momentary BO until Unison took over. Thus I'm guessing an EDMX priority issue.

Puzzled now, but let us know what you discover.

Steve Bailey

Brooklyn College