Moving Lights Randomly Reset

Sounds like a dodgy network connection to me, probably somewhere between the desk and ethernet switch or switch and whatever you're using to hook up the Smartswitch.

Cheers

Richard

Hopefully this answers the most recent questions, thanks again for all your help everyone!

The system is fairly new - installed summer '08.  In this theatre it was a complete gut job - new power, data, infrastructure, etc.  In the 10-12 shows we've used these consoles on, this is the first time I've noticed the problem.  The SmartSwitch replays are patched into a channel on the console that is parked at full whenever the console is on to provide for remote shutdown.  

There is a Unison system in the theatre, but it has not had its' configuration touched in almost 9 months and nothing on the Unison is being activated when the reset takes place.

I struck the lamp on one of the Mac 500's almost 3 hours ago.  It was on for more than 2 hours, I went to lunch, came back and the lamp had turned off.  No one else was using the space during the time I was out.

The control connections are: ethernet cable from Ion to ethernet port in booth, ethernet port to patch panel to Linksys switch, Linksys switch out to patch panel to Remote Data Stations throughout the theatre, Net3 gateways plugged in via Ethercon to RDS stations.  Eos is plugged into one of these RDS stations in the house.  Each RDS station has a hard line run back into the patch panel in the rack.

I'll look at replacing the network connection between the console and the ethernet switch.  I don't know what I'll do if this whole thing turns out to be over a network cable!

I will also note that we updated to v1.8 before our last show and I had never had this problem prior to this version of the software.

After taking some of your suggestions, I've discovered the following: changing out the ethernet cable to the Ion did not fix the problem.  I next switched the SmartSwitch over to [Allow Manual] mode and manually turned on all of my non-dim circuits.  I've had them on now for 4+ hours without a reset so it appears that the problems lies somewhere between the console and SmartSwitch.

OK! It sounds like you may be running into an issue of one of the devices occasionally sending a DMX zero to the Smartswitch. When the smartswitch sees a zero it will flip the relays off, and then back on again. Where is the DMX to your Smartswitch coming from - the Unison CMEi, or a gateway, or the console?

Regardless, my first step in this situation would be to set a packet delay on the Smartswitch. This makes it wait for a few DMX packets before it actually actuates the relay. Not a noticable delay, but reduces the changes of this kind of event.

So : from the front panel of the Smartswitch go to [DMX] -> [DMX Response] and set the "Packet Delay" to 10. This won't visibly affect the speed at which it turns off (DMX goes at 44Hz so 10 packets = about 0.2 seconds) but will ensure it only turns off when it's really supposed to!

Let us know how it goes!

Tom

Upping the packet delay is the solution that ETC suggested to me on the phone this morning.  Lo and behold, we seem to be back in business (knocking on wood)!  Thank you to everyone for your help, this forum continues to be a wealth of knowledge for me each and every day.

Upping the packet delay is the solution that ETC suggested to me on the phone this morning.  Lo and behold, we seem to be back in business (knocking on wood)!  Thank you to everyone for your help, this forum continues to be a wealth of knowledge for me each and every day.