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    vegskipx
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Dimmers behaving badly

Hi Everyone

About two days ago one of my assistants was programming our lighting desk in preparation for a church service.  At one point he couldn't get certain channels to change their intensity in a cue.  He called the producer for help, who then proceeded to reset the power boxes for the lights to see if it would solve the problem.  Suddenly 60% to 70% went out and wouldn't respond to any commands from the desk.  And the channels that did get responses would turn on completely the wrong lights. No information was changed as far as I could see in "Patch": each channel was referencing the correct address.  I'm thinking the problem could either be blown dimmer boxes or a software glitch.  Am I correct or could this be something else?

vegskipx

(ETC Ion console v1.9.6)

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  • 0

    Howdy Vegskipx,

     

    is the Ion Konsole, the only control source in the building? Is there maybe a touchscreen or button station in the

    building that also can control the lights via an architectural control system such as Unison?

    What kind of dimmers do you have? Are you controlling the dimmers via DMX or Network?

    Do you have other sequences running in the background? Maybe from a fader?

    Can you reproduce this problem? Does it maybe happen at the same time every day?

  • 0 in reply to corey cascio

    Hi

    Is the Ion Konsole the only source in the building? Yes

    Is there maybe a touchscreen or button station in the building that also can control the lights via an architechtural control system such as unison? No.

    What kind of dimmers do you have? Chilli

    Are you controlling the dimmers via DMX or Network? DMX

    Do you have other sequences running in the background?  No.

    Can you reproduce this problem? Does it maybe happen at the same time every day?

    We ran the console on Sunday morning and it ran fine.  Sunday evening we ran it again and the problem emerged.  I turned the console on again today and the problem still persists.

  • 0 in reply to vegskipx

    Hi

    Terribly sorry, I think some of the details of my problem need correction.

    What actually happens is when I turn on the desk all the lights work, but my situation is that some of the channels control completely the wrong lights, and the channels that are supposed to control those lights don't do anything.  As I said, I checked the addresses on the channels in Patch and all the addresses are as they should be.

    vegskipx

  • 0 in reply to vegskipx

    You can check the patch in your Chilli dimmers. Maybe the patch was changed there. 


    If you have a dmx tester, you can plug it into the back of your ion and double check that the Ion is sending

    out the correct dmx values. 

     

    If you are still having problems, please contact the dealer that installed this site, or ETC directly: 

    For technical support in the Americas, please call 608/831-4116, or toll-free in the U.S. at 800/688-4116.
    For technical support in Europe, please call (+44) 20 8896 1000.
    For technical support in Germany, please call (+49) 8024 4700-0
    For technical support in Asia, please call (+852) 2799 1220.

  • 0 in reply to corey cascio

    I don't know about your specific dimmers, but I have some NSI packs that just don't tolerate the fastest DMX timing coming from the ION.  You might want to check your DMX timing, and if it is set to a high value, try slowing it a bit and see if anything changes.  A bit of a longshot, I know, but odd things happen when dimmers can't keep up with the DMX stream . . .

    - TIm

     

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