SmartFade ML Bug?

1 thing I have found that "sometimes" corrects this issue is booting up my board with all my faders down, ramping up the colour wheel to full, and then selecting a colour pallette. As I said sometimes this works, as the colours will not change. I run 2 to 3 shows a week. usually 2 nights a week this works for me... the other night for some reason the lamp responds to the fader at full ( with my mac 250's thats a slow colour scroll).

 So far I havent come to a way to solve it. I actually called etc tech support and they said they would contact Mr. Bennette and get back to me. That was mid december, and I still havent heard anything back yet. Its definately a bug. Hopefully it will be fixed in the coming update

Hello to 'fate' and 'jdagget'

I need some more detailed information, can you please be specific about these items:

1   Do the spurious changes occur if the fader mode is set to INT A, INT B, INT D or MEMS? , i.e. not to PARAM 1 or PARAM 2?

2   When you say that the errors seem to occur more often on color, have you EVER seen these changes on other parameter types? 

3   Are the errors on color only on CMY channels, i.e. the Hue and Sat faders, or can they be on other color faders, such as Wheels, 1, 2 etc?

4   Do the errors seem to be that only Palette values are replaced with spurious data, does the problem ever occur with manually set vales being replaced, for instance values set on the dials?

5   Does the problem occur in MEMS fader mode, but not in INT A, INT B or INT D fader modes?

6   If the problem occurs in MEMS mode do the INT ONLY or GO MODE settings affect the errors?

We are trying to reproduce this problem, which may only occur on some consoles and not all, and we will fix it.  Apologies for the difficulties you have encountered so far and thank you for your patience.  Any other detail that you think may be relevant would be helpful and gratefully received.  Please email me directly on adam.bennette@etcconnect.com if you wish, or call me on +44 20 8896 1000.  Or you may continue to use this forum if you prefer.

Adam Bennette

For me personally The only channel affected is colour wheel 1 that I notice, as my macs dont have cmy. I have had the issue in both go mode and in param a mode. I like using param a mode so I can make changes live. I work in a road house so every night its a new show. So I setup a few focus points, use my color pallettes and beam palletes. When I started noticing the colors changing randomly on me. I used the record all function, and ran a show in go mode. Same issue would happen. I would record a look with my 4 macs in all pink color frames. Then when playing it back during the show, all of a sudden all 4 would change color. And all of them to different colors. and every 2 seconds or so they would constantly change. At that point I hit my color pallete button to change them to a static color, and instantly they would change again.

 When in other modes, like int , or param 2 the colors dont change.The error doesnt only occur with pallette sets either. I booted up my board, every lamp home'd. Open white, brought my intensity to full so i could see the beams. Locked up my booth and went to the stage. By the time i hit the stage, all 4 of my mac 250's were in random colors. Then after a few minutes they started changing colors again. So i know its not an issue directly related to the color pallette. I also tried erasing all the data from the board, and just patching my mac 250's in. turned on the bulbs and the same issue occured. I also tried just running up my color wheel 1 fader to my second color frame which is yellow, left it there for 5 minutes and the color did change on me to red, which is my 7th color frame.

I hope this info helps a bit. I love this board, Its just frustrating at times. But with any new product, theres always going to be some issues. Hopefully you can re-create this problem at your end. I also though maybe for some reason I was plugged into "dirty power" that was maybe causing the issue, so I ran the board through a power conditioner/cleaner. That didnt work though.

 

For me personally The only channel affected is colour wheel 1 that I notice, as my macs dont have cmy. I have had the issue in both go mode and in param a mode. I like using param a mode so I can make changes live. I work in a road house so every night its a new show. So I setup a few focus points, use my color pallettes and beam palletes. When I started noticing the colors changing randomly on me. I used the record all function, and ran a show in go mode. Same issue would happen. I would record a look with my 4 macs in all pink color frames. Then when playing it back during the show, all of a sudden all 4 would change color. And all of them to different colors. and every 2 seconds or so they would constantly change. At that point I hit my color pallete button to change them to a static color, and instantly they would change again.

 When in other modes, like int , or param 2 the colors dont change.The error doesnt only occur with pallette sets either. I booted up my board, every lamp home'd. Open white, brought my intensity to full so i could see the beams. Locked up my booth and went to the stage. By the time i hit the stage, all 4 of my mac 250's were in random colors. Then after a few minutes they started changing colors again. So i know its not an issue directly related to the color pallette. I also tried erasing all the data from the board, and just patching my mac 250's in. turned on the bulbs and the same issue occured. I also tried just running up my color wheel 1 fader to my second color frame which is yellow, left it there for 5 minutes and the color did change on me to red, which is my 7th color frame.

I hope this info helps a bit. I love this board, Its just frustrating at times. But with any new product, theres always going to be some issues. Hopefully you can re-create this problem at your end. I also though maybe for some reason I was plugged into "dirty power" that was maybe causing the issue, so I ran the board through a power conditioner/cleaner. That didnt work though.

 

I'm experiencing the same problem with my Mac Entours on Color Wheel 1, but can't seem to recreate the bug consistently.  It has also occured when I've recalled a color from the color palette.

Have you updated your console to the newest file released in the smartsoft beta forum? As soon as I did that, My issues with the colour wheel disappeared.