Hi,
I am using a Smartfade ML in a rented facility. Last night, I patched all the dimmers in the building (there are only 48 of them) into the Smartfade as a simple 1:1 patch. When I unplugged the DMX cable from the facility's console and plugged it into the Smartfade, some lights began to flicker. It was almost as though someone was quickly wiggling the fader controlling the light. I turned down the DMX output speed all the way to "slow" and the problem improved, but didn't completely go away. In addition, I found that the control of many of the lights was erratic (i.e. I would move a fader and the light would jump to levels rather than smoothly transitioning) Keep in mind that during this, I was slowly moving the fader all the way from 0 to 100% and back, so this is not an issue with the level being set elsewhere and the fader just grabbing control at a certain point.
For the purposes of this test, all the lights are conventional fixtures (no intelligent lights). The console that the facility owns (and which works just fine) is an ETC Express 24/48. The dimmer panels say "Sterner" on them--I've never heard of such a company before. The Smartfade ML is running v 2.0.1, and I have SmartSoft v 1.0.1 During the duration of this test, I had the Smartfade connected to my laptop via the USB connection.
Since the facility-owned console works fine, I am fairly certain that the problem is not with cabling, termination, or dimmers. My only theory right now is that, perhaps, the USB connection between the laptop and the Smartfade was demanding too much of the Smartfade and the Smartfade was not keeping up with DMX updates. I will test this theory next time I have access to that facility.
Does anyone else have any ideas as to what could cause this problem? Are there any other parameters on the Smartfade that I could adjust to fix this? Any adivce would be much appreciated.
