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    dmb182
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conventionals on the ML universe one are flickering

I have a production that's opening Thursday that i've been teching for a week.  Universe 1 is the default patch for conventionals 1-48 and universe two is 6 studio spots and 12 color blasts.  Universe 2 has shown no problems.  Universe one, which is into the house dimmer rack, started flickering during the second act on friday night.  When it did this, the inteligents and LED's were not effected, but all the lights connected to universe one started blinking randomly.  The problem is sporadic.  There is a house panel in the room as well and when i use that to turn on the lights they stop flickering.  So i'm thinking it's a dmx problem?  Some where it's losing signal in short bursts and turning off?  could it be the port? (either on the board or dimmer rack?)  bad cable?  There are 2 DMX ports, one out in the house and one upstairs actually on the dimmer rack.  I'm thinking i'll try plugging into that port to see if the problem goes away.  Any suggestions?

  • what kind of dimmers are you connected to? if they are older dimmers, the dmx rate from the smartfade ml maybe to fast. you can go into the smartfade settings and change the dmx rate. try this and see if that helps
  • in reply to corey cascio

    We keep having a similar problem on a Smartfade 2496 with smaller loads (par56 or smaller). Our dimpacks have the same age as our SmartFade 2496 and are ETC Smartpacks. Some channels do sporadicly 'slightly flash' it happens once in a show or sometimes more often. It's unpredictable behaviour, and not always easy to notice.

  • in reply to Jeroen

    Hello,

    Are you running the SmartPacks on single phase power?  If so, are they version 1.08 or earlier?  There was a bug fixed that would cause occasional flicker on single phase with fast DMX rates.  The packs need 2.0 or later software version if they being run single phase.

    The other thing to check is the DMX cabling, is it terminated properly and only a daisy-chain run with no Y splits?  Are there many orther devices on the DMX line? 

    Perhaps the forum is not the place for this, why not contact ETC Technical Services and we will help you fix this problem.

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