I am preparing a performance and as part of it, I need to be able to fade some spots to a certain point over a 10 second period, then suddenly go completely dark. I really don't want to use the "Black Out" button if I can help it. In trying to get this to work, I have two memory settings; one with spots on and one with nothing on at all. I have tried modifying the up and down times on both settings but I can't get anything to work. There must be some way of doing this. Thanks for any help you can offer.
I tried your suggestion. It got me closer, but here is what happened. I set up three steps, as you suggested. All steps use the same lights. Step 1 was full on, step 2 was dim, step 3 was lights out. I set the timings as follows:
Step 1 - up: 1sec., down: 1 sec.
Step 2 - up: 1 sec., down: 5 sec
Step 3 - up: 0.1 sec., down: 0.1 sec.
This setup worked. However, when I changed the down time on step 2 to 10 sec., it no longer worked. When I went from step 1 to step 2 on the stack, nothing happened, and step 3 never ran at all. The series worked again when I reduced the down time on step 2 to 6.4 seconds. It didn't work when I used 6.5 seconds, but it did at 6.4. Very odd.
I did things like that a lot of time without any problem...
Are you using the stack or a normal sequence?
Witch is your software version (the last one is the 1.7.1)?
Also, remember the down time of the step 2 will affect the decrease of the step 1.
Can you save a backup & post it here. Il will try on my smartfade.
[edited by: arnof at 3:20 AM (GMT -6) on Mon, Oct 29 2007]
[edited by: arnof at 3:19 AM (GMT -6) on Mon, Oct 29 2007]
[edited by: arnof at 3:11 AM (GMT -6) on Mon, Oct 29 2007]
I am definitely using the stack. I can get the sequence to work in Virtual SmartFade, which makes it more odd that it won't work on the actual board. I will check on the software version in a couple of days. Thanks for your help.
Please check the software version. Previous versions had strange bugs in the stack timing that only showed up in particular circumstances. We believe that we fixed these in version 1.7.1.
If you are running 1.7.1 I would be very grateful if you could send me a copy of your showfile.
Thanks for the reply. I won't be able to check the software version until Wednesday evening. If I have a previous version, how do I get the latest software and get it loaded onto the SmartFade?
One more question: I don't have an SD card reader for my PC, so I have no way to get the downloaded files onto an SD card, but I have a USB flash drive. In reading the manual, I see that there is no way to save and reload the memory other than an SD card, but it does refer to loading software using the USB port. However, it says that there must be a USB cable from the PC to the SmartFade console. Will a flash drive work, too. Thanks again for your help.
No, a flash USB drive will not work on the console and cannot be connected. The console is a USB slave and is fitted with a square USB connector, like those found on printers.
You can connect the console to your PC and load new software directly, without needing a SD card at all. Please load the software package from our website which will expalin how to do this. You will first install a 'downloader' program on the PC and then transfer the new code to the console.
SmartFade & SmartFade ML consoles do not support the use of USB memory sticks. To load new software, you will either need to get an SD card reader/writer, or us a USB A-to-B cable to connect the console directly to your PC.
I got the software loaded last night and it seems to work as intended. The only issue I had was that not all of the memory pages saved properly. It's no big deal because we can easily reproduce the settings. Thanks to everyone for your help. This was my first time using this forum and it worked great. Responses were quick and accurate, and, most importantly, you solved my problem. Thanks again.
