Re: Letting the smoke out on Palettas

Much has been written about dimmers parked ON.  All of it is to advise not using devices that need clean power on parked dimmers.  Among all the other issues, could be having the rack control  electronics set to adjust and regulate to incoming line voltage, which could cause the dimmer to potentially reduce output voltage as it compensates.  Sensors can have this function turned off in the CEM, not sure about Strand.

In any event, once you get the fixtures repaired, I'd find another power source, or swap dimmers to relays or constant breaker modules (if you can get the gear from Strand).

Thanks!

The Paletta manual indicates that they would run just fine on dimmers whose profile has been modified to be, for all intents and purposes, a non-dim (switched), which is why we had no concerns about powering them in this fashion.

(Now, maybe we were living in a fool's paradise.)

For our units that do care (VLs, etc) we have true non-dims that we move around the C21 racks, as necessary (yes, Strand has all that gear.)

We just added to our inventory of dual non-dim, dim/nondim, and nondim/dim drawers and so the Palettas will be powered by true nondims as of this season.

That will ease worries that the modified waveform could cause damage.

I don't believe the C21s behave like Sensors, but I don't have any experience with Sensors...

The output from our profiled dimmers ranges from 114v - 122v rms, which is within the stated range of 100 - 240VAC/50-60Hz.

Again, the way we've got it set up the dimmers are always full on and won't dim unless someone selects Channel 1003 and fades it to 100% in a count.  

My crew knows not to do that.

Typos can happen but in this case we weren't writing cues.

We had just hung and circuited (we have a rep plot, so no changes there) and turned on the console to begin focus.

We had no cues in the board.

We believe our system to be fairly idiot-proof until they invent a better idiot.

But obviously something happened...

FWIW - our VLs in one specific position also had a mind of their own. (They are plugged into true non-dims, and always have been.)

We're working on that one.

To me this has all the earmarks of a control issue, but we have another (12) 42" and (13) 11" Palettas which are unaffected and are controlled by dimmers profiled the same way and in the same channel as the ones with issues.

Thanks for the feedback and please let me know if any of the above info gives you additional ideas.

I appreciate getting insight from others in the industry.

Thanks!

The Paletta manual indicates that they would run just fine on dimmers whose profile has been modified to be, for all intents and purposes, a non-dim (switched), which is why we had no concerns about powering them in this fashion.

(Now, maybe we were living in a fool's paradise.)

For our units that do care (VLs, etc) we have true non-dims that we move around the C21 racks, as necessary (yes, Strand has all that gear.)

We just added to our inventory of dual non-dim, dim/nondim, and nondim/dim drawers and so the Palettas will be powered by true nondims as of this season.

That will ease worries that the modified waveform could cause damage.

I don't believe the C21s behave like Sensors, but I don't have any experience with Sensors...

The output from our profiled dimmers ranges from 114v - 122v rms, which is within the stated range of 100 - 240VAC/50-60Hz.

Again, the way we've got it set up the dimmers are always full on and won't dim unless someone selects Channel 1003 and fades it to 100% in a count.  

My crew knows not to do that.

Typos can happen but in this case we weren't writing cues.

We had just hung and circuited (we have a rep plot, so no changes there) and turned on the console to begin focus.

We had no cues in the board.

We believe our system to be fairly idiot-proof until they invent a better idiot.

But obviously something happened...

FWIW - our VLs in one specific position also had a mind of their own. (They are plugged into true non-dims, and always have been.)

We're working on that one.

To me this has all the earmarks of a control issue, but we have another (12) 42" and (13) 11" Palettas which are unaffected and are controlled by dimmers profiled the same way and in the same channel as the ones with issues.

Thanks for the feedback and please let me know if any of the above info gives you additional ideas.

I appreciate getting insight from others in the industry.