Strange dimmer behavior

Hi Robert,

Some older consoles can send out DMX values during shutdown that can cause certain circuits to get stuck on at random values. Depending on your Data Loss Fade Time on your CEM is set to, these values should fade out naturally on their own after a certain amount of time. Turning the console back on should also cause these levels to go out, since the console would then be sending zero values to those addresses again. This issue potentially could also be caused by dirty or damaged DMX ports / cabling / infrastructure in your system, causing data to get garbled.

Do you have a notification number from when you called in and spoke to Tech Services? I'd like to be able to take a look at the notes from the calls you've already made to see if I can make a more specific recommendation on what we can try next, since this issue is so intermittent.

Thanks,

Alex 

ETC Technical Services

Hi Alex, This thread is getting a bit long/old now and some of my earlier comments getting lost. I do have a number but its back at the theatre and if we see this behavior tomorrow I'll call in. Its a pain because today we were set up to call in but of course - we did not see the lamps coming up after shutdown! As to the residual DMX stuff during shutdown I think I ruled that out by simply pulling the DMX plug whilst the board was up and those lights came up 5 seconds later. And, as you say, some 10 -15 minutes later they will go out or I can use the RESET on the CEM to put them out. All green lights and levels within the CEM's Dimmer info menus appear to be the same as if they had been switched on normally. So, this is waiting a re-occurrence when I'm at the theatre and a call to ETC I guess. Thanks for wading I though. Its not effecting shows but the behavior is disturbing.  Oh I should add its a new Element 2 but the SENSOR rack is about 16 years old. It was installed by ETC originally. 

Hi Alex, This thread is getting a bit long/old now and some of my earlier comments getting lost. I do have a number but its back at the theatre and if we see this behavior tomorrow I'll call in. Its a pain because today we were set up to call in but of course - we did not see the lamps coming up after shutdown! As to the residual DMX stuff during shutdown I think I ruled that out by simply pulling the DMX plug whilst the board was up and those lights came up 5 seconds later. And, as you say, some 10 -15 minutes later they will go out or I can use the RESET on the CEM to put them out. All green lights and levels within the CEM's Dimmer info menus appear to be the same as if they had been switched on normally. So, this is waiting a re-occurrence when I'm at the theatre and a call to ETC I guess. Thanks for wading I though. Its not effecting shows but the behavior is disturbing.  Oh I should add its a new Element 2 but the SENSOR rack is about 16 years old. It was installed by ETC originally.