Seemingly rock solid understanding of dimmer doubling shaken by current show

Hi Will,

Page 109 of the Ion manual talks about the offset that the console uses, the standard offset is 20,000 and can be adjusted in show settings. The local dmx port of the node is still sending out 1-512 or whatever you have it set too but on the network, the dmx address in patch would utilize the offset per the show settings.

Eric

Maybe this will help:

Ion uses an offset of 256 for the doubled dimmer when using DMX addressing, and an offset of 20,000 when using sACN, EDMX.  As long as the address the Ion uses for the dimmer agrees with the rack then all is good. For most purposes it does not matter since Ion will route the information out all the ports that have been enabled.

Given dimmer 1 in DMX universe 1 is doubled, the second part of that dimmer can be referenced by address in a number of ways:

• 1B (base + offset)
• 257 (absolute DMX)
• 1/1B (explicit universe, base + offset)
• 1/257 (explicit universe)
• 20001 (sACN/EDMX)
• 1/20001 (explicit universe)

Some of the above are better to use than others. My preference is to call it 1B or 1/1B and let the console work out the absolute address, and which port(s) to send

Eos/Ion/Element have a setup option of a user configurable dimmer double offset which is applied to the patched addresses.  The default dimmer double offset is 20,000 on the console, which matches the default offset when doubling a port on a Net2 node, a Net3 gateway in Net2 mode, or a networked CEM+.

Assuming a default system, if you dimmer double address 1 on your console, it will output EDMX 1 for address 1A and EDMX 20,001 for address 1B.  An EDMX port on a network node configured to start at EDMX 1 and dimmer doubled will output EDMX 1 as DMX Channel 1 and EDMX 20,001 as DMX Channel 257.

sk8rs_dad is correct that there are several different ways to reference each of these addresses on the console. 

The A side can be referenced as:

• 1 (absolute address)
• 1A (absolute address with doubling)
• 1/1 (universe notation)
• 1/1A (universe notation with doubling)

The B side can be referenced as:

• 20001 (absolute address with dimmer double offset manually added)
• 40/33 (universe notation with dimmer double offset manually added [20,000 addresses = 39 universes and 32 addresses])
• 1B (absolute address with doubling)
• 1/1B (universe notation with doubling)

If you play around in patch on your console, you will notice the addresses for each side are mutually exclusive.  If you patch address 1/1B and then try to patch address 40/33 you will be prompted that the address is already in use.   That's because they're all really the same address and you can only patch an address to a single channel.

Generally speaking:

• On a pure network system you'll want the console default dimmer double offset of 20000 unless someone has done some custom configuration. 
• On a system using DMX out of the back of the desk to a doubling Sensor rack, you'll want to set your dimmer double offset to 256 so you can get the B sides out of the same DMX port as the A sides. 
• On a mixed network and hard line DMX system (all going to Sensor racks that are doubling), the best answer for you may vary. 

If in doubt, give a call to your local ETC Tech Service office and we'll be happy to help you find the right solution for your system.

  Looking back at your original description, are you sure that the second and third packs are dmx addressed as you describe on the pack?  I'd suspect that the second pack may start at 201 on the A dmx input but starts at something much lower, like 1 on the B dmx input.  Similarly, I would expect the third pack to probably be addressed at 101.  

The big trick to all of this is tracking how the same data moves through the system and is represented differently in different places.   

For example:  

Basically, the network dimmer doubling offset of 20,000 allows doubling dimmers higher than 256 without conflict.  Using that offset, if you're looking for the B side of dimmer X, you find it well out of the way up at dimmer 20,000 + X.

Tracy , you were correct!  On Rack 2, the start address for Port  B is 1, and on Rack 3 the start address for Port A is 45.  Why would this be?  I have read more on Dimmer Doubling and setting up a Sensor CEM to use both DMX Input ports but I still do not feel a whole lot closer to understanding this in a solid way.

Does anyone have experience dimmer doubling a lot of dimmers in one universe that can give me some advice on what the different Start Addresses, First Dimmers, First UD #s mean and how to use them.  Also, I'm sure configuring the node has a lot to do with making the system work, but I have not found a lot of info on that either.

And I am confused about where the system (in the console, in a node, in the CEM) is the translation made between the different formats (dimmer with the B suffix, 20000 offset, DMX512 that the CEM sees).  I hope that made sense.

Thanks,

Will