Lights dimming by themselves

 

We have an ETC Smartfade 2496 dimmer board.

Intermittently  with noone at the board  all lights both theatrical and house  (Church)  start dimming. 

Have been accused of doing this to get preacher to stop ... :)

 

Touching any of the dimmer controls  buttons or slides stops and goes back to normal settings..

  • Hi Billy,

    A few quick troubleshooting questions that will help identify what's going on.

    1)  What kind of dimmers or dimmer rack is the Smartfade controlling?

    2) Is there any sort of architectural control in the space?  Button stations/sliders on the wall, or anything that can turn the lights on without the SmartFade?

    3) What version of software is the SmartFade running?

  • Thanks for the reply.

    We purchased the board in OCT 2009.  Have not upgraded since..  Not sure on version will check Friday nite .

    Architectural contol is   a Lightronics AR 1202 RTC  12 channel  with 2 8 button Litronics AC-1009 controllers.   This is connected to our  Smartfade 2496 also.  When the dimmer board is turned on it overrides the litronic button. 

    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

     

    Stage lights are controlled by an ETSL1210T Dimmer.  

    We have 8 par , 4 ellipsodals and 8 Chauvet Colordash Block Pars..

     


     



    [edited by: BillynNC at 11:31 PM (GMT -6) on Wed, Jan 19 2011]
  • Couple of further questions:

    1) When you say:

    BillynNC said:
    Touching any of the dimmer controls  buttons or slides stops and goes back to normal settings..

    Do you mean touching faders/button on the SmartFade console itself, or do you mean touching the Lightronics parts?

    2) How are the Lightronics components connected to the Smartfade and the ETSL dimmers?
    Can you attach a quick sketch diagram showing how everything is connected together? You can attach images to posts here.

  • The problem could be caused by the "Event Scheduler" in the Lightronics AR1202 RTC (Real Time Clock) dimmer unit. Someone may have accidently  gone into the "Events" menu item and created a time event which would cause lights to be triggered on at a certain time. Push  MENU >NEXT>"Events"> "Off">ENTER>CLEAR to turn off the event scheduler function. Worth a try. It can be very frustrating to find if you don't know it exists. The owners manual can be downloaded from www.lightronics.com for further information on this function.