Troubleshooting

[maydavidj]

We have a small Leprecon light board. We currently don't have any theatrical fixtures, just stage, baptistry, and sections of the house. But, the problem is that (we have three chandeliers :rolleyes:) and the left one no longer works on the light board. It's happened twice; the first time it fixed itself. It's like the light board lost control over it, and the only way you can get it on is to use the slider on the wall (one of the walk through things.) Well, it does work with the tester button on the dimmer box thing. Not only does it stop controlling it, it switches the channel of the other chandeliers on the light board. We're having a guy come and look at it soon, but I just wanted to see if maybe anyone could point out something that we may have missed.

[Adam Ogden]

Hey Man-

Are you using portable dimming packs? The kind you plug into the wall, and then plug the lights into there? Are you using DMX for control? Are any other lights that you are using on that pack messing up too? How long is the DMX run total? Could you send me a couple pictures of the room, console, dimmers, etc? If you are using a seperate system for your architectural control (the things by the door), there may be a communication error between the systems.

Email the pics to adamogden@hotmail.com....maybe I can help.

[maydavidj]

I only have a picture of the light board itself. I sent it to your email. I will be at the church on Thursday and will take a picture of the dimmer boxes and etc. I'm not really sure what type they are (I'm not a light guy...yet). :) But the music minister thinks it's probably a bad dimmer card. We just wanted to see if there was something easy that we could do that we overlooked. So, we'll see. Anyways, thanks for your help!

EDIT:

I forgot to say how long the run was. The dimmerboxes and lightboard are with each other. We keep the dimmer boxes in a big metal box under the table the lightboard's on. The chandelier is a LONG way away though. Also, no other channels have done this before. (Besides the two other chandeliers switching channels when this happens.) Oh, yeah it's DMX and I'm pretty sure they're not portable packs.

[jsheehan]

if it's a long run you could have reached the end of DMX....i had this happen one time with some LED fixtures and it freaked out all of my movers that were downsteram of the LED (I had to add a lot of length of cable to patch the LED in)....adam would probably no more though...

what is the normal max length of DMX 512 adam?

[Adam Ogden]

Hey guys-

It could be the end of the line for your DMX control cable. You can add a DMX terminator to the end of the line, which will solve the problem, if this is indeed the problem. DMX length depends on the gauge of wire you are using.

22 AWG wire will go 1640 ft.
24 AWG wire will go 1000 ft.

You can buy the terminators for less than $10 each.

If it's not a DMX issue, check the following things:

-Press the "Preset" button until "Page" is lit up, and make sure you are on "Page 1" in the Red LCD display.
-Press the "Record" button in the Mode section of the top left of the console.
-Use the top row of faders to find the lights you want to record (in this case, all of the chandeliers), and turn the up to 100%. Turn all other lights off.
-Press the bump button under the fader on the BOTTOM row wherever you want the lights to be grouped together. If you want the lights on Fader #1, press the bump button under the first fader on the bottom row; or Fader #7 or #3, etc...wherever you want them.
-After you do this, press the "RUN" button on the top left corner in the Mode section.

See if that fixes it. If not, we will check the dimmer patch.