EMJ
Member
OK, long story short, I'm helping out a high school and trying to get their board communicating with some old VL1000 movers. The background is as follows:
The building's about 14 years old and has a Strand Preset Palette 32/64 board (300 channels) running 2 racks of Strand C-21 dimmers. All communication is via a dedicated lighting Ethernet network. The Board is connected to the network twice, each outputting a different signal. One is DMX from the DMX A outport port on the board to an eithernet port on the wall using a DMX XLR to Ethercon cable (5 pin DMX on one end, RJ45 Ethernet on the other) and the second is ShowNET from the Ethernet port on the board to the second eithernet port on the wall (standard eithernet cable). These two ports feed to the dimmer room back stage where there's an Ethernet patch panel that has 14 Ethernet cables terminated to it. One of the feeds from the booth cross connects to another cable which appears to feed directly into one of the dimmer racks. I assume this is the DMX feed from the Board and the C-21 processors indicate that they have a network connection and DMX on "Port B". The other 12 cables are patched into a POE network switch. 7 of them are probably lighting network Ethernet ports around the theater, one is the 2nd feed (ShowNET) from the Board and I assume the other 4 are for the Visionnet house light control pads. I'm pretty sure of all of the above, but they have zero documentation of anything. It's a big school system with more than 100 schools, and so far I have had no luck trying to get through to any of the central office construction staff that probably have access to the as-builts. I'm still working on that, but have traced enough to know the Ethernet network isn't my issue.
The school has 4 Strand N21 DMX Nodes for outputting DMX to the 3 VL1000's that the building apparently came with, and some scrollers on the Cyc lights. The N21 Nodes are powered up and I can access them via their IP address, so they are on the network and they say they are receiving shownet. They are all in DMX Output mode, but they all indicate "Port Inactive" and don't have the down arrow icon that indicated DMX output.
NetSLOTS are new to me, but as far as I can tell, I have everything set to NetSLOT 1, DMX 1 - DMX 512. I only have 300 channels, so I figured I'd just have everything output the first DMX universe and I should have signal flowing no matter what. Obviously I'm missing something. It doesn't help that everything seems to have been updated to the latest/final software, but ALL of the manuals I can find online are for various older versions that are slightly different. I even emailed Vari-Lite/Strand and they replied that everything they have is on the website. I'm attaching a photo of the N21 Node showing its' Port A configuration and indicating that it's inactive, photos of the output patch routing on the board, and just for fun, the network patch panel mess (note that I subsequently removed a number of these patch cables because they were plugged into ports that weren't wired to anything).
Anyone that knows the Palette software see what I'm doing wrong or missing? Thanks for the help!!!!
The building's about 14 years old and has a Strand Preset Palette 32/64 board (300 channels) running 2 racks of Strand C-21 dimmers. All communication is via a dedicated lighting Ethernet network. The Board is connected to the network twice, each outputting a different signal. One is DMX from the DMX A outport port on the board to an eithernet port on the wall using a DMX XLR to Ethercon cable (5 pin DMX on one end, RJ45 Ethernet on the other) and the second is ShowNET from the Ethernet port on the board to the second eithernet port on the wall (standard eithernet cable). These two ports feed to the dimmer room back stage where there's an Ethernet patch panel that has 14 Ethernet cables terminated to it. One of the feeds from the booth cross connects to another cable which appears to feed directly into one of the dimmer racks. I assume this is the DMX feed from the Board and the C-21 processors indicate that they have a network connection and DMX on "Port B". The other 12 cables are patched into a POE network switch. 7 of them are probably lighting network Ethernet ports around the theater, one is the 2nd feed (ShowNET) from the Board and I assume the other 4 are for the Visionnet house light control pads. I'm pretty sure of all of the above, but they have zero documentation of anything. It's a big school system with more than 100 schools, and so far I have had no luck trying to get through to any of the central office construction staff that probably have access to the as-builts. I'm still working on that, but have traced enough to know the Ethernet network isn't my issue.
The school has 4 Strand N21 DMX Nodes for outputting DMX to the 3 VL1000's that the building apparently came with, and some scrollers on the Cyc lights. The N21 Nodes are powered up and I can access them via their IP address, so they are on the network and they say they are receiving shownet. They are all in DMX Output mode, but they all indicate "Port Inactive" and don't have the down arrow icon that indicated DMX output.
NetSLOTS are new to me, but as far as I can tell, I have everything set to NetSLOT 1, DMX 1 - DMX 512. I only have 300 channels, so I figured I'd just have everything output the first DMX universe and I should have signal flowing no matter what. Obviously I'm missing something. It doesn't help that everything seems to have been updated to the latest/final software, but ALL of the manuals I can find online are for various older versions that are slightly different. I even emailed Vari-Lite/Strand and they replied that everything they have is on the website. I'm attaching a photo of the N21 Node showing its' Port A configuration and indicating that it's inactive, photos of the output patch routing on the board, and just for fun, the network patch panel mess (note that I subsequently removed a number of these patch cables because they were plugged into ports that weren't wired to anything).
Anyone that knows the Palette software see what I'm doing wrong or missing? Thanks for the help!!!!