Lights Turning Off Suddenly On Element 2 Board

Hi, I work at a highschool and I use an element 2 board. It’s often that after around 45min-1 hour the front stage lights just turn off completely only leaving cyc lights.

Originally we (me and the other lights person) thought it only occurred when using a fader set for all the lights on the stage in that session of using the board (then waiting about an hour) but we aren’t sure that’s the issue.

We has new lights installed some months ago, but the issue only began to occur a couple months after.

Though sometimes this doesn’t occur and shows work fine. We also learned that it doesn’t occur when there are a lot of cues, but if it’s full stage the whole show without much else it’s likely to turn off.

Are there any ideas to fix thi? Sorry if i worded this poorly, not very good with technical lights terms.

Are they LEDs or dimmers?

Do you get the same effect if you pull all your faders down, goto cue out, then manually select all the channels that you would have up, bring them up (manually, so subs or running cues), and then leave them like that for an hour without touching the desk?

RegiK said:

We has new lights installed some months ago, but the issue only began to occur a couple months after.

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This could/should be under warranty.

almorton said:

Are they LEDs or dimmers?

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Are there any DMX network nodes?

Mac Hosehead said:

Are there any DMX network nodes?

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Also a very good question, which leads on to are there any architectural controllers in the system, and how is it cabled otherwise? any mergers and splitters that may be misbehaving?

Reach out to ETC to see if they have install documentation for your venue. The behavior does not sound like something an element console would do by itself. There’s either a really malicious macro or something else in the system that is taking control when the console is idle for a while. It wouldn’t be surprising to find somebody programmed something into the architectural system, perhaps time-of-day or energy saving.

Just a shot in the dark here, besed on which lights turn off, but look at fader, channel, and group labels for the term "FOH Inhibit."

Are they Lustr 3's by chance? Ours have done this to me twice now during dance competitions where they've been left on at a static level for several hours. It's been hard to trouble shoot since it's only happened in the middle of an event. I'm pretty sure it's something the fixtures are doing on their own. They still show on at full on the console and I still had control of the rest of the rig. The first time it was both front bridges which are on separate Luminex nodes (same universe though.) Since I needed to get them up ASAP the first time I just power cycled the relays and they thankfully came back up. The 2nd time I had a couple of minutes to troubleshoot. I still had control of the fixtures on the 2nd bridge that hadn't been on all day. I went upstairs to the fixtures and they were totally unresponsive. The only thing I could see was a green light that was on inside of the fixture. The displays was off and pushing buttons didn't do anything. So I unplugged a set, waited a few seconds and plugged them back in. They came back up acted like they're supposed to.

I had something similar once with a single Arri fixture. In my case, I just had to disconnect the power for a minute, and it reset to normal operation.

@techieman33 have you reported this errant behaviour to ETC so they can look in to it? Sounds like the sort of thing they'd want to investigate.

Overheating fits the description. I'd look at the power source. A faulty breaker taking a full load might trip, but not when the load is changeable.