Colortran DMX issues?

[LeadHead]

Hey guys, a couple of friends at school asked me for help with the auditorium lighting system, as I'm quite good with computer and electronic related things.

Of course I've had no previous experience with theater control systems previous today, so I apologize if some names for certain devices and descriptions of some things seem a bit vague.

The system has a Leviton i96 Rack as well as an i24 rack, and the console is an Innovator 24/48.

The way I understand it ( as best described by my friends and some maintenance personnel) is that the system was working at the beginning of the year, but between some point and now all console control was lost.

There are some other odd quirks in the system too. They are single push button switches around the auditorium, probably 3-4 total, with a little green LED indicator light. I assume these are supposed to automatically turn on/off the house lights? Well they don't do anything, even when the green LED lights up.

Now backstage located in a black box is a 10(more, less?) fader "wall plate" I guess you could say, there is also an identical plate up in the booth. Both also have a push button "on/off" switch. Located right below the black box mounted faders is a little LCD display unit with several buttons, at first it was blank. The backstage and booth "wall mount" faders did nothing significant either, except if you put all the sliders down, the lights got *slightly* dimmer (every single light was on). The master of facilities let us in the rack room, from which we hit the reset on both racks. The console still did nothing, and neither did any of the on/off house lights or the "wall mount" faders, but the little LCD display in this box now says "Station 10". It may be unrelated to the lighting system, but I am unsure. None of the buttons on it do anything. I will try to get pictures tomorrow if possible.

Now to the booth, along with the console (and its accompanying monitor, on a side note, we also tried the console on the backstage console port, and the results were the same) was this fairly large black box, with a small label on it saying it was manufactured by NSI. This box had a bunch of gray insulated wires running hardwired into the wall, as well as cord with a standard 115v plug on it, plugged in. For the hell of it, we unplugged this box, then plugged it back in, and then suddenly all of the house lights went out, and most of the stages lights (a few were on, but very dimly), then after a few seconds all of the lights turned back on again. We unplugged it again, then plugged it back in, and this time all of the lights went out, but as before a few seconds later everything came back on.

So because we're high school students, and curious, we unplugged it again, then plugged it back in, this time I was paying attention to the status lights of the box. As soon as we plugged it in, the red POWER light lit up, then the green SIGNAL light, followed by an amber AIRFLOW light. The stage/house lights were still out at this point, but then suddenly the SIGNAL light started blinking something furious and the stage/house lights all came back on.

One of my friends unplugged it, then plugged it back in again, all of the status lights lit up again, but the SIGNAL light remained a solid green and the stage/house lights remained off, but now both the "wall mounted" faders functioned, the backstage LCD display still read STATION 10 however. The on/off button scattered throughout the auditorium still did nothing, and the console still did not work either. We tried unplugging the box again, and this time it returned to its old behavior - after a few seconds of being plugged back in, the SIGNAL light started blinking and the whole auditorium just lit up like a christmas tree. A few more unplug/replug cycles later and we got the SIGNAL light to remain a solid green, and the auditorium to stay dark.

Haven't a clue what the purpose of this box is, or why its doing what it is doing.

Onto the console though, on the main STAGE page, it of course lists all the lights, as you move the sliders up on the console, gray % numbers show up corresponding to the slider you moved. This seems normal, except my friends tell me the % numbers used to be yellow, not gray.

Well that is about it for now, so if you guys have any advice, it would be greatly appreciated.

On a side note, my school recently installed wireless routers throughout the building, and there is one mounted to the wall backstage, quite close to the dimmer rack room. Could this be a possible source of interference?

[DuckJordan]

from glancing through there, are the little buttons around the stage grey and rectangular? I believe your panic lights are engaged which would disallow control from the board and turn on house lights automatically this is how your house lights go on if there is a fire. if this is engaged it will not allow you to take down your house lights or turn on any other lighting equipment my suggestion is find your schools head custodian and have him reset the system. also please inform everyone to not push these buttons placed around the back of the theater.

EDIT: Do NOT do that with power sources controlling dimmer racks. That can cause serious problems later on. If you don't know what you are doing DON'T do it. Ask someone who might know or better yet post on here. Since you are high school students let me inform you on how expensive that whole system is since its a fairly new system it would probably cost you about $3000 per dimmer as far as install, actual device, wiring and everything else. Not to mention a control board that is i believe in the 6 grand range? The "on/off" switches you are referring to placed randomly through out your auditorium are panic switches used for emergency lighting.

So without berating you DON'T touch anything unless you know what your doing in the theater, you may be good at programing and computers but there are a lot more to theater controls than basic high school programs. I am also a programer and i still could know less about a lot of the control systems for a dimmer rack. Also if the Air flow light is still yellow i would suggest to your TD that it needs to be cleaned.

[LeadHead]

The standalone single buttons are more or less square with little green LEDs, there is only one or two on the stage, and another 2 or so near the main entrance. Should I check if any of their LEDs are lit up?

We had the director of facilities with us, and we were able to hit the reset button on both racks, but the way the system responded was un changed.

I'm not sure if its worth mentioning, but when the system wasn't responding to anything, if you held down the power/on-off on the "wall mount" faders, all of the lights got significantly dim, but as soon as you released the button they went back to full brightness.

The box we were unplugging/plugging back in was NOT in the dimmer rack room. Its a black box, by about 1ft by 1ft, maybe 5" thick. Just sitting on the booth room floor, with a standard 115v 3 prong plug. But it had some small gauge wire running into the walls. It had one removable element which contains some which I assume to be EEPROMs, other logic chips, a couple of fuses and a coincell battery. In addition to the status lights, there was a slot for some sort of memory device as well. The rack power was unaffected whether this little box was plugged in or not. With the box unplugged however, the wallmount "faders" worked perfectly. This little box had no kind of vents, and no internal cooling fans. So the AIRFLOW light was a tad perplexing to me. The actual rack filters were clean, and their fans seemed to be functioning fine. I repeat, we were NOT power cycling the racks.

[DuckJordan]

The panic system is a whole different setup its not controlled by the dimmer rack controls but rather a whole diffrent system. My suggestion is make sure that none of those are lit up do not press the buttons to reset them. there should be a control box for them close by your dimmer rack and either the guy you had with you should know where they were or someone from your district will know. My main suggestion is do not under any surcomstances try and do this on your own. as expensive as lights are no bulb is more expensive than a whole dimmer system. also have you contacted leviton on this issue, their customer support is very helpful as we had issues with our old ENS system and they gave us a call within a day of us emailing them.

[LeadHead]

We called Leviton and left a message, hopefully they will get back to us.

Unfortunately this school system has had nearly a complete administrative turn over twice in the past 2-3 years, and I'm not sure how much of the original maintenance staff is left from when the system was installed ~6 years ago. The director of facilities seemed to have a limited working knowledge on how the system functioned.

EDIT: Also, please check my updated post regarding the racks.

[DuckJordan]

I'm slightly confused by this black box you mentioned its not labeled or attached to anything other than a small wire going into the wall? its also in the booth with a standard Edison plug?

I'm not sure about the black box it may be the panic system, but it has an airflow light on it? This is much over my head. Hopefully Footer will get on here and explain or someone who has more knowledge of the new colortran systems. I would think it is a control device for the panic system from the way you described what happened when you unplugged it but that is what i was referring to not the reset button on the rack itself.

[LeadHead]

Yes, the box was not labeled other then a manufactured by NSI sticker on it. It had a couple of light gauge wires running into the wall, and yes a cord with a standard edison/NEMA 5-15 plug on it. The only reason why we spent any time messing with it is because anytime it was unplugged, the wall mount faders responded fine (although the console still refused to work), and every few times it was plugged back in, the SIGNAL light would not go nuts, and the wall mount faders would still work fine.

I should also mention if the console is on, the wall mount faders will not function either, but the console still will not do anything.

[David Ashton]

there must be a manual to explain the system as part of the installation, it will probably be filed away, with it life should be fairly straight forward, without it you need some serious professional help.

[icewolf08]

Your black box is probably a component of the architectural control system. It would be useful to know what the cables besides the power are that come from it. If they are connected using XLR type connectors then go ahead and unplug it/them and tell us how many pins it has. If it is hardwired in, that is a whole different story. See if you can find any other identifying marks on the box and/or take some photos and post them here.

Odds are this is a case of someone having pushed the wrong button somewhere or your architectural system has crashed. Many times if the architectural system has control you can't override it with the console. It would also be a good idea to see if there are any other "black boxes" possibly around the dimmers that are part of the architectural system. It would be best if you posted some photos if you find any or at least a description before you go messing with them.

You might also check around the dimmers to see if there is a DMX jack that is either connected to the dimmers or has a cable that is connected to the dimmers. If either fo these is the case, you could try plugging the console right in there and see if you get control back. If you do, then the problem lies with your architectural system and then you just have to find the component that is spitting out bad signal.

[MNBallet]

are you getting any control of lights from the light board? If not here are a few things to check:
1: grandmaster up to 100% ( you won't believe how many people miss this)
2. proper DMX cable plugged into the proper DMX port on the back. The Innovator has 3 DMX ports (A,B, & C) as well as a 3 pin port that is switchable between all 3 ports)
3. Double check your softpatch on the board, it could have been erased.
4. On the setup screen, make sure that all ports are outputting DMX, the Innovator gives you options to output several types of protocol.
4a) are your dimmers really DMX? I've been in schools where ETC does funky things with the dimmers so only an ETC board works, and I've been in schools where Leviton (Colortran) installed a system that was on CMX and not DMX. Try output on the proper port as CMX and try it.

Kenneth Pogin
Production / Tour Manager
Minnesota Ballet
Been touring nationwide with an Innovator 24/48 for the past 15 years!

[MillburyAuditorium]

Okay, This might seem to be my only area of specialty since it seems out venues are setup the same

Alright. First, Look around the backstage or dimmer room for a box with two lights on it and a key hold that might say something like "Emergency Power Transfer Unit" and see if the red light is lit up, if it is, the room is not getting enough power.

Now these boxes around the house we have as well. These are additions for the Pre-Set System used in most high schools so other teachers can turn on the houselights. The main control panel for the preset system must be in the booth like you mentioned and a branch of it must be backstage and the buttons around the house. In order to get a lighting desk working with a preset system in place is to press any of those small buttons and the houselights or whatever the preset is, to slowly go off, then you go over to your desk and turn it on and go at it.
But it seems that the lights refuse to turn off? There could be a short in the preset system like there was in our place last year.

But first I want you to try something. Go over to your board. Hit Setup until you see something like.. Control Type or Language or something like that and if you go into that menu there should be two options. DMX and CMX. If it is on CMX, move it to DMX. CMX is the defualt on Leviton boards. If it is on CMX with a DMX system just random crap will happen. If your sure it is on DMX control, check the DMX cable going out of the board to the wall and dust it a bit.

But it probably is not the board since the presets do not work.
Make sure your baord is turned off when you try using the presets, there may be some interference there.

If nothing works, shut down your dimmer racks and give them a good cleaning and keep them cooling down for a while and try reseting them again.


If nothing works then shut down everything and call in Leviton.
I would be interested to see how this turns out for you.

Good luck!

[LeadHead]

The console/control board has no control at all over the system. We read through the manual, and verified that it was set to DMX, but it made no difference.

Unfortuantely there seems to be no easy way to shut down the dimmer racks. The maintenance department and the director of facilities believes that the large disconnect in the dimmer rack room may also power other parts of the building.

The most we can do is just press the reset button the racks.

I'll try and get pictures/video of the system and what its doing on tuesday.

[derekleffew]

As icewolf08 said, it's likely that the architectural control interface has crashed, seizing control of the dimmers. Look for something that says Luma-Net® (Leviton's architectural control line) on it. Could the "black box" be an I/F 501?

Leviton Entertainment Controls phone numbers:

Telephone Numbers

For Product Support or Technical Issues
Technical Support Toll-free : 1-800-864-2502
Technical Support Local Portland, OR : 1-503-404-5501
Technical Support Fax: 1-503-404-5601

Hours
Technical Support: Mon-Fri 6:00 AM-4:00 PM Pacific Time
Customer Service: Mon-Fri 8:00 AM-5:00 PM Pacific Time


SO I take it they didn't call you back today?

[Tex]

Check all the buttons on the architectural control stations. A stuck down or shorted button can take control. If shorted, most of these panels can be removed from the wall and simply unplugged.

[mstaylor]

The console/control board has no control at all over the system. We read through the manual, and verified that it was set to DMX, but it made no difference.

Unfortuantely there seems to be no easy way to shut down the dimmer racks. The maintenance department and the director of facilities believes that the large disconnect in the dimmer rack room may also power other parts of the building.

The most we can do is just press the reset button the racks.

I'll try and get pictures/video of the system and what its doing on tuesday.

There has to be some sort of disconnect to the dimmers, either a disconnect beside the dimmers or a breaker controling them. You need to get an electrician in to trace everything out and make the powers to be aware of what they have and how it is controled. You also need factory support to troubleshoot your system so once you know how it is wired, to be able figure what is wrong. I think it is going to take both things, a factory solution and a local electrician to implement the solution.

[MillburyAuditorium]

Lead, go to the dimmer room and through the main breaker. Tell the custodians that you know it is Only for the lighting system. A lot of high school theaters are like separate buildings from the school sometimes. We have our own power separate from the school's, different fire system and HVAC not connected to the school's.
Just either do it yourself or have a maintenance do it. And if they are worried about it being connected to other rooms which it wont be, do it after school.

Also do what Tex said, because you said you can hold one button and they will dim but go back up when you release it. Make sure that your box of faders, presets, in the booth and backstage are at 0 too. Because something in your venue is being told to turn the houslights on. In turn, the lighting console wont operate.

And also check for an Emergency Power Transfer Cabinet like I said. Because it really sounds like a power issue. In our place, if the there a power loss or fire alarm, the transfer cab will take over. It shuts down the dimmer rack and brings up the houselights and worklights using backup power and there is no control over this until normal power is restored.

[LeadHead]

Update: We had a rep from Leviton/Colortran come down today (just a rep, not a technician), and he was going over some details of the system.

The blackbox I was referring to in the original post was a Viewpoint system (I guess the architectural control system)

The little screen backstage that said STATION 10, is a Viewpoint Station, and as far as the rep could tell, the issue seems to be stemming from the Viewpoint Station. It appears to be locked out, as it will not respond to any inputs via the buttons.

We do have a case number with Leviton, and the facilities director said he went through basic troubleshooting with them and did basic things like resetting the racks, checking the DMX cables out, etc..

[Studio]

It is most likely the architectural control system, we had a new install in 2003 in our school and opening night all the lights started pulsing full to zero. Turns out they had to replace the whole architectural control system. There are remnants of it though out our auditorium. Anyone for a single rack mount in the wall with wires that are e taped together (I hope that's not our DMX)

So yah, have you tried plugging the DMX from the light board strait into the dimmer rack (if possible)

[SHARYNF]

As you noted, the box was the control box for the view system

So because we're high school students, and curious, we unplugged it again, then plugged it back in, this time I was paying attention to the status lights of the box. As soon as we plugged it in, the red POWER light lit up, then the green SIGNAL light, followed by an amber AIRFLOW light. The stage/house lights were still out at this point, but then suddenly the SIGNAL light started blinking something furious and the stage/house lights all came back on.

The light sequence is typical NSI Red is for power, green solid says there is a signal, and the flashing signal lights shows that it is receiving a control signal

After you unplugged it again the reason the green was steady is that the system had all ready executed the command so another command and the flashing lights showing it was receiving was not needed


PLEASE ASK QUESTIONS BEFORE you take actions, Plugging and unplugging and not knowing what you are doing or what you are doing it to can be a mistake. THINK RESEARCH THEN ACT. READY FIRE AIM is the clear sign of the inexperienced

Sharyn

[LeadHead]

We did ask questions before hand, the facilities director had no problem with it, and one of the first things the Colortran Rep did when he got here was power cycling the viewpoint controller/module box..but thats not the issue at hand here.

Why doesn't the Viewpoint wall plate respond to anything?

Is the Viewpoint Controller box set to the wrong "Rack Position"? It is currently set to Rack Position 0.

The big i96 Rack is set to Position 1, and the smaller i24 is set to position 5, and from as far as I could tell was correct - at least rack wise based on information I've found so far.

[SHARYNF]

We did ask questions before hand, the facilities director had no problem with it, and one of the first things the Colortran Rep did when he got here was power cycling the viewpoint controller/module box..but thats not the issue at hand here.

I think you totally missed the point. When you cycled the power you had NO IDEA WHAT THE BOX WAS??? The Fact the rep did that was based on knowing what the unit was.

You could have been connected to a starting/stiking system that needs a delay, you could have a system that needs to have a power on sequence.

It is like a computer, simply hitting the power switch might not be the best thing for shut down restart.

It is one thing when you know what the unit you are dealing with to decide what to do.

Since I am assuming the system worked in the past, did anyone else touch or change anything? How did the settings get changed? assuming this might be the problem? what was the rep's suggestion? What has failed? Has the power reset caused the system to loose its settings?

Sharyn

[LeadHead]

We were on the phone with leviton for probably a solid 4-5 hours straight today.

We wired the DMX cable from the Innovator panel right into the racks, and the system worked. A lot more continuity checking later. We found one bad diode on a wire on the backstage viewpoint panel wiring. This wire was on the take control circuit for the panic buttons, and as far as the Leviton tech could tell over the phone, the Viewpoint module is bad, and we'll be sending that out tomorrow for repair.

[LeadHead]

If anyone is interested we finally got everything working. Problem was a combination of a fried diode in a back stage viewpoint "box", and the architectural control module had somehow been damaged and lost its programming. Probably because its not mounted properly and just sits there on the floor. Somebody probably accidentally gave it a good kick one day.

Finally go the ACM programmed, and then everything started working as it should.

Got to learn all about soft patching an Innovator 24/48, not terribly fun. Still haven't figured out the whole Cues thing, and submasters are a pain to program into it as well. Oh well.

[DuckJordan]

to add on to that the colortran architectural things are very touch we have two sets of memory chips because they loose there programing frequently.

[LeadHead]

We working on trying to get a memory card for our system. Apparently we never got one which is partially why it took so long getting the system back up and running. We had to hook a PC upto the control and reprogram every single thing in manually.

[hebessica]

Finally go the ACM programmed, and then everything started working as it should.

Got to learn all about soft patching an Innovator 24/48, not terribly fun. Still haven't figured out the whole Cues thing, and submasters are a pain to program into it as well. Oh well.

Where did you get your software? We're having the same issue and I can't locate the software. So far Leviton's techs have been a mixed bag.

This thread on the other hand, has been AWESOME!

[Tex]

Got to learn all about soft patching an Innovator 24/48, not terribly fun. Still haven't figured out the whole Cues thing, and submasters are a pain to program into it as well. Oh well.

Patch - Channel# @ Dimmer# or vice-versa Enter
Cues - Record Cue # Time # Enter
Submasters - Record Sub # Enter

This is a pain? Seems pretty standard to me...

[LeadHead]

Where did you get your software? We're having the same issue and I can't locate the software. So far Leviton's techs have been a mixed bag.

This thread on the other hand, has been AWESOME!

Our Facilities Director fired off an E-Mail to someone within Leviton, who then E-Mailed us the software. Tell them you need the software to program the architectural control module.

Patch - Channel# @ Dimmer# or vice-versa Enter
Cues - Record Cue # Time # Enter
Submasters - Record Sub # Enter

This is a pain? Seems pretty standard to me...

Patching is easy enough, its the fact that who ever installed the system at this school never bothered to properly label the dimmer racks themselves, or something was changed at last minute. None of the dimmer numbers match up properly with the light/socket numbers on stag. We had to manually set each dimmer on one at a time to see which lights went where, write it all down on a chart, and then from there figure out how we wanted to organize our 120 or so dimmers into 48 channels.

Can't answer you on cues, but Recording Submasters is a bit more difficult then that, at least on the software version we're running. You have to soft-select the channels you want, soft-set them at 100% (or whatever your desired is), then assign it to a sub master, and if you don't hit enter twice as a specific point in the process, the submaster will be stuck at 100% and you'll have to manually set everything back down to 0.

Perhaps a lot of it is because I really don't know the board (or lighting in general that is), but the software just doesn't really seem all that intuitive.

[Madzoga]

If anyone needs the info;
1) If you see the LCD station having the words "Station 10", or another number, it means that viewpoint has lost it's programming. If this happens, one of 2 things happen. the first being that all the lights will be held at 70%, or all lights will be off.
2) If you have the memory card, try to "read the Card". It will look like nothing happened, but if you are standing near the rack, you will hear the pitch of rack change as the system goes to the first preset.
3) If you do not have the memory card, then you will need the software to reload it. Just email Leviton or me for it. Note: I have the software, but might not have the config that u need for your system.

In terms of DMX console not playing nice with ENR/Topaz/D-192 racks, it is site specific. But the general rule is all of the racks use both DMX and CMX. However, they will default to CMX. The reason for the blinks is that CMX has slower refresh rate, so it messes with incoming signal.
You can get around this by turning your DMX board on first, then resetting the rack. This forces the rack into DMX. However, it is easier to just purchase a protocol converter for this. The converter will also deal with termination issues that sometimes.

[LXPlot]

Patching is easy enough, its the fact that who ever installed the system at this school never bothered to properly label the dimmer racks themselves, or something was changed at last minute. None of the dimmer numbers match up properly with the light/socket numbers on stag. We had to manually set each dimmer on one at a time to see which lights went where, write it all down on a chart, and then from there figure out how we wanted to organize our 120 or so dimmers into 48 channels.

Perhaps a lot of it is because I really don't know the board (or lighting in general that is), but the software just doesn't really seem all that intuitive.

*Theatres often have more dimmers added in upgrades, so numbers get thrown off. We had that problem, but we fixed it. Now we have a 1-1 patch on all of our dimmers (Dimmer 1 to channel 1, etc.) You should build some kind of a plot of the theatre with dimmer numbers to locations. This'll make your life a ton easier in the future, and even better for those people who'll come after you.

And I really don't see anything particularly unintuitive with the software, it's all command line like normal PCs. Although a CMX default is rather irritating.