Patching house lights to board

[akaplo]

Hi,
This is my first posting in these forums, so if I don't have enough information to answer all of your questions, please say so.
I am running a show this week at a venue in which I have never before set foot, so I wasn't sure what to expect. They had just bought about 30 new Source Fours to replace old fresnels, so I hung and focused those with no problem. When I went to turn on the control board (an ETC Element 40), I realized that the house lights weren't patched to the board. They are controlled by a Lehigh DX (original) server rack. This rack includes 96 dimmer packs, and numbers 76-80, 84-88, and 92-96 are the house lights. The Element, at first startup, is set by factory default to do a 1:1 patch, correct? This kind of patch should be fine for this high school auditorium, so I just figured that everything would be patched to the board (it's been in the booth for about a month, brand new). For some reason, the channels go up to 250 (WAY more than are actually in the theater, and not quite half of a universe), but the numbers on the house lights in the server rack don't control the house lights from the board's channels.
Would it make sense to clear the entire board and do a fresh 1:1 patch? Or should I just clear those specific channels and re-patch those? Or should I do something altogether different?
Thanks for any help!
Aaron

[techieman33]

My guess would be that they have a separate controller for the house lights, and that the house lights can't be controlled from the light board.

[cpf]

You'll want to look at the dimmer rack configuration - as the person above me said, they're probably externally controlled, and changing them to HTP/DMX override would be done from the rack.

[Robert]

My guess is that the house lights might need to be controlled by two seperate locations (I think this is a code requirement). If you do not have a position backstage or elsewhere to control the houselights in conjunction with the board you may be out of luck.

[DrPinto]

are you nuts? all three of our spaces are 1:1 patched, and many shows that come through are 1:1 patch except for non rig items. Now I may not be in my right mind but I have serious doubts of the 12 ME's I've met are all not right...

I wish I could use a 1:1 patch. When they removed the patch board and installed new dimmers in one of the theaters I work at, the electrician randomly connected the circuits to the new dimmers. There is no order at all.

You know, if you have 250 channels, why not just go 1-250@FULL and see what happens?

[DuckJordan]

not a safe thing to do... I know in my old space if we brought everything on I'd be searching for a breaker in the dark...

[DrPinto]

not a safe thing to do... I know in my old space if we brought everything on I'd be searching for a breaker in the dark...

That makes me feel better about my space!

Try 1-250@10 instead if you don't trust your system.

[65535]

You want to be careful with any 0 count fades on large numbers of instruments. Inrush current is still huge even bringing up to 10%.

On a related note. 1:1 patches aren't feasible for us. We have 240 channels on our board and use 2 universes for various devices aside from dimmers.

Custom patching makes programming much faster.

[derekleffew]

Some posts have been moved to 1:1 patch: Do you use it? .

[xander]

^ That was inappropriate.

[josh88]

^ That was inappropriate.

Why? That conversation seems better suited for that thread instead of one about patching house lights

I'm still curious if the op ever actually found the house lights.


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