Control/Dimming - Permanent Installation Shutdown Procedures

[derekleffew]

Speaking of permanently installed dimmers and distros.

[icewolf08]

The only time I kill power to my racks is for maintenance or when the power goes out.

[SteveB]

I leave all racks up and running 24/7

1) Racks are Sensor with CEM+ and I would worry that the CEM will not like frequent kill/boot cycles. ETC tells me that the racks are designed for 24/7 operations, fans included. And as a connection to the "Do you shut off your console" thread, not shutting down a console maintains constant DMX to the racks, which will have the Sensor fans running 24/7. A call to ETC about this indicated that this is normal and that the fans are unlikely to fail as a result (in their experience).

2) In a meeting with the theater consultant, hashing out details of the new building spaces, the TC wanted to have master shut-off relays for the 3 racks in the large theater. This was mostly to help the buildings "Green" rating. I then pointed out that a Sensor with a fan running and it's CEM+ on, draws maybe 77 watts (according to ETC). I also had major issues with the reliability of a 3 phase, 2000 amp relay and could foresee many issues with a lower level employee forgetting to activate the relay to power up the rack, prior to a recital. Ditto having Unison/Paradigm trigger the relay, THAT had so many failure points that there is no way we are going that route.

So I leave the racks on.

Steve B.

[Esoteric]

I am with Ice.

Mike

[icewolf08]

Originally Posted by SteveB

And as a connection to the "Do you shut off your console" thread, not shutting down a console maintains constant DMX to the racks, which will have the Sensor fans running 24/7. A call to ETC about this indicated that this is normal and that the fans are unlikely to fail as a result (in their experience).

I have Sensor+ racks as well, and even with DMX present, my rack fans only kick on when a dimmer goes active. So if all the dimmers are at 0 then after 20 minutes of inactivity the fans will turn off, even if data is still present. The fans also come on if the CEM reads certain errors like "clean your filters!"

[SteveB]

Originally Posted by icewolf08

I have Sensor+ racks as well, and even with DMX present, my rack fans only kick on when a dimmer goes active. So if all the dimmers are at 0 then after 20 minutes of inactivity the fans will turn off, even if data is still present. The fans also come on if the CEM reads certain errors like "clean your filters!"

Alex you are correct as I discovered when I went back to the CEM manual this afternoon (nagging doubt in my brain).

One of my racks seemingly runs 24/7, which is why I had called ETC about fan life. The rack has stage dims, as well as house lights, as well as the ghost light, so SOMETHING is always getting DMX.

SB

[lieperjp]

We power down our permanent system since it's really just a bunch of 6-channel NSI packs mounted to a rack and permanently tied into the building's system. Saves electricity and prevents too much heat build up in our small booth.

[waynehoskins]

I had to vote "other", because there are few rare conditions where I will down the racks. These have nothing to do with trying to save wear-and-tear on anything or being green, and all to do with maintenance or safety things, things where the rack is down anyway and leaving the building is a trivial addition.

In college, we downed the racks (MD288s) once when we had a cooling fan seize up during a rehearsal. You could hear the noise of the fan all day, and in rehearsal that evening my job was to watch it. It locked up, we got works up fast and downed the racks.

At the church I've got Genesises. They also stay up 24/7, but there have been a couple of times in the winter where squirrels have taken down one leg of the three-phase on the pole. That's happened twice, but I've downed the racks and all the other three-phase loads I could to keep the trafo and the air handlers as happy as they could be, and to hopefully reduce any big transients when that third phase came back on.

Other than that sort of thing, there's no reason I down any of the racks I work on overnight.

[kiwitechgirl]

We almost never power our racks down. Certainly those in the dimmer room never get switched off; very occasionally we'll put a dimmer under the stage to run set electrics and that does get powered down nightly, purely because the understage area is not 100% watertight (old old building) and we're a little paranoid! Hence I voted other....Other than that, they're on 24/7.

Interestingly enough I worked in a venue where the dimmers did get switched off nightly, which was fine, but the major issue I had with the procedures that were in place; in the event of a fire alarm, the LX operator had to power the dimmers down - and given that the dimmers were in the basement under the stage, about as far away from the control room as it was possible to be, I didn't think this was entirely sensible - if the building is going to burn, what difference does it make if the dimmers are on or off?! Strangely enough, the first time I ran pyro on a show, I asked the technical manager what I should do in the event of a fire alarm if I had pyros loaded, because surely that's going to be a danger to any firemen in the building? While he'd decided the LX op had to get the dimmers off, this situation had never occurred to him....

[dramatech]

My main rack is a EDI MK VII, and quite a few home made dimmers made from an old Teatronics MD288 rack, controlled with circuit boards from Lightronics and Northlight. All of these are shut off except shows and rehearsals. The house lights are on a dimmer rack that I made out of an old analog Electro Contol rack. I built the contol stations, and have a transfer switch for show control that uses a Northlight DMX to Analog board. When I first arrived at the theatre five years ago, the house were also on the EDI rack, and it was left on 24/7. In that year alone, we had $2000 dollars in repair on the dimmer rack. The building was built in 1976 and is in Central Florida. From all of the lightning strikes and Hurricane outages, plus bad ground connections in the building, we were always having to repair our dimmer rack.
Since putting the house on it's own dimmer and turning everything else off when not in use, we have had no failures.
I have also installed optos all over the theatre. (24 ouputs in all) That clears up the grounding problems. I have also modified the input circuitry to the EDI rack to use the true RS 485 transceiver. It had a RS 422 input transceiver. Additional surge protection was also put on all of the input power lines to the control circuits.
I realize that I have explained more than was requested in the survey, but I thought that I would give reason why some might want turn things off, although in the normal convention, I would agree with leaving it all on 24/7.