Patch to board... unpatch from...

[Charc]

I have a quick question, and I can't seem to find the relevant information on the Strand website, with their blasted new layout.

I have, an undetermined, strand architectural lighting system. It's really limiting and a pain, and I've finally made up my mind to just patch all the house-lights into the board. I'm worried that if I patch into the board, the architectural controls will no longer work the house-lights. What do you guys think about this? Unfortunately it doesn't look like the new site as the information on these controls anywhere. The old site had them, it was one of their two architectural controls. I'm also looking to find out if I can lock the architectural controls from our master panel. Unfortunately, again, I can't find any manuals or the model.

In retrospect, this is a terrible post, oh well.

[Grog12]

It shouldn't mess with the architectural controls...it should be dealing with the DMX and your board patch shouldn't affect it.

[DHSLXOP]

I can't help you fix it, but if you want to try to find the manuals and information, you can go to http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
and type in the name of the strand lighting site, where you will be able to see all of the older forms of the site.
Hope this helps in some way.

[jmabray]

Grog's right. Your board patch should not affect anything done by your architectural lighting system. In Strand racks, they are two mutually exclusive ways of control. They don't talk to each other at all, really. Some of the Strand architectural systems can listen to the DMX stream to snapshot looks that you have set by the console, but they will never talk back to the console.

Do you know what your dimmer rack is? Can you describe your stations? That would go a ways toward determining what type of architectural system is.

[Charc]

Dimmer Racks: Two Strand CD80 Supervisor

Architectural Controls: Look quite like the outlook controls on the strand site. White box, with four small buttons, and long horizontal red lines next to each button. We have two master panels, they have a handful of buttons and around 8-12 faders.

I'll assume the racks set the level as most recent takes precedence. So I'll have to find out about lockout functions on the architectural controls.

[jmabray]

You have outlook controls. SWC only has 8 and 16 button stations if I remember right.... Premire has to have a seperate processor box.

The beauty of Outlook is that you can wire it into the dimmer rack direct. But you do have rooms and channels to contend with. There is an outlook patch in the SV control module. If you remove a dimmer from the room,you won't be able to control it.

I believe that the rack operates on an HTP (Highest Takes precedence) signal as opposed to an LTP. Meaning that what ever is higher - the level from the console DMX or the level from the outlook station - that is what gets played back....

[Charc]

Originally Posted by jmabray

You have outlook controls. SWC only has 8 and 16 button stations if I remember right.... Premire has to have a seperate processor box.
The beauty of Outlook is that you can wire it into the dimmer rack direct. But you do have rooms and channels to contend with. There is an outlook patch in the SV control module. If you remove a dimmer from the room,you won't be able to control it.
I believe that the rack operates on an HTP (Highest Takes precedence) signal as opposed to an LTP. Meaning that what ever is higher - the level from the console DMX or the level from the outlook station - that is what gets played back....

Right, that's what I meant. I've read "highest takes precedence" all over the manual. What I meant was that, but said completely backwards, is that since the house-lights will be off during the show, if someone hits the architectural controls, they will turn on.

[Charc]

Looking at this online, retail site, I think it is in fact the Premiere.

[Grog12]

Originally Posted by charcoaldabs

Right, that's what I meant. I've read "highest takes precedence" all over the manual. What I meant was that, but said completely backwards, is that since the house-lights will be off during the show, if someone hits the architectural controls, they will turn on.

Make sure no one hits them....If I remember correctly though and you're really worried about it...either Premier or Outlook, maybe even both have lockouts...but you'd have to hit up the manual to check.

[fredthe]

If it's an Outlook system, on one of the master stations (with the sliders) simultaneously press and hold the "manual" and "enter" buttons, until the LED starts flashing... this will lock out all other stations. Use the same combination to release the lock-out.

AFAIK Outlook and Premier stations look pretty much the same... so give this a try, and see if it works.

-Fred