SmartColor issues

[DCATTechie]

I recently bought 2 SmartColors off of LightTheatrics.com (i know its sketchy, please dont hate me!). They came in soon after and I installed them no problem. Now, it started that when I entered a low value to that channel (Im running an Express 72/144 by the way) the scrollers displayed the color that I had requested, but as the values increased the first scroller would not display the right frame. It was either it was an entire frame off or was 3/4 of the way into the right frame but you could still see the other color. I reset to factory default and it seemed to fix the problem, but as I started changing levels from cue to cue the problem slowly came back and eventually became worse. And to my dismay, the scroller that had previously worked great the first time is now developing the same issue. The 4-pin isn't run back into the power supply because I only purchased the 75w PSU. It also is NOT terminated because I have yet to purchase the terminator. Could these problems be caused by the signal not being terminated? Is it a user error on my part? Or is it a problem with the scrollers and the gel string itself? Any help is appreciated!!

P.S.
I called Apollo and they were very helpful! They tried everything they could think of and even called me back 10 minutes later with another possible solution they had thought of. Their final conlusion was that the gel strings were made too long and eventually caused the frames to get misaligned. Not saying I don't trust Apollo, they're awesome!, I just wanted a second opinion before I ship these back to the dealer and wait who knows how long before they were returned to me. I also wanted to make sure the problem wouldn't occur again once I got them back due to my error

[Footer]

I agree with them, its in the gel string. I would suggest purchasing a string strait from apollo and installing that. It could be a dirty eye, but I would go with what Apollo said, they know their product.

[icewolf08]

I'll third the strings being the issue. There is no "eye" like on a ColoRamII, but it is possible that the encoder on the motor is messed up. It also could be as simple as needing to re-load the strings onto the rollers, however, if you take the strings off, make sure that A) each of the frames is the same size, and B) the total length of the string is not longer than the max specified by Apollo.

[Sony]

I suggest giving them a good cleaning as per the Apollo Manual

http://downloads.goapollo.com/Smart%...ual%201008.pdf

It could be the optical encoder has gotten dirty from dust and use.

From the Manual

"The Smart Color ® scroller uses an optical encoding method to calculate the position of the gel filter. If dust, smoke, fog juice, or other debris accumulates on the optical devices, the position accuracy of the gel string will begin to shift."