Chauvet LED Colorbank

[branflake]

Thank you to all who offered suggestions for this problem. In the end, the guy I was renting the lights from ordered a Chauvet board to run just those lights. I think the problem is the age of the board our high school is using. When we ran the lights through the new board the problem disappeared.

We did use terminators and ran actual DMX cable (not mic cable), but it was a very long run from the stage to the book because of our setup. Interestingly, the school's board had been damaged in the past and repaired, but I wonder if there is something still wrong with it that only becomes noticeable with the more sophisticated lighting instruments.

Anyway, the show was a success, so thank you all! I was biting my nails on this one because we didn't figure it out until the day before opening. hehe

[derekleffew]

Glad it all worked out for you in the end, branflake. An ETC employee on the ETC community forum has written:

We have become aware that some luminaires made by Chauvet do not correctly receive DMX data from some types of lighting boards. I think it is possible that the flicker you are seeing is due to this defect in the luminaire. We are planning to provide a suitable DMX setting to support the Chauvet products to eliminate flickering. I am not able to give you a precise date when this will be available.

Our own jmabray responded:

I had the same flickering issue with the Chauvet colorstrips with both an ION and an Expression3. The ION was able to compensate by switching to a Slow DMX setting. The Expression3 was not able to do so. It is a Chauvet issue--and they are aware of it--last I talked to them, they were working on a solution but had no idea when it was going to be ready.

Interesting, considering that the Expression3 has three DMX settings: slow, medium, and fast. Perhaps the Ion adds snail, turtle, rabbit, greyhound, and cheetah?

Originally Posted by branflake

...We did use terminators and ran actual DMX cable (not mic cable), but it was a very long run from the stage to the book because of our setup. Interestingly, the school's board had been damaged in the past and repaired, but I wonder if there is something still wrong with it that only becomes noticeable with the more sophisticated lighting instruments. ...

I regularly run DMX snakes of 300'-500' with no ill effects, although not with Chauvet fixtures. For curiosity's sake, what was the original console you were using? Sadly, I thought the DMX512 standards of 1986, 1990, and 2004 were supposed to prevent exactly this type of problem.

[Esoteric]

Originally Posted by derekleffew

Glad it all worked out for you in the end, branflake. An ETC employee on the ETC community forum has written:
Our own jmabray responded:
Interesting, considering that the Expression3 has three DMX settings: slow, medium, and fast. Perhaps the Ion adds snail, turtle, rabbit, greyhound, and cheetah?

I regularly run DMX snakes of 300'-500' with no ill effects, although not with Chauvet fixtures. For curiosity's sake, what was the original console you were using? Sadly, I thought the DMX512 standards of 1986, 1990, and 2004 were supposed to prevent exactly this type of problem.

This whole DMX setting issue sucks. I am running into it more and more working with churches and small venues. I had never run into this up until a month ago and now I have three clients having these problems! Ugh. Then again up until about two years ago I had never heard of Chauvet, Elation, etc. I thought Martin and Clay Pakey were "low end" DJ gear/lighting.

Mike

[dramatech]

It's seems as though the problem might be in the Chauvet units, but I would like to at least tell of a smilar experience that turned out to be a differance in DMX.
Several years ago, at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, we were putting in a show that used dimmers from several different manufactures, some Wybron scrollers and a few other DMX accessories. We were daisy chaining everything together, as distros were just coming into popularity. We turn the board on and some of the dimmers were happy as can be and other racks went nuts with all kinds of flickering. The scrollers wouldn't do anything right and kept changing gels with no recognizable pattern. In desperation, as the show opened in two days, we call Doug Fleenor. He asked all of the equipment models and manufactures. He immediatley mentioned that the console was pre 1990 and the DMX was not what the selected items, that were going crazy wanted to see. The other items were old enough or of a manufacture that was stable on both pre 1990 DMX and post 1990 DMX. Solution was a Fleenor combiner shipped over night, but only using one of the two inputs. This was inserted between the console and the first receiving item on the daisy chain. Explanation: The Fleenor combiner input would except any DMX input, but the output was DMX 1990, that has a slightly different timing. The console was a Strand LP90. The dimmer racks and acccessories that worked were, a 12 channel ETC sensor rack, some huge old analog rack running an ETC DMX to analog convertor, and two Strand CD80 12 packs that had been converted to DMX by using some Lightronics circuit boards. The nonfunctioning equipment was an LMI 48 channel touring rack, Wybron fourrunner scrollers and 10 I-beams recently converted to DMX operation.

[derekleffew]

IntellabeamHX700s were some of the most finicky fixtures I've ever worked with. I had twelve of them on an Exp3 one summer, with no problems at all. Near the end of the season, for a one-off, I programmed for two days, with no issues. Then during the performance, four random fixtures decided to do that fabulous mirror-twitch! I found out much later there were several different EPROM versions/revisions, only one of which was truly stable.

In fact, I've found one cannot mix I-Beams, Cybers, or AF1000s with any other fixture on a datastream without grief. In their defense, though, they were some of the first fixtures to go from a proprietary protocol to DMX512.

[dramatech]

When the I-beam first became available in DMX, we purchased 10 of them. We had another 15 that were high end protocall. We phoned high end and asked if we could purchase the eproms to convert them. The reply was that we didn't have the skills to install them. This after we had just found a problem in the manufacturing of the I-beams, corrected it, and High end then sent out the info to dealers and users as a field bulletin. Our next response was that in the future we would purchase some thing other than high end products. Reluctantly we were sold the eproms. I installed a few and coudn't get them to work. Phone calls were answered with "we told you so". After some bitter conversation, they put on one of the engineers. After several tests performed, he asks, "what is the version number on the eproms". Dead silence on the other end of the phone for quite a while then, "send them back and you will have new ones in the morning". After much prodding, he responds with "they sent you eproms for trackspots". Needless to say in their embarrasment, I was never again questioned on any issue and was able to purchase repair parts with no problem.

[Esoteric]

Oh the I-Beams. Those were the second moving lights we used in college (after we mastered the Trackspots). Those were little suckers. We had so many problems with them. Of course they were for all tends and purposes HES first moving lights.

Mike

[DavidNorth]

We have been working with Chauvet on this issue quite a bit lately. It very much looks like the ColorStrip needs a large amount of interbyte timing to work correctly without shifting DMX bytes. Those of you that know this timing parameter also know that this is arguably the most difficult area for a lighting console to modify depending on how its hardware is designed. As much as we would like DMX to be DMX and not have interconnectivity issues, this just isn't the case.

When you select different speed on DMX consoles, just because it is slower does not mean that the timing you wanted, or needed, changed does indeed change. Some timing is set in stone, such as bit width. Almost all other timing is flexible. Mark after Break, Break, Post Start, Interbyte, and Interpacket time can all be flexible in their timing allowances. This means that slow on Console A is not necessarily the same as Slow on Console B. Refresh rate does not help you as it is the timing making up the refresh rate that is the difference.

Yes, Intellabeams had this same issue if addressed above DMX address 256 as they needed 4uS to do a DMA between 256 and 257. With an Expression 2 console, the amount of time after the first stop bit and the next start bit was indeed the width of the second stop bit and was 4uS. You can see how occasionally a 4uS DMA did not complete in a 4uS window and cause a shift of one dimmer number.

Back to ColorStrips. An Ion console on Slow will usually control these. A SmartFade on v1.7.1 code will as well. SF and SFML on v2.0 and most other ETC products will not control these. We will be changing some of our timings, in the products that we can, to better handle these in the near future. We have also been working with Chauvet so that they understand the issues within their products and attempt to affect change.

In the meantime, good luck and let us know if we can help. Thanks to Jeff Mabray for being the first to bring this to us.

David
ETC

[Scan2]

I am having the same issues with the Chauvet Colorstrips. I have tried power and now am having a DMX terminations cable made up (3 pin). Anyway i am using a Magic Q set up with the external Maxiwing board. When i get in today i am going to try and slow the DMX output of the board. I will update later and let you know how it goes. I kinda got thrown in with this Lighting set up not to sure how the magic q works but so far it seems pretty good. Any tips for that console. Oh ya im trying to link Par 64s LED to it cant find a profile for them on the board. No name on the side but made in China 6 channel DMX with a dip switch. This things are horrible, but i cant get them to link right. Any thoughts thanks cheers!

[Esoteric]

All this is why I don't sell Chauvet LED products.

Mike