Control/Dimming Any old school Strand Palette OS experts out there?

[EMJ]

OK, long story short, I'm helping out a high school and trying to get their board communicating with some old VL1000 movers. The background is as follows:

The building's about 14 years old and has a Strand Preset Palette 32/64 board (300 channels) running 2 racks of Strand C-21 dimmers. All communication is via a dedicated lighting Ethernet network. The Board is connected to the network twice, each outputting a different signal. One is DMX from the DMX A outport port on the board to an eithernet port on the wall using a DMX XLR to Ethercon cable (5 pin DMX on one end, RJ45 Ethernet on the other) and the second is ShowNET from the Ethernet port on the board to the second eithernet port on the wall (standard eithernet cable). These two ports feed to the dimmer room back stage where there's an Ethernet patch panel that has 14 Ethernet cables terminated to it. One of the feeds from the booth cross connects to another cable which appears to feed directly into one of the dimmer racks. I assume this is the DMX feed from the Board and the C-21 processors indicate that they have a network connection and DMX on "Port B". The other 12 cables are patched into a POE network switch. 7 of them are probably lighting network Ethernet ports around the theater, one is the 2nd feed (ShowNET) from the Board and I assume the other 4 are for the Visionnet house light control pads. I'm pretty sure of all of the above, but they have zero documentation of anything. It's a big school system with more than 100 schools, and so far I have had no luck trying to get through to any of the central office construction staff that probably have access to the as-builts. I'm still working on that, but have traced enough to know the Ethernet network isn't my issue.

The school has 4 Strand N21 DMX Nodes for outputting DMX to the 3 VL1000's that the building apparently came with, and some scrollers on the Cyc lights. The N21 Nodes are powered up and I can access them via their IP address, so they are on the network and they say they are receiving shownet. They are all in DMX Output mode, but they all indicate "Port Inactive" and don't have the down arrow icon that indicated DMX output.

NetSLOTS are new to me, but as far as I can tell, I have everything set to NetSLOT 1, DMX 1 - DMX 512. I only have 300 channels, so I figured I'd just have everything output the first DMX universe and I should have signal flowing no matter what. Obviously I'm missing something. It doesn't help that everything seems to have been updated to the latest/final software, but ALL of the manuals I can find online are for various older versions that are slightly different. I even emailed Vari-Lite/Strand and they replied that everything they have is on the website. I'm attaching a photo of the N21 Node showing its' Port A configuration and indicating that it's inactive, photos of the output patch routing on the board, and just for fun, the network patch panel mess (note that I subsequently removed a number of these patch cables because they were plugged into ports that weren't wired to anything).

Anyone that knows the Palette software see what I'm doing wrong or missing? Thanks for the help!!!!

 

[Mac Hosehead]

My guess is that the Ethernet network is working and waiting for Shownet data which isn't there or not patched. If that is the case then the dimmers are working from the DMX output on the console. I would look to patching on the console and try to verify Shownet is making it to the network.

 

[Rob]

Check for link lights on the console processor and at the Netgear switch to make sure the DMX 512 RJ45 didn’t get confused with Ethernet RJ.
You might as well delete Routes 2-4 as they’re not doing anything for you.

Download Pathscape and then plug into Netgear. I can’t remember with ShowNet if it cares if you’re on the same Subnet, but might as well set your laptop up share same as console/nodes. From the PS Tools menu, chose DataScope | ShowNet and see if you can see an active source from the Palette.

Also, use Tools | Virtual Console, and change protocol to ShowNet and start DMX to see if your N21 Nodea can receive from your laptop.

 

[EMJ]

My guess is that the Ethernet network is working and waiting for Shownet data which isn't there or not patched. If that is the case then the dimmers are working from the DMX output on the console. I would look to patching on the console and try to verify Shownet is making it to the network.

Thanks Mac. When I log into the N21 Nodes via their IP address, they indicate that they are receiving showNET. I tried changing the output protocol on the board to something other than ShowNET and the N21 Node I was watching switched to "ShowNET- Inactive". I agree that it's probably a patching issue on the board, but I think it's probably something to do with the NetSlot/DMX patching. It seems like the Nodes are getting ShowNet fine, but not receiving a DMX broadcast on the Netslots they are looking for. The problem is, everytthing seems to be set correctly. Atleast thats the only explanation I've come up with so far.

 

[EMJ]

Check for link lights on the console processor and at the Netgear switch to make sure the DMX 512 RJ45 didn’t get confused with Ethernet RJ.
You might as well delete Routes 2-4 as they’re not doing anything for you.

Download Pathscape and then plug into Netgear. I can’t remember with ShowNet if it cares if you’re on the same Subnet, but might as well set your laptop up share same as console/nodes. From the PS Tools menu, chose DataScope | ShowNet and see if you can see an active source from the Palette.

Also, use Tools | Virtual Console, and change protocol to ShowNet and start DMX to see if your N21 Nodea can receive from your laptop.

Thanks Rob. I'll double check the DMX and Ethernet outputs, but as far as I can tell, the DMX output changes to Cat 5 cable and RJ45's for transport only, but never goes through a Node to change it to anything else and it doesn't connect to the network at all. It runs to the network rack in the dimmer room and then has a direct physical cosspatch to a cable going into the dimmer rack, and therefore never connects to the network switch.

I haven't used Pathscape before, but I'll download it and try all of the tests you suggested the next time I'm overthere. Thanks alot for the advice.

I have a call later this week with the local lighting company that holds the school system wide contract for dimmer/lighting system inspection and maintenance, but I'm not holding my breath. System wide they maintain (which seems like it mostly means they do an annual inspection to make sure it's safe) around 30some middle and high school systems that range from much older than ours all the way up to brand new state of the art LED systems. So the brands and technology are all over the board. We can then have them come up for an onsite look, but there is a cost for that which will come out of the theater program budget, and unless they have someone who really knows old Strand stuff, I'm not sure they will do any better than me. Thanks for the advice and recomendations.

 

[JimmyM]

Check to make sure the console didn't lose it's IP address, it's pretty common for those consoles.

To chnage it, exit out of Palette software and you should see a "network connections" program icon. Should be a 192.168.1.XXX IP usually, if it is 169.XXX.XXX.XXX it will not work(link local/DHCP).

 

[Jay Ashworth]

Did I read you correctly that the desk has two Eth ports with the same network number, plugged into the same switch?

That often doesn't work well.

 

[TimMc]

Did I read you correctly that the desk has two Eth ports with the same network number, plugged into the same switch?

That often doesn't work well.

Data storm! Chaos! Dogs and cats sleeping together!

 

[Jay Ashworth]

Data storm! Chaos! Dogs and cats sleeping together!

The actual quote is apparently “Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!”

But in fact, my experience of "two interfaces on the same subnet" is just that it coughs and dies, sending out no traffic, unless the IP core knows specifically how to treat that -- largely when you have a default gateway that's specified by interface rather than target IP. I think that's what it is.