Not necessarily. I think the dimmer fading at the same rate as the console LEDs is purely coincidental. The L86's "DMX Loss Behavior" is to fade all in 3 or 5 seconds, I think.
Ah! A new product for DFD to market! A DMX "mute" box.
It could go inline and run off a wall-wart. Hit the switch and it just starts outputting all zeros! Would be a lot cheaper for most people than changing or upgrading the board. Or better yet, it could cue off a certain number on a certain address. Program that as the last scene before you power down. (reverse on power up.)
Wonder if his passive A/B switch would work?
Doug Fleenor Design - DMX512 Console Switch
Yes, Derek and JD are correct. This last gasp DMX blurb can be sent from most consoles on the market and any dimmer rack or pack with a Hold Last Look feature can capture it and display it as the OP has noted. JD is also right that stopping this from occurring in product design is very difficult.
What happens is that as the power supply in the console fades away after power shutoff, the DMX driver inadvertantly sends out some junk in the form of possibly recognizaable data right before turning itself off. The dimmer rack accepts that junk as valid data and then holds the level until the time it's supposed to time out and fade out.
Every console does this differently and even two Express consoles might perform differently. We even had some people call us when they moved from Express to Ion that suddenly starting having this same issue when nothing else in the system changed.
We are coming out with a way to disable to chip and hopefully stop this kind of power down blip. The Ion series of consoles will benefit from this first. Keep an eye out for more info.
David
Thanks, Les, for your helpful answer and directing me to more posts about this issue! In reading through some of the posts on the ETC Connect forum, someone mentioned that it is a good idea to turn off the dimmer racks between performances. At my theatre, we have always left our dimmer racks powered up 24/7, and as long as I have worked there we have never turned them off between shows. I was never even told by the TD to do that. Whether it would help prevent the Death Gasp or not, is it bad to leave the dimmer racks on all the time?
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