Well, due to the total shutdown I won’t get to play with my issues, so I’ll ask my question here.
Just started (and ended!) a run and had weird DMX issues. We were running ETC Nomad off a laptop through the 2 universe dongle. Universe 1 was front of house, universe 2 was on stage. Universe 2 went through a DMX splitter due to length of run. At the end of every line, I put a DMX terminator in the final instrument. In every case, this caused weird flashing, strobing, and non-responsive instruments. The last thing on the front of house was a dimmer pack for ellipsoidals, and the pack wasn’t overloaded (only 3 S4 575w instruments and they were never all on at once, plenty of clean power running to them.). When I’d try to run the show, the entire FOH would flash or not respond to the DMX, or would temporarily work then shut down. After replacing every dimmer pack, hoping it was a faulty pack, I forgot to plug the terminator in the last pack and the lo and behold, the system responded perfectly. When I went back up the ladder to plug in the terminator, the system went haywire again.
On stage, same story. The final four instruments in the chain were LED pars, and when I plugged in the terminator on the final instrument, the last three stopped responding, flashed, gave garbage output. When I pulled the terminator, everything ran. On stage, run 1, 2, and 3 all had terminators and didn’t give me a problem, but run 4 did.
Did I do something bad or was this my gremlin on this show? Does anyone have any experience with this? Like I said, I didn’t have time to tinker because of the circumstances but it’s my puzzle to think about.
Just started (and ended!) a run and had weird DMX issues. We were running ETC Nomad off a laptop through the 2 universe dongle. Universe 1 was front of house, universe 2 was on stage. Universe 2 went through a DMX splitter due to length of run. At the end of every line, I put a DMX terminator in the final instrument. In every case, this caused weird flashing, strobing, and non-responsive instruments. The last thing on the front of house was a dimmer pack for ellipsoidals, and the pack wasn’t overloaded (only 3 S4 575w instruments and they were never all on at once, plenty of clean power running to them.). When I’d try to run the show, the entire FOH would flash or not respond to the DMX, or would temporarily work then shut down. After replacing every dimmer pack, hoping it was a faulty pack, I forgot to plug the terminator in the last pack and the lo and behold, the system responded perfectly. When I went back up the ladder to plug in the terminator, the system went haywire again.
On stage, same story. The final four instruments in the chain were LED pars, and when I plugged in the terminator on the final instrument, the last three stopped responding, flashed, gave garbage output. When I pulled the terminator, everything ran. On stage, run 1, 2, and 3 all had terminators and didn’t give me a problem, but run 4 did.
Did I do something bad or was this my gremlin on this show? Does anyone have any experience with this? Like I said, I didn’t have time to tinker because of the circumstances but it’s my puzzle to think about.