My work is all volunteer, I'm a poser, and I'm getting old. The offspring who used to help have moved away. To keep the hobby going I had to tighten up the efficiency of setup and strike. A lot of time was devoted to cabling DMX. The venues I'm in have sturdy suspended ceilings so it is easy (but time consuming) to pin cables up with "barnacles"... you know, those two piece hooks that lock onto T tracks with impressive tenacity.
With all these considerations roiling in the back of my mind I contacted Control Booth member Jim@RC4Wireless. After some soul searching, it was a simple purchase: 4x RC4M-900SX.
While rehearsing in my basement "lab" prior to my first RC4 show, everything tested fine using my Elation SDC 12 dimmer as the DMX source. BUT when I changed the DMX source to my trusty Durand Interstellar 4201-B DMX controller , everything stopped. None of my shoebox dimmers were seeing DMX from the RC4 receivers. Keeping the 4201-B as the DMX source, I replaced the RC4 units with cables... Everything ran perfectly over cables.
I contacted Jim at RC4, and he provided customer service of the highest caliber. He figured out that I had inadvertently programmed my 4201-B controller to send a start code of 1 instead of 0. He went on to explain that my shoebox dimmers ignore start codes, so they ran fine with start code 1 over cable. But the RC4 gear knows better than to propagate a message with a non-zero start code, so the shoebox dimmers were properly denied DMX. Truth is, this old poser didn't even know there was such a thing as a start code!
So if your a dabbler like me, beware of start codes. If you're using a programmable DMX controller, keep the start code set at 0 to stay out of trouble. I recommend looking up start codes, its fascinating to see who reserved them and why.
With all these considerations roiling in the back of my mind I contacted Control Booth member Jim@RC4Wireless. After some soul searching, it was a simple purchase: 4x RC4M-900SX.
While rehearsing in my basement "lab" prior to my first RC4 show, everything tested fine using my Elation SDC 12 dimmer as the DMX source. BUT when I changed the DMX source to my trusty Durand Interstellar 4201-B DMX controller , everything stopped. None of my shoebox dimmers were seeing DMX from the RC4 receivers. Keeping the 4201-B as the DMX source, I replaced the RC4 units with cables... Everything ran perfectly over cables.
I contacted Jim at RC4, and he provided customer service of the highest caliber. He figured out that I had inadvertently programmed my 4201-B controller to send a start code of 1 instead of 0. He went on to explain that my shoebox dimmers ignore start codes, so they ran fine with start code 1 over cable. But the RC4 gear knows better than to propagate a message with a non-zero start code, so the shoebox dimmers were properly denied DMX. Truth is, this old poser didn't even know there was such a thing as a start code!
So if your a dabbler like me, beware of start codes. If you're using a programmable DMX controller, keep the start code set at 0 to stay out of trouble. I recommend looking up start codes, its fascinating to see who reserved them and why.