Control/Dimming 1:1 isnt, in this case. ETC Express, help!

[ethelirene]

I have an issue with my ETC Express that I've never had before. More than one light is coming on during dimmer check when it's circuited and patched 1:1. For example, 1 instrument is circuited to circuit/dimmer 11. There is another pigtail for circuit/dimmer 11, but it is empty. One light. A dimmer check, though, pulls up two. We did have to pull power from the catwalk to accommodate all the booms. Someone suggested that the problem is only happening with circuits in the catwalks, and thus might have something to do with the sacos, but it sounds like a control issue to me? We cleared the patch before we started, is there perhaps a chance that the console is retaining a previous patch?

 

[derekleffew]

...More than one light is coming on during dimmer check when it's circuited and patched 1:1.

How are you doing the "dimmer check"? (Most people still say dimmer check, even when they are actually doing a "channel check." The console however, has a specific method for a true dimmer check.)
Are you typing, from the Stage screen, [Dimmer] 1 [at] [Full] [Enter], and then [+] to bring up each successive dimmer? If you do this, and two lights come up at once, they're obviously plugged into the same dimmer. This bypasses the dimmer-to-control-channel softpatch. A gray box will appear in the center of the screen. Press [Clear] to exit dimmer check mode and return to normal.

Alternatively, you can go to the Patch screen, and verify that it is indeed a one-to-one patch, should like this:
Channel ___ Dimmer
1___________1
2___________2
3___________3
and so on.

I believe there's also a softkey labeled "Reset Patch 1:1".

 

[65535]

I'd also like to know if you have checked what other circuit is supposedly energized.

Derek has given most excellent advise, those boards are dead easy to poke around in to check patching and so forth.

 

[tayklor]

Do you by chance have more dimmers than channels? If I remember correctly, a 1:1 patch in Expression will "wrap around", so if you have a 24/48 Express with 96 channels, channel 1 would have dimmers 1, 97, 193, and so on. Channel 2 would have dimmers 2, 98, 194.

 

[Sony]

Do you by chance have more dimmers than channels? If I remember correctly, a 1:1 patch in Expression will "wrap around", so if you have a 24/48 Express with 96 channels, channel 1 would have dimmers 1, 97, 193, and so on. Channel 2 would have dimmers 2, 98, 194.

If you are doing a channel check instead of a dimmer check on your board, then THIS stated above is most likely your problem. When you auto patch on the express 1:1 if you have only a 96 channel board, the dimmers will automatically wrap around putting 97 in channel 1 and so on and so forth until all 512 or 1024 dimmer addresses (depending on what your board configuration is) are patched into a channel.

 

[WooferHound]

It is also possible that the dimmers are addressed incorrectly and have overlapping channels.