Death of my Express 250?

[Chris Chapman]

So my ATD was running a concert tonight and things went... wonky.
Evidently our Express 250 died 3 times during the concert. The monitor started to flicker and roll, and then the video would fade out with control. Sending the venue into the dark. Unison to the rescue... but tomorrow will be a fun day. Any thoughts folks? Power supply giving up the ghost, or is the 12 year old board on life support? I guess my timeline for an Emphasis has moved up.

 

[chris325]

I guess my timeline for an Emphasis has moved up.

You want to replace a used board with another used board? I would think that a new Element or Ion, depending on your budget, would be a much better investment in the long run.

Hey, I feel your pain. Been using a 9 year old Innovator 600 throughout all of my high school stage lighting experience, and it's had so many issues with ghosting that I've thought of dozens of ways to kill it while trying to reset the dimmers.

As for your problem, I would think that hard clearing the board combined with a dimmer reset should get the board through this run, but it's definitely on its last legs.

 

[gafftapegreenia]

Wait, you want to get an EMPHASIS?

 

[Footer]

I think he meant Element... at least I hope so.... I would give ETC a call about it. It very well could be a bad power supply. I have never actually seen an express crash or act up in any way.

 

[Les]

+1 for the power supply. This is a fairly common problem for anything [computer related] of this age (actually, they usually fail sooner), and your issues match up with a failing power supply pretty much exactly.

 

[photoatdv]

+1 for bad power supply. I know the express uses an external power supply (like a laptop... is there some kind of internal one also? If it's the external should be an easy fix... have ETC overnight a new one...

 

[Chris Chapman]

Nope. It's late. I'm tired. I did mean Element, not Emphasis. Not a good day. I'm thinking power supply too.

 

[dramatech]

I had one fail in much the same manner, it was a power supply. It uses a switching regulator supply with 5 volts at 2 or 3 amps, I don't remember which and 12 volts at something like 1 amp. You can get a supply cheap at mpja.com. The trick is the pin connections and I believe there was a post about a year back by an ETC tech outlineing the pin configuration.
Look on the supply and I think that it tells the power output requirements. Find a supply of that value or greater and use the cable and or connector from the bad supply. If it is the older version, it will use a minidin connector. The newer ones use the regular din connector, which is also available at mpja.com. Good luck and contact me if you have further questions, but check the past posts first.

Tom Johnson
[email protected]

 

[Chris Chapman]

Okay, true weirdness continues. Following the forums on ETC's Support Page, there is a very interesting thread about wireless devices forcing an Express to also do the same thing. Doing testing today, we couldn't get it to replicate, but we did force our monitor to "turn off" using a Motorola Radio. Put the radio on the table next to the board, press the talk button, and the monitor clicks off, and the signal goes away. Yet the power buttons remain on. You have to power cycle the monitor to get it to come back. Cool. New trick to use to annoy your friends who still have CRT's.

We're ringing the Power Supply out with a multi-meter to check it's output, but it seems stable.

Board was left on last night and has been running for rehearsals all day today with no further seizures. Hrmmmmm.....

 

[SteveB]

Okay, true weirdness continues. Following the forums on ETC's Support Page, there is a very interesting thread about wireless devices forcing an Express to also do the same thing. Doing testing today, we couldn't get it to replicate, but we did force our monitor to "turn off" using a Motorola Radio. Put the radio on the table next to the board, press the talk button, and the monitor clicks off, and the signal goes away. Yet the power buttons remain on. You have to power cycle the monitor to get it to come back. Cool. New trick to use to annoy your friends who still have CRT's.

We're ringing the Power Supply out with a multi-meter to check it's output, but it seems stable.

Board was left on last night and has been running for rehearsals all day today with no further seizures. Hrmmmmm.....

,

And as addendum, Express's are known to be sensitive to cell phones transmitting nearby, so tell your operators to walk out of the room if they talk on the cell phone.

 

[mstutzman]

I'm having a similar issue with my Express 250 where in every time my director stands up, walks down the isle and crosses to the stage you can hear static build up in the headsets and in the PA, then my LCD monitors on my console go out just for a second. At first I thought it was AC, then I removed all Cell phones from the console area, then realized that the room is incredibly dry and that every time I have ESD, my monitors would go out. I am currently running a humidifier, but it doesn't seem to be helping all that much. Any insight?

 

[tyler.martin]

Last year I had a similar issue that ended up being a few things, Our building was incredibly dry due to AC running 24/7 and really terrible carpets,building up static. Our express was restarting left right and centre,when ever someone came near it after walking around the lobby. I made a short grounding cable from the back of the console under one of the bolts where the VGA cable screws in, to a screw from an electrical outlet, that seemed to clear up issues, until someone would bring their cellphone in.

 

[KevBot]

We're ringing the Power Supply out with a multi-meter to check it's output, but it seems stable.

Metering the power supply without having a load on it will not tell you much. If the power supply is bad the voltage will drop while it is under load. (Or increased load, such as accessing the floppy disk drive.)

A new supply and keeping radios away should provide good peace of mind. But so would a new Element.