Well my issue is that I have two difference spaces that use the same dimmers
My first thought is that you have a rack that moves between the spaces.
We distinguish which space is using the dimmers at a specific time by turning off breakers at the hard
patch panel
Now it sounds more likely that this is an installed rack that feeds two performing spaces through some sort of patch bay.
It is not possible for me to
switch each and ever
dimmer over to Normal and then into
Dimmer Double mode each time I go about changing them.
This sounds like your control module is set up to select
dimmer doubling on individual dimmers rather than the whole rack.
Since there is an issue for the space where
dimmer doublers are not in use when
dimmer doubling is on, it sounds like you have at least some dimmers patched to both spaces (using the breakers in the "hard
patch panel" to select which space receives the
dimmer output. This sounds like a very hackish retrofit situation. It is unclear how the spaces are used, but it seems that switching which space is using the dimmers is frequent enough that it is a hassle to configure the
dimmer doubling every time.
Regular lights plugged into dimmers set for DD mode will act correctly, but only if you patch both control numbers into the same
channel on the
console.
As our friendly CB member from
ETC points out, it is possible to configure a
console to output normal waveforms from a
dimmer configured for doubling. There are two ways I see modifying your patch to reduce the hassle:
- Configure the soft patch for the space that doesn't use dimmer doublers to output a channel mapped to a doubled dimmer on both halfs of the dimmer.
- Configure the rack to switch between all dimmers doubled and no dimmers doubled and adjust the soft patch for any dimmers that are not doubled in the space that uses doubled dimmers.
Either of these solutions is likely to require your
console to output more
DMX addresse than you have been using. If you are close to your
address limits for your
console(s) this could be a problem.
I am a
bit concerned about "turning off breakers at the hard
patch panel". If the
patch panel is allowing a
dimmer to be connected to circuits in both spaces at once, it may be easy to overload a
dimmer by not switching the breakers correctly. Also
circuit breakers aren't designed to be switched on and off a lot, so you could be wearing them out prematurely. Perhaps if you post more about your space, CB members will give you some useful advice for making improvements and/or alert you to more potential problems.