Dimmer pack flicker

kiersplat

Member
I have three brand new Chauvet DJ DMX-4 dimmer packs. All the channels on all the packs are periodically flickering about every second, all at the same time. I can tell by the indicator LEDs but I plugged in some fixtures (just regular incandescent household light bulbs) to be sure.

To preface: All my cables are DMX cables, not mic

I have the first pack plugged into an ETC Net3 gateway with a 25' 5-pin DMX and a 5-pin to 3-pin XLR adapter on the end. All the other packs are chained together using 15' DMX cables. Every pack is getting power from our relay raceways. I've tried replacing the 25' cable with a 10' microphone cable and put the adapter on the other end, but the issue persisted in that setup.

If I unplug any section of the DMX, all the packs down the line stop flickering but any pack still connected continues to flicker. I don't have a terminator on hand so I haven't been able to try it. There are no additional devices on this DMX line besides the dimmer packs.

I assume due to the periodic nature of the issue that this is some sort of clock sync issue. I believe the output speed of the gateways can be adjusted in ETC Concert but I'm not sure if this would help.

I also tried plugging one of the packs into the wall instead of the relay and this didn't help.

Any advice or things to try would be appreciated. I have a terminator on-order.
 
If you need RDM, just patch your dimmers at an address above 128 (say, 401…) and they won’t flicker when RDM packets chirp.
Please explain this. The flicker is caused by the dimmers not paying attention to the start code, and trying to respond to non-zero start codes as dimmer levels. I do not understand how the addressing would affect this.
 
I'm guessing, not knowing for sure, that the length of an RDM packet is no greater than 128 bytes? So anything below 128 bytes "looks like" level data?
 
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