Control/Dimming DMX lights not connecting to controller

[fumb3l]

Hello and thanks for reading. I work in a Theater at my highschool as the main lighting tech for musicals plays concerts and other various events. For as long as i have been working there we have used conventional stage lights w/gels and we just got some LED cycs. The company who installed the DMX relays to the stage from out booth hooked the lights up. Unfortunately a greenhorn forced off out light board after working on it. Patches, cues, and more where messed up. in the chaos someone changed the DMX channel on the cycs trying to get them to work.

I have some experiences with LED/DMX light from an internship. My question is what do i need to do to get them working again. The information - RBG, hue, saturation, and intensity are still patched and are responding to my changes in ML control. The lights are under channels 201 and 202. Do I need to patch light one to 201 and light two to 202 in the DMX setting on the fixture. Or set the DMX channel on the lights to a particular channel. Is it this simple? I feel like this is right however i have never worked with DMX lighting with a digital board of this stature I'm more comfortable with a obey 70 for this kind of lighting application. so if there is something i need to know let me know.

Gear
ETC element 40-250
Chauvet Ovation C-640FC

I am sure the DMX cables work.

 

[JD]

There are three addresses you have to worry about:
1) the board channel #
2) what DMX channel on what universe the board is programed to patch that to.
3) the DMX address on the LED cycs.
It sounds like you are saying the board addresses are set up correctly so I would suggest the problem is that the patched address is either not agreeing with the address set for the cycs, or it may be patched to the wrong universe. (Remember, the element has two output universes.)

 

[greatpopcorn]

RGB lights take up three DMX addresses in most cases, so putting them right next to each other won't work. Put them on addresses 201 and 204 and hooking those up to the boards with the appropriate fixture setup should do it assuming you are using the right universe. If tgese lights are on the second universe, like I think they are based on that you have dimmera for the other lights, the proper address to patch woukd be 2/201 and 2/204. Just type it exactly like that into the patch screen.

 

[coldnorth57]

There one of the things that bothers me the most about DMX is the confusion between channel and address.

ADDRESS:
The digital location of a fixture. DMX addresses range from 1 to 512, and any fixture controlled by DMX has its own address it listens for instructions on. The addresses are usually set by using the unit's on-board LED/LCD display, DIP Switches, or by thumb-wheels. Regardless of how many channels the fixture personality uses, one only needs to deal with the startingaddress and the others will follow.


Channel is the number assigned to a pathway on the light console to control a dimmer. In older or basic light consoles this relationship is fixed at "1 to 1", meaning Channel [HASHTAG]#4[/HASHTAG] always turns on dimmer [HASHTAG]#4[/HASHTAG]. In more modern light consoles the soft patch features allows you to assign any snumbers on the light console to any dimmer or group of dimmers in the rack. So by changing the patch, Channel [HASHTAG]#4[/HASHTAG] on the console can be programmed to turn on Dimmers [HASHTAG]#6[/HASHTAG], 34, and 95.

Remember the relationship of dimmer numbers to circuit numbers may or may not be fixed as well. See circuits.

With many modern advancements in lighting, Channels now do many other things as well. A channel can control the movement, color, gobo, zoom, iris, prism, and other parameters of a moving light, and even some fog machines and other atmospheric effects can be controlled directly from a control channel.

 

[JohnD]

That fixture can be set up to use between 3 and 24 channels so you have to have that set the same as the console channels. Also, if you want all the fixtures to respond the same, they can all be set to the same group of channels, but if you want to be able to have each fixture a different color you have to allow for a group of channels for each fixture.

 

[fumb3l]

Awesome guys. Thanks for the info! After reading I figured out the mode on the light didn't match up to the patch nor the dmx starting address lined up. Thanks for the responses!