curtis73
Well-Known Member
Having trouble with a fog machine. It's relatively new (used for two shows). It's a Chauvet Hurricane 1600 which I bought for a production of Baskerville a just before the pandemic when our ancient LeMaitre fogger died during tech. The Chauvet had what I needed and fit in the tiny remaining portion of our budget.
The problem we ran into with the first use was that it refused to heat when you plugged in DMX. If you allowed it to fully heat first and THEN plug in DMX, it worked fine. Inconvenient, but we had ace ASMs. I'm now trying to use it for our current production of Side Show, and it's just not working properly. If I skip DMX entirely (just plug in the remote), it works exactly as designed. If I wait for it to heat and then plug in DMX, (with or without the remote plugged in) it remains functional... until the first time it cycles the heater again, and then the LED status light goes out and we get no fog.
Opening night we just had an ASM with the remote do fog manually. For last night and today's matinee I was able to dust off a smaller unit I have and it works fine on DMX. The upside is that we now have DMX control over the fog. The downside is that this unit is only a Rockville 800 and makes pretty wimpy fog. Great for a wedding reception, not so great for a 40' proscenium in a 900-seat auditorium.
The manual for the Chauvet is useless. The only menu settings are Addr and Htr. One allows you to set the address, and the other simply displays the temperature of the heater. There are no settings for type of DMX, or modes, or anything. It occupies one address, so the only DMX control is 0-255 for output on one address.
Wondering if anyone has encountered this issue who can tell me what I'm doing wrong. (aside from buying a cheap fogger in the first place)
Link to manual: https://www.chauvetdj.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Hurricane_1600_UM_Rev2_WO.pdf
The problem we ran into with the first use was that it refused to heat when you plugged in DMX. If you allowed it to fully heat first and THEN plug in DMX, it worked fine. Inconvenient, but we had ace ASMs. I'm now trying to use it for our current production of Side Show, and it's just not working properly. If I skip DMX entirely (just plug in the remote), it works exactly as designed. If I wait for it to heat and then plug in DMX, (with or without the remote plugged in) it remains functional... until the first time it cycles the heater again, and then the LED status light goes out and we get no fog.
Opening night we just had an ASM with the remote do fog manually. For last night and today's matinee I was able to dust off a smaller unit I have and it works fine on DMX. The upside is that we now have DMX control over the fog. The downside is that this unit is only a Rockville 800 and makes pretty wimpy fog. Great for a wedding reception, not so great for a 40' proscenium in a 900-seat auditorium.
The manual for the Chauvet is useless. The only menu settings are Addr and Htr. One allows you to set the address, and the other simply displays the temperature of the heater. There are no settings for type of DMX, or modes, or anything. It occupies one address, so the only DMX control is 0-255 for output on one address.
Wondering if anyone has encountered this issue who can tell me what I'm doing wrong. (aside from buying a cheap fogger in the first place)
Link to manual: https://www.chauvetdj.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Hurricane_1600_UM_Rev2_WO.pdf
