Help! Dimmer/Board/lighting problems

[blurubberlizard]

Hey there all,

I'm having some lighting problems with the current show I am working on. I have two smartbars and four Anaconda dimmer packs. They are all run to a Smartfade 24/96 by DMX. I should just be able to run the DMX to each dimmer pack and then to the board and have everything work, right? Are there particular settings on the smartbars/smartfade board that I need to have to bring channels up? ...yes I did address everything properly. (I've checked that 3 times.) Right now, I can't get any instruments to come up at all. Any ideas?

 

[shiben]

Is the blackout button activated? Is the Grandmaster at 10? Is everything plugged in? Is your patch correct? Do you have your DMX in the right universe for your patch?

 

[blurubberlizard]

Is the blackout button activated? Is the Grandmaster at 10? Is everything plugged in? Is your patch correct? Do you have your DMX in the right universe for your patch?

These were all the obvious things I checked first.

 

[shiben]

These were all the obvious things I checked first.

Does your DMX cable work? Honestly, if your patched correctly, your dimmers are all addressed right, your all plugged in, you really ought to be getting stuff to happen unless something is broken. Do you know your outputting DMX? Is it reaching your chain? When it comes down to it, something "simple" is wrong here unless your gear is not functioning as intended. Are you getting no response on any channel when you pop 1-512@25?

 

[blurubberlizard]

I managed to get the lights going on my smart bars but now the lights on the Anacondas aren't working. I'm switching out a dmx cable to see if that's the problem.

 

[blurubberlizard]

I managed to get the lights going on my smart bars but now the lights on the Anacondas aren't working. I'm switching out a dmx cable to see if that's the problem.

Nope...didn't work. I'm still playing around with things. Has anyone had problems running daisy chains with two different types of dimmer packs?

 

[JD]

As long as everything is DMX, brands should not matter. Check to see if there are termination switches on anything, they should all be off, except for the last piece in the chain. (Or a DMX terminator plugged into the end.) If multiple units are trying to terminate the signal, you maybe killing the signal. Are all your cables DMX? (No mic cords.) Are any of your cables reversing polarity? (Pin 2 should feed pin 2, etc. Often not the case on hand made mic cords, will work fine for a mic but not DMX.)

 

[blurubberlizard]

As long as everything is DMX, brands should not matter. Check to see if there are termination switches on anything, they should all be off, except for the last piece in the chain. (Or a DMX terminator plugged into the end.) If multiple units are trying to terminate the signal, you maybe killing the signal. Are all your cables DMX? (No mic cords.) Are any of your cables reversing polarity? (Pin 2 should feed pin 2, etc. Often not the case on hand made mic cords, will work fine for a mic but not DMX.)

I checked all the termination switches and I don't have terminators plugged into the smartbars. All the cable is DMX. All the individual pieces work...lamps, cable, etc...I plugged the dimmer pack straight into the board and ran things fine from there but when I try to connect it back to the chain it doesn't seem to work anymore.

 

[chausman]

I plugged the dimmer pack straight into the board and ran things fine from there but when I try to connect it back to the chain it doesn't seem to work anymore.

Could you run the DMX line from the board, to the dimmer pack, and then into the smart bars?

As long as everything is DMX, brands should not matter.

Don't forget the whole ETC chauvet debacle.

 

[kiwitechgirl]

As long as everything is DMX, brands should not matter.

Sometimes it does though - I've had issues where different brands of movers just will not play nice on the same DMX chain, or will only work if you put a particular brand at the end of the chain (it seems that the DMX THRU does something to the signal which other units don't like). Given that everything works when it's the only thing plugged into the board (am I right in thinking that's what is happening?), you need to troubleshoot unit by unit. Start with one dimmer, when it works then add another, and so on until it stops working - that unit or cable is the issue. If the smartbars don't like the DMX that the dimmers are spitting out, try putting them first in the chain. If they just won't play nice on the same chain, no matter what, then you need a DMX splitter so they can run on their own chain.

 

[blurubberlizard]

Sometimes it does though - I've had issues where different brands of movers just will not play nice on the same DMX chain, or will only work if you put a particular brand at the end of the chain (it seems that the DMX THRU does something to the signal which other units don't like). Given that everything works when it's the only thing plugged into the board (am I right in thinking that's what is happening?), you need to troubleshoot unit by unit. Start with one dimmer, when it works then add another, and so on until it stops working - that unit or cable is the issue. If the smartbars don't like the DMX that the dimmers are spitting out, try putting them first in the chain. If they just won't play nice on the same chain, no matter what, then you need a DMX splitter so they can run on their own chain.

The smartbars are in the front of the chain...but I was just able to get a splitter so I'll give that a shot and hope it works.