Innovator patch

[renegadeblack]

Just finished a pretty awesome run of Pirates of Penzance. Aside from 3 missed cues that were obvious (though only one person mentioned one of them to me) to the audience, the entire show went great... except for closing night. They recently installed LEDs as our houselights which I fought the entire time because I knew that they wouldn't work. We dim the lights at the beginning of the show and since from what I understand, theatrical dimmers dont necessarily go all the way off so they didnt and all the LEDs start flickering like we're in the twilight zone. I run backstage to flip the breakers for the lights since they are off at the console. I then realized that the patch panel got screwed up so the houselights that are over the aisles that are programmed to go on during parts of the show wont go on properly.

Anyone know of the Innovator randomly deciding to change around the patch panel unprovoked?

 

[icewolf08]

When you say patch panel, do you mean a hard patch panel or the softpatch in the console? If you mean softpatch, it is a computer, data can get corrupt, or someone might have pushed a few too many buttons, not knowing what they did. If you are talking hard patch, then for things to have been swapped around, someone would have to have done it.

 

[renegadeblack]

When you say patch panel, do you mean a hard patch panel or the softpatch in the console? If you mean softpatch, it is a computer, data can get corrupt, or someone might have pushed a few too many buttons, not knowing what they did. If you are talking hard patch, then for things to have been swapped around, someone would have to have done it.

At first when I described the situation to my father, he thought that I meant a physical patch panel, I'm talking about the patch panel on the console, a soft patch. Firstly, I'm (for the vast majority of the time, I'm almost certain that throughout the duration that I'm looking at) the only one who touches the light board. Much less than that, no one would ever push any of the buttons as I'm fortunate enough in the fact that when someone doesn't know how something works on my board, they dont touch it, therefore I don't think it was something that someone did.

I forgot to mention that one of the folks back stage mentioned the Scottish play without leaving the area. He asked the gods for forgiveness and proceeded with business. That wasn't our only incident in this run. One late night while hanging lights, we were talking about superstitions and whistling and the scottish play, and the whole bit. I mentioned the play (not the actual name) and told them all not to start guessing at what it is and ofcourse, one of them decides to mouth it. Told him to leave. He went on the other side of the door leading to the work room, he didnt actually leave. As if on cue, we blew a lamp when he walked back in.

Take the anecdote as you may, but I'm just putting it out there for a lead to data corruption. It seems strange to me that it would have effected only the house lights though and not all of the stage lights aswell, unless the ghosts didnt want to make it too miserable on us.

 

[icewolf08]

Well, I for one scowl at the superstitious, as almost all of the superstitions are based on very valid and real things (ie. whistling->sailors working rigging used whistles to communicate). Take it however you will.

That not withstanding, for the sake of clarity, the term "patch panel" is generally used for physical patching devices (hard patch, slider patch, etc.) When referring to the digital patch information in a console, the common terms are "patch," "softpatch," patch screen," or "patch display."

It seems odd to get such data corruption to actually change your patch. More likely that somehow it was accidentally changed. I have, on occasion, accidentally tried to bring up channels while still looking at the patch screen, resulting in me repatching things... Amazingly frustrating! It happens, computers do funny things sometimes.

 

[derekleffew]

Colortran Innovators don't have patch panels. See http://www.controlbooth.com/forums/glossary/9172-patch-types-lighting.html. I have never seen a console corrupt its softpatch (but I've never worked with an Innovator, either.)

 

[lieperjp]

Did you ever load a show? I know the chances of that are slim, but perhaps you didn't save the right patch? Then again, your house light patch probably stays the same from show to show.

Another thing: Did it change during the show? I mean, it sounds really odd that before the show they would be fine but during the show it would change. Hmm...

Or, did the DMX addressing on your house light system get messed up when you cut their power? Not knowing how your house light system works, it could have been the problem. But it doesn't sound like you had to reprogram the house lights, so probably not.

 

[Sayen]

Anyone know of the Innovator randomly deciding to change around the patch panel unprovoked?

If you mean the patch screen - yes.

There was another thread (was that by you?) up in lighting about something similar. I'm on my third (don't ask) Innovator console now, and all three have had a tendency to reassign DMX Device data, although the second was by far the worst. I haven't found any rhyme or reason, some issue with the way the console stores data. One of the times the console remapped house lights into cues, which shouldn't have even been possible since I had the dimmer count limited before the console should have even been talking to the house light dimmers.

 

[renegadeblack]

If you mean the patch screen - yes.

There was another thread (was that by you?) up in lighting about something similar. I'm on my third (don't ask) Innovator console now, and all three have had a tendency to reassign DMX Device data, although the second was by far the worst. I haven't found any rhyme or reason, some issue with the way the console stores data. One of the times the console remapped house lights into cues, which shouldn't have even been possible since I had the dimmer count limited before the console should have even been talking to the house light dimmers.

It wasn't me who made a thread about a problem with a patch table. It is indeed the soft patch on the console. My houselights are wired into the dimmer rack along with the regular stage lights. For the most part, I tend not to have any problems with my Innovator, all of the houselights were fine before closing night, except when we brought them down for the beginning we had an unrelated issue with the LED ( ) houselights and that's when we realized that we were having an issue. Fortunately it was only houselights that got screwed up, but it seemed all too strange to me.

 

[Sayen]

My favorite Innovator moment happened right before a major concert. The band wanted to start with house lights up, so I brought up the fader that controlled the wash I built, and the houselights went out at the same time...okay, that's weird. Maybe I somehow screwed up the fader, even though I tested everything before hand? I brought everything back up, and manually called up the stage through the keypad...and the houselights faded out again! I checked the patch, and reset the 1-1 which was already present, and....presto, same effect! The band is angry at this point, I'm angry at this point, and we did the rest of the first set with just house lights and no stage wash. It took a hard reset of the console to release the house lights.