Control/Dimming Martin M-PC and ETCnet2 problem

K

KingSky

Member
Hello,

I'm having a bit of a problem at work.

The Setup:
I am using a laptop running Martin M-PC to control my houselights and theatrical fixtures. The house lights are run off of Sensor 3 racks, and the theatrical fixtures are run off some old Roscco IPS dimmer strips.

The problem:
The lights flicker irregularly. They just shut of for a split second and then come back. It's totally random. Sometimes it happens every 30 seconds or so, sometimes it's fine for 10 minutes.

This has happened with two other systems, a Martin MAXXYZ compact, and a Chamsys MQ100.
The LD with the Chamsys was able to mitigate the problem by lowering his baud rate, so I am inclined to think it is a conflict with our ETCnet2 system.

We have never had this problem with any of our ETC or HOG consoles, or Grand MA systems that we run on a regular basis.

Please help me find a solution. Short of replacing the net2 system or running a different console I don't really know what else to do.

I think I might try running the signal through a Opto to see if that will help the signal. What do you think?
 
How do you have this hooked up control wise? What control lines are hooked into the dimmers? Since its Sensor 3, what protocols are enabled, and what are the priorities relative to each other? What is the M-PC outputting? sACN, or DMX? Any other conversion boxes in the chain? Do all the lights flicker, or just the ones on certain dimmer units?
 
Laptop to DMXduo via usb cable, two universes. one for architectural and one for theatrical.

The Sensor racks are receiving eDMX from the ETC Net2 4 port nodes.

The priorities of the Net2 nodes are 10, so is the Unison system.

M-PC is outputting DMX.

No other boxes on architectural, there is an opto in line for the theatrical fixtures.

All of the lights that are patched flicker.
 
Does the flicker happen after the laptop has not been touched for a while? My suspiscion for this particular case is there is a hiccup on the USB bus which is resetting the output dongle. I'd recommend turning off all power saving features on the laptop and seeing if the problem goes away. Especially if the stage dimmers are directly connected to the USB widget with no other devices in between.
 
Actually, I don't think that's it. I have used the system to control moving lights and the theatrical fixtures before, and never had this issue, even when the console wasn't touched for an hour or so. It's just when I add in the architectural lights.
 
Is it a hub, or direct connected to the laptop? The USB bus is CPU mediated, and can be interesting at times with data flows. If its on a repeater, try direct connecting it to the computer with nothing in between. I have seen odd USB issues before when time sensitive data streams (audio mostly).
 
It is direct into the laptop. I have tried USB 2.0 and USB 3.0. I'm not convinced it's USB related because the problem has occurred in full lighting consoles. I was just told this problem had occured with ETC Smartfades as well. Which is odd.

I think it has to do with Baud rate or signal distance. I'm not sure what the distance is the the floor pocket i'm patched into, I'm going to try plugging directly into the node in a little bit.
 
Another thing to try, unplug the power from the laptop and run off battery. I've seen poorly made power supplies cause grounding issues.

I've had similar issues with an etc ion in a theater where I worked. I was using straight etcnet2 from the console with net2 two port nodes. It turned out that RDM was causing my issue. Can RDM be turned off on the USB duo or inside m-pc?

Sent from my HTCONE using Tapatalk
 
Still happens running off of battery power.

Doesn't seem to be a way to shut off RDM, but as far as I can tell, It is a manual rdm search, it doesn't do it real time, the operator has to initiate a scan. Though it does warn that initiating RDM scan will interrupt DMX. But scheduling is turned off and I haven't initiated a scan.
 
I managed to determine it was the DMX Mark After Break rate of the ETC Net2 4 port node. For some reason the 2 port and 4 port node have significantly different MAB rates and when I used a Two port node in another ballroom the flicker was non existent. So I programmed a 2port for the room I had the issues in, and voila! No issues on the two port.

Just for information's sake though, It runs from the duodmx via 5pin through the walls to a Node, from the node to a switch, from the switch to the dimmers.
 
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