Ravenbar
Active Member
Working at a HS I work at once a year for their spring musical. After asking for several years, and them needing them for architect, the schematics have been dug up for the lighting system.
The last few years, we've finally been getting a few DMX controlled fixtures/toys. When the place was wired(in 2008), they installed DMX output ports on the raceways, as well as constant power plugs for DMX controlled fixtures. Last year I tried to connect to those ports and was receiving no signal, as far as I could tell. Assumption was they were never hooked up. In the end, I and a dedicated cable back to the board and used an antique Colortran Status board to control the fixtures. Last year tee toys were a couple Chauvet Abyss USB's and a pair of RGB LED pars. This year, so far all I'll be controlling it a 4 channel dimmer pack running led strips in the front of a 4 step staircase.
Now that I've got the blueprints from when the system was installed, I opened the splitter box and all the wires for the raceway DMX outputs are connected. Traced the wires up and they do connect to the raceways.
Got home tonight and I made up a DMX line tester with a XLR plug and and LED/resistor so that's the first thing I'll be checking next week(not ruling out operator error on if there's signal to the port or not). Where else should I look? I don't see a terminator on any of the lines, as I suspected might be the issue.
System consists of a ETC Expression 3, feeding an 8-way pathways edin 8-way splitter(5 connectiuons used per blueprints and visual inspection, 2 feeding dimmer racks and others feeding raceways), and (2) sensor dimmer racks with a total of 120(96 + 24) dimmers.
The last few years, we've finally been getting a few DMX controlled fixtures/toys. When the place was wired(in 2008), they installed DMX output ports on the raceways, as well as constant power plugs for DMX controlled fixtures. Last year I tried to connect to those ports and was receiving no signal, as far as I could tell. Assumption was they were never hooked up. In the end, I and a dedicated cable back to the board and used an antique Colortran Status board to control the fixtures. Last year tee toys were a couple Chauvet Abyss USB's and a pair of RGB LED pars. This year, so far all I'll be controlling it a 4 channel dimmer pack running led strips in the front of a 4 step staircase.
Now that I've got the blueprints from when the system was installed, I opened the splitter box and all the wires for the raceway DMX outputs are connected. Traced the wires up and they do connect to the raceways.
Got home tonight and I made up a DMX line tester with a XLR plug and and LED/resistor so that's the first thing I'll be checking next week(not ruling out operator error on if there's signal to the port or not). Where else should I look? I don't see a terminator on any of the lines, as I suspected might be the issue.
System consists of a ETC Expression 3, feeding an 8-way pathways edin 8-way splitter(5 connectiuons used per blueprints and visual inspection, 2 feeding dimmer racks and others feeding raceways), and (2) sensor dimmer racks with a total of 120(96 + 24) dimmers.
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