Rosco I-Cue maintenance

gttechie

Member
Anyone have any idea if an I-Cue needing to be sent for re-calibration /re-alignment from time to time is a thing? I have a mirror that over the course of a few days won't keep its focus pallets, it is off by a foot or two some nights and other nights it's right on the money.

I swapped to a different mirror so I'm pretty sure it's the mirror not a cable or the way it's run.

No it's not terminated, I have never needed to do so with I-Cues and there are only 2 devices on that run.
I'm powering it with a Chroma-Q psu with 2 line outs and the trouble mirror is on the 2nd out with a gobo rotator.

Thanks in advance.
 
Basically those re-calibrate themselves every time you turn them on. I think those use a optical sensor for position, but Its been a long time. There could just be dust in the sensor that throws it off, or possibly the motor could be crapping out.
 
I have half a dozen Rosco I-Cues. Most of them work perfectly. Two of them occasionally "drop." They home correctly on power up, and then at some point during use they will slip a few degrees and all of the cues will be too low. Pan is never wrong. The tilt sags a bit, but doesn't completely fall off. They'll work fine for days, then drop during a show.

I haven't been able to find any documents about routine maintenance of I-Cues, or troubleshooting guides. I have tightened the set screws on the axis, but for the devices in question this doesn't seem to make a difference. Again, they are homing correctly.

Now I'm turning to the collective with two questions:

1 - What can I do about my intermittent dropping?
2 - What is the best practice for regular care and maintenance of this accessory?

Thank you!
 
I can't answer your question, but I hope there is nothing seriously wrong with it. One of my I-cue's stopped accepting DMX, and Rosco wanted to "just " replace the whole pc board for $495 instead of troubleshooting and fixing at the component level.
 
The most likely cause of a moving mirror loosing its home is a worn motor. Since you have two units, you could take the pan motor and swap it with the tilt motor in the other unit as a test. I don't know of any regular maintenance, just replace worn parts. There are different generations of I-Cues so if ordering a part make sure it is correct.
 
I'd be surprised if they're worn. They are all only a few months old. (Everything is only a few months old. We had a fire, lost it all, and had to replace)

That's a good idea to test the pan motors though, thank you! In the meantime I've built a Macro for my stage manager to toggle power to the I-Cues' relays so she can reset them since they home correctly.

Thanks!
 
Not to divert the main topic, but as a quick aside: Why was there a fire? What caused it? You write that you 'lost it all'. 'All' is a pretty encompassing word, so it seems pretty big. Or was it small fire, lots of water?
Thanks.
 
A neighbor that shared the building with us burned down. Smoke got into everything, and firefighters pumped rivers of water into the building.

We lost part of our building, though our stages were intact, and a great deal of our equipment. "All" in the previous post meant anything with a circuit board, all soft goods, a good bit of our infrastructure, and other things depending on how hot/wet/smokey they got.

It was a busy time! And now I'm left with 6 out of 8 I-Cues working only 95% of the time. All things, I'd rather have the current problems than the previous ones.
 
Hey Kyle,

We're having a similar issue here with Icues losing position quite often. Did you test the motor theory? Ours are at least 7 years old and I don't know their maintenance history.
 
Hey Kyle,

We're having a similar issue here with Icues losing position quite often. Did you test the motor theory? Ours are at least 7 years old and I don't know their maintenance history.
I didn't. I put a 4-pin DMX terminator at the end of the chains with the I-Cues that were acting up. Both of the fixtures in question were just off the PSU, at the beginning of the run, and had a single second I-Cue downstream.

I haven't seen the problem resurface since, and it's been about two weeks.

The problem, of course, is that the issue was intermittent. So I don't yet trust that I've solved anything. If the problem resurfaces, I will swap motors and see.

I still haven't -- either from answers here or Googling about -- found anything that recommends any kind of maintenance for the fixtures. So far my routine has been: 1 ) check the set screws aren't loose. 2 ) if it stops working, call my dealer, they call Rosco, tell him that the problem sounds strange, send me an RMA.
 

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