Shoutout to ETC Customer Service and Sensor Upgrade

StradivariusBone

Custom Title
Premium Member
Fight Leukemia
First I want to publicly thank ETC for their always stellar tech support. Alex and Justin and the gang over there are doing Thespis' work keeping these 23 year old dimmers alive. We just suffered a failure of our rack 2 CEM that kept blowing the fuse at F1 which is in front of the A phase zero cross detector as well as the CEM PSU. I don't know what caused it (suspect lightning), but it almost forced us to cancel a rental.

That said, the rack and its internals are not getting any younger. We've had a number of service issues in the past year or so and I've been told by our lighting service vendor that it might be time to consider upgrading/retrofitting/replacing components.

I recall a while back ETC ran some sort of deal with upgrading Sensor Classics to 3's and my vendor also said that it is a fairly straightforward upgrade as far as swapping out rack internals is concerned. Essentially, I'm just looking for people who have been through such an upgrade to gather experiences, thoughts to start building a case that it is needed. We're a HS PAC so it will be an uphill battle that will take some time in any event.
 
Contact Steve Short at Litetrol. I know I type this a lot about Litetrol, but I understand they have recently done, or are in the middle of a major system with many multiples of classic CEM, doing exactly this upgrade to CEM3.

516 681 5288
 
After the upgrade - Sensor 3 or one of the ones for CD80s - its only copper, aluminum, maybe some other inert materials, circuit breakers, and the SSR packs - which if they don't fail in the first 6 months probably will never fail. (I am 66 - pretty safe to say never!)
 
Upgrading old control electronics modules to CEM3 will breathe an exciting new life into your system! The swap itself is pretty straightforward and can be done with relative ease by a certified tech from your local ETC dealer.

A CEM3 upgrade is a great investment in your space!
 
How does it integrate with or replace the arch controller? We've got an older Digital Address System that has been non-functional for at least a year and we have no plans to repair it as it has always had issues due to lightning damage over its lifespan, but was mortally wounded by a lightning strike that did a lot of damage on pretty much everything electronic on our campus.

I've heard that since the Sensor 3 will also interface with the preset stations (which I'm assuming are replaced). It's all DMX cable to those entry stations, and we're actually using one run of it at the moment to drive an arduino inside the jbox to provide control for entry lighting. Is all the arch control stuff integrated into the rack?
 
You seem to have a lot of issues with lightning. If you’re going to have a large expenditure, the racks powered down, and electricians involved, it might be a good opportunity to also install some kind of surge suppression system.
 
Sensor 3 supports architectural panels. The wire type is Belden 8471, so new wire would need to be pulled. The support is integrated into the processor but would lack the advanced features of a Paradigm system, such as station lockouts.
 
You seem to have a lot of issues with lightning. If you’re going to have a large expenditure, the racks powered down, and electricians involved, it might be a good opportunity to also install some kind of surge suppression system.

There is a surge suppressor off the disconnect to the rack. It's been upgraded and replaced, but in my experience they are not fool-proof. :( Or at least not 100% lightning-proof rather.

The wire type is Belden 8471, so new wire would need to be pulled.

That looks like audio cable rather than signal cable. What's in the walls now is Carol 9180 and I can't find a datasheet for it since it seems like they got bought out shortly after they installed it here, but it looks comparable to Belden 9729.
 
Belden 8471 is a simple twisted pair audio cable and ETC uses it for button station connections. 9729 and many close variations are DMX cable, but most folks are using CAT5e or CAT6 as it's 1/10th the cost.
 
A high school I work with recently did a CEM 3 upgrade from the Classic in response to an LED retrofit. The new CEM helped a lot with control of the LEDs but it turns out there are some control faults with the rack that may have resulted from the installation. See this thread from the ETC Community. It seems that there may be some bent pins or a ribbon cable problem in the back plane that the CEM connects to. Just be sure that all the circuit control is fully tested once your CEM is installed! I second the shout-out to ETC's stellar tech support; Beck was a huge help in systematically diagnosing what was going on with the rack. Hopefully there will be a tech out soon to fix it.

Yes, that wire was specified for DAS. Here is chart of wire specified by ETC. The panels would be the same as Echo.

Thanks for the link to the wire chart. I'm thinking of suggesting to the school that they swap out the Unison system with some Echo stations wired directly to the CEM 3. If I'm reading the chart correctly it seems like that would be possible without pulling new wire to the button station locations. There are only three button stations and a touch panel in the Unison system. The touch panel is becoming pretty sketchy to operate.
 
The support is integrated into the processor but would lack the advanced features of a Paradigm system, such as station lockouts.

Not entirely true. There is a specific Echo Lockout Station that has similar functionality of a station lockout in Paradigm, except it applies to all stations in a Space. With newer Echo firmware, there isn't much Echo cannot do for most basic venue configurations (Presets, Channel Control, Lockouts, Timeclock etc)

As for the upgrades, I've completed 2 dozen or so rack upgrades up here in Canada, and they are a reasonably easy procedure, and have always left the clients happy, with some new functionality and the relief that replacing and servicing a CEM3 is much easier. It also gets you compatibility with the ELV-10S modules which are reverse phase dimmers that work better with LED's.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back