Strange issue with Smartpack2

[JChenault]

I have a call into ETC Tech support but as this is not an emergency I will not hear from them for a few days.

I am having a very intermittent problem with some ETC SmartBar 2 series products. The symptoms:
It seems that occasionally one dmx channel on the smartbar stops listening to the console. Here is the most interesting occurrence.

I'm doing a dimmer check. One fixture is not coming up ( Ok - it must be burnt out). The remainder of the dimmers are fine. I leave the channel at full, and go to the dimmer pack. Before I do anything put the dimmer pack in manual mode and the light comes up fine. Huh. Then when I put the pack back in DMX mode the light goes to full ( control has been restored). After that things work fine.

So to recap - without touching the fixture, or the connection - I was able to restore functionality by putting the dimmer in manual mode ( with the channel set to 100% / 255 ) and then back into DMX mode.


I have for sure seen this once in our system. Perhaps two times ( I was in a time press and simply used a different dimmer for the fixture ) in a moderately large system ( about 20 smart bars, and 10 smart packs).

Going to try to refine the problem a bit more today but hoping someone might have experienced this.

 

[Amiers]

Are these in a fixed location or do you have them on trees?

Possibly could of fallen over and knocked something loose inside?

 

[JChenault]

Are these in a fixed location or do you have them on trees?

Possibly could of fallen over and knocked something loose inside?

Fixed location. No earthquakes in the area so I think physical damage is unlikely

 

[Apmccandless]

I had a similar issue on a smartbar 1st generation. It would work on the bench but when hung it would not respond to dmx. I could control it on the manual settings no problem then dmx would work. After a few hours nothing. For me the cable that fed power into the bar had a partial short. What I mean by that is that it was partially broken apart in the cable. The phase that feeds the main control board was the issue. I don't know why manual control worked. Once the cord was shortened past the short I have had no issues with the bar. For me it was easy to see where the short was because there was a sharp bend in the cable. I dissected the cord once it was shortened and found the short. I don't know if this solution will work for you but it might be worth looking at.

 

[Jacob Brooks]

have you verified that only one circuit is not working? I'm thinking there might be a wire loose in the connector and you might be missing a phase at times. But for that to be true, you would be missing two circuits simultaneously. Other than that, try using a different address and see if the problem persists.

 

[JChenault]

Update

I talked with ETC support today. This was a new problem for them and since the system is currently working, there is nothing to debug at this time.

I will keep an eye on the suspect dimmers and re post if anything comes up