Strobes, DMX, and an ETC Express

[Aquarius]

So I've been having a bit of a problem with our lighting setup.

We have two American DJ Mega-Strobe DMX units that I'm trying to hook up to our light board. In the past, we have run these during shows by putting them into the self-test mode, setting the desired flash speed with the DMX Dipswitches, and then plugging its AC plug into a 3-pin dimming socket, then turning on the circuit to full power when we needed the strobe effect.

I decided to try to change this today.

So basically, we have two DMX ports in the theatre. 1 of these is in the booth where we plug our ETC 24/48 Express board in. The other is off-stage right, and both are 5-pin male sockets. I needed to run 1 strobe from stage right, and one from the house right catwalk just outside the booth. I figured that I would get the suitable adapters to plug the one on-stage into the 5-pin socket off stage right, and one into the 2nd universe port on the board. I set the dimmer dipswitches on the one downstairs to dimmer 500, and one upstairs to 1, figuring that that would mean that I could call on dimmer 500 for the one downstairs and dimmer 513 for the one upstairs. When I wired up the strobes in the above arrangement, both of the "DMX Indicator" lights lit up, indicating that the signal was working all right.

However, when I patched the dimmers into the board on various channels, they refused to turn on at all. I was expecting that at a low level, the strobes would flash at a slow rate, and and at high levels, the strobes would flash quickly. (Both strobes were plugged into regular AC outlets for their power).

I figured that the problem might be something with not terminating a DMX cable or some weird thing like that. So, I changed up the wiring a bit. I made it so that the board outputed (sp?) its signal from Universe 1 to a strobe, which then plugged in to the DMX port off-stage right. All of the other lights in the theatre still worked, but the strobe (which was set to dimmer 500) still refused to turn on.

Any ideas why this isn't working? Here's a link to the user manual for the strobe, but I think I have everything set up right. Is there some sort of channel attribute that I need to set up on the board itself?

Thanks for your help.

 

[JChenault]

There's a lot going on here - let's try to simplify.


I would start by simply trying to get a strobe worked when plugged directly into the console. Once that works - then you can go on to dealing with possible issues with cable, etc.

I would likely begin by simply unplugging the DMX from the console, and plugging a strobe ( set to a start address of '1') into the main DMX output. Patch channel 1 to dimmer 1, and channel 2 to dimmer 2. Manipulate channel 1 and two and see if the strobe works.


If you can't - there is likely an issue with the strobe or you have not patched the output correctly. Let's assume that it does work and that channel 1 = dmx address 1 = speed AND channel2 = dmx address 2 = intensity.

Now you want to make the strobe work from the second DMX output in the console. Check the console setup to see which universe the second output is talking to. (I am assuming you want to use dmx universe 2 here - although I am not sure why you have made that decision. Are you using all dmx addresses now? ) Set it for universe two and repeat your test - but this time map something like channel 10 = dmx address 513 , channel 11 = dmx address 514. See if you can get channel 10 to to control speed, and channel 11 to handle intensity. If you get nothing you probably have a patch issue, or an issue with the second output port.

Once this works, you are down to questions of cable. I'm not clear on your cable situation so I will wait to comment till you get a single strobe working directly from the console.

John

 

[icewolf08]

The other thing, that I am not sure if John really touched on is that you need to know what the DMX profile for the strobe is. Some strobe use two channels, some three, some one. Often times on multi-channel strobes you need to have some level set on all the channels to actually get them to fire. So if you have only 2 channels (intensity and rate) you will need to set both to a non-zero value if you want to get output from the strobe.

 

[Aquarius]

Thanks to both ofyou for your replies.

It turns out that our strobes are 2-channel (which I didn't know), and I was only patching in 1 channel (the speed one, as it turns out). Anyway, the problem's solved now. Many thanks!