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.
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.