Sub Palette

Has anyone had any experiences with the Strand Sub Palette? We've been running one and we've been having a few problems with it. I just wanted to know what everyone else though.

 

are you talking about a 300 series sub palette?

 

No. The brand new windows based Sub Palette. 48/96 with 32 subs.

 

Well tonight we were running a dance show. The board randomly crashes. Hadn't been doing anything strange. Just running the show and when I was put on Standby I noticed an error message. It read something to the effect of "Something bad has happened. Do you wish to save an error file?" Said yes and restored the board off of a checkpoint file. The checkpoint file had been written 2 minutes before hand and acted like we had recored it a day before.

Whenever it writes a checkpoint file it will delete everything in the syntax line. So say I was about to record a cue "cue 165 time..." writes checkpoint file and it just lets you keep typing so strange things happen.

Fades are jerky. They aren't very smooth and there doesn't seem to be any set thing that will make them jerky. We've tried and tried to replicate them, but can't on a consistent bases.

When a laptop is connected with a Cat 5 cable there seems to be a lag in how the board responds to cues. You hit go and it takes a second or two to read that you hit go.

One of my favorites is the fact that it won't give you a correct read time of cues. So when you hit go on a 15 count cue it will give you the remaining time in a box. However the time remaining is usually incorrect. You hit go on that 15 count cue and it will start with 3 seconds remaining and show that the cue has completed in the cue list. However the levels are still running in that window and it will complete in the correct time. Sometimes it won't even show that it's running the cue until after it's complete. You hit go and nothing on the board will change, but the lights on stage change and then it shows that it's complete.

I'm sure that I'll remember something else later but he's a starter list.

 

This is Hall's new board. It's replacing their old Lightboard M! Which they were still running up until this fall.

The board is this one http://www.strandlighting.com/index...il&srctype=display&refno=15&category=Controls

 

It seems to not want to let me edit my post. So here's the other half of your question. We were running 3.4.6 and then installed 3.4.15 after the dress run last night. We ran through the show and the problems were still there

 

i had the same problems on a pallette i was uisng to write show files for a tour, i sent it back to our strand rep they sent another one and said something along the lines of it is a known problem. this is going back a few months though, make sure your software is up to date!

 

Not for nothing, but I found this out with Virtual Facepanel on my ever-day-use laptop and associated ETC Net2 software, is to deactivate all anti-virus and any anti-spyware, etc... when connecting to the Lighting Network.

Steve B.

 

I have the new preset palette. I've had it about 3 months. Check to make sure you have the newest update loaded. 3.4.15. The problem arose from deleting cues. The console would tell you something bad has happened and to send the dump file to strand. The new update should fix this problem. Also if you are recording cues while running the show the cues tend to drag on the screen but move properly on stage. If you are just stepping cues everything is fine. If you close the file and reopen it it will reset to move properly. Follow the release notes and they will tell you how to load the update. Just to let you know, strand will have a new update out soon and the console will look and operate alot like the old 500. The are calling it the black and tan update. It looks very impressive. If you down load the new installation manual dated 11.06.07 from the stand product download page and look at the screen shots you will see what the new program will look like and some of the new things the console will do. Hope this helps

 

I've been waiting 6 months for this update! I was excited to see them post the new installation manual, figuring they would finally have the software done... then the next update they posted was just more bug fixes . Have you heard when "black and tan" will be out?

 

I've heard rumor that the update is supposed to be out by or on the first of the year. This is just something I'd heard second hand so I'm not really sure about it. But if it's going to be more like the 500 I'm still worried. We haven't had good luck with the 520i that we have. However it's problems are more hardware than they are software. But it's much easier to program on and a channel is a channel and a dimmer is a dimmer. Not an output or a fixture. Did they have some computer geek with a little knowledge of theatre program the new software or what?

Thanks for that info. We turn the board off every night. So the show was reloaded everyday. The board crashed again right before the show started, with the house half full(something like 300ish people). We had not edited any cues. We had only gone through a dimmer check and were just chatting over headset. I looked over and there was the error message. Which by the way isn't that helpful or funny "Something bad has happened. Would you like to record a diagnostic file?"

The problem with the cues not reading on the board but going on stage was always there. No matter what we tried to fix it. We upgraded, shut the board off, restarted, and reloaded the software. It may be that the show file was written in the older software and then run on the new?