Unison System - Losing Timing

SamSam

Member
Long-time Lurker, first time poster.

Recently took over a space with a 15 yr old Unison system.
It controls house lights, warmers, and works with various screens, buttons, and switches as you might expect.

Various presets for things that dim, smooth fades between.
Switches/Buttons and relays for works.
The dimmers and relay trays for these lights are spread out across the same dimmer racks and CEM modules as the rest of the dimmers in the building.

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I just experienced an issue that, it seems "from time to time" (anecdotally from other staff), the system loses its timing and the house/warmer buttons all snap to the looks at a zero count.
Just pressed House 1/2 and it snaped out rather than its usual 3-4sec fade
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The system, racks, and nodes are all Net2
Cueing is happening on an ION with sACN and Net2 enabled
All other dimming, and control of House Light dimmers on ION fade as expected.

I expect to call ETC once ive collected enough information to have an intelligent discussion about the problem and there isn't a show teching. I also need to get my hands on a PC/Floppy that can get me into the config if there are any other larger issues.

Thanks for any advice from longtime Unison users
 
I assume the Unison module you have is a CMEI which has an ethernet port for Net2. Relevant information might be what version of Unison is running.

I don't think I would hesitate to call ETC. They might have your config in their servers. They should have a good opinion of what might be happening.
 
It’s an old system, but if you were not suffering what is known as an “Arch Failure”, then the simplest thing might be to back up the config to a floppy, give it a different name then the last file, and do a system reset. I’d call ETC for advice and how to do all this
 
Beyond Steve's rebooting there isn't much you can do with the system. There's no software option for randomly screwing up!

Hardware repairs are done at the factory. So start planning/budgeting for several hundred dollars, well probably under 1000. If it doesn't need it now it's just a matter of time, but then you'll be fine for many years. Someone will ask about upgrading, tell them it would be at least 10 times the repair cost.
 
There's no software option for randomly screwing up!

Oh yeah? It would take a lot more work in Legacy, but I bet with a combination of macros and timed events I could probably make something that looks pretty random :) (A Paradigm upgrade would, of course, make this a whole lot easier since the standard math library is implemented in Lua scripting--including a pseudo-random number generator.)


But to address Sam's actual problem: there is such a thing as a "Fade Time" fader that could exist somewhere in your system. My memory is fuzzy, but I believe it has to be a physical fader rather than a control on a touchscreen... Sometimes they were just knobs built into custom rack panels. If you do have one, it could be that someone is changing that setting sometimes. Or, it could be a hardware problem with that station. Having ETC take a look at the config will tell you whether it exists and maybe where to look for it.
 
Generally, stuff like warmers and house lights would be recorded into presets that have recorded intensities for the zones (dimmers). You can put timings on the presets with those presets being actual buttons on button stations or virtual buttons on an LCD screen. Only way I recall of changing timings was thru macros written to specifically modify timings. So it’s possible there’s a button or buttons that modify timings, but that would show up in the config file, which ETC likely has a copy of. You might need a job number if talking to them, but they can likely find that in their system files
 
Thanks All,
I'll be chatting with ETC soon, happy to continue sharing and talking with yall.
@SteveB seems to sum up the situation perfectly. Those presets and zones are all on buttons. Realy basic setup. the LCD doesn't have any options that arent also physical buttons.
I'm imagining perhaps one of the buttons in the space has something weird associated with it.
Also, hours after I posted here about the snap, I took the house out from the panel, and it STEPPED down, in like 10-15 little dips. Wild.
Can't get the Processor to save to a disk I have, I did find a config disk nearby. Now I gotta find a floppy drive in the offices.

Back to running the house on the console.
 
You might try a new disk. I've seen bad floppys resist saving, and you should have more than one backup anyway.

USB disk drives are pretty cheap, but the disks are getting harder to find.
 

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