Control/Dimming What is this panel?

[Brandofhawk]

So I was asked to come into a fairly new highschool who is having issues with their system.

They have an Colortran (or is it NSI or Leviton?) Innovator 48/96 but the board isn't controlling the system despite being plugged in correctly. All the pieces are there.

They do have control from a fader wing/ arch panel backstage... I feel like if I could find any information on the panels I might be able to do something for them. Though it might be outside of my knowledge. Attached is a photo of the plate mounted backstage and the one that looks similar in the booth. On the one in the booth (which doesn't do anything but blink when you push any of the buttons) says scene 1 - 10 along the screen.

Anyone know what it is?

 

[derekleffew]

http://www.leviton.com/OA_HTML/ProductDetail.jsp?partnumber=D8000&section=37954&minisite=10251

 

[Sayen]

Yuck, I hate those things. Sent mine back to Leviton for service about five times, and they never got it to work correctly. I finally just tossed it in the corner and gave up.

Do you know anything about the rest of the system? Does the board talk directly to the dimmers through DMX? Or for that matter...what type of dimmers? And are you sure the board is patched right?

One of the schools I worked at had a similar setup with an Innovator, and we finally determined that the DMX run to the dimmers was faulty, but the network lines were correct, so we installed a Pathport system in its place.

 

[Nelson]

I know that system fairly well (but I'm by no means an expert); we have the same thing in our PAC. First, to help understand the system, you have two control mechanisms. The panels you are looking at are part of the Lumanet system. Those panels connect to the dimmers separate from DMX. Then you have the DMX input to the dimmers that comes from the Innovator. There is no direct connection between the Lumanet system and the Innovator. Both connect to the dimmers separately.

Regarding Lumanet:
Lumanet stations are programmed by a computer program that is found on Leviton's Web site. Its called Luma Edit, and you can download it from the link that Derek provided. Programming is not terribly difficult; you can probably pick up on it without too much trouble. Somewhere you'll find a serial port where the computer will connect assuming your system is similar to ours. However, if the system was set up correctly in the first place, you should not have to do any programming. If you do feel the need to reprogram a station, do so carefully!

The scene buttons may not do anything if you don't have any scenes recorded. If you press the left and right arrows, can you find different screens? You might have other screens for houselights, worklights, etc, depending on how it was set up. Also, Lumanet stations are wired on a ring. If the ring fails at any point or if any station stops functioning, the ring stops communicating. We have a concentrator of sorts with red and green lights in our wiring cabinet. If any lights are red, a ring might be down. However, I think that if a ring goes down, the station fails to respond at all.

Regarding the Innovator:
Innovators are not the best consoles out there. It is possible that yours has issues. Can you borrow a DMX console from anyone you know? Also, when the console is turned on and connected, you can look at the controller in the bottom of the dimmer racks assuming you have i-series racks. There should be a green LED blinking rapidly to indicate that the dimmers are receiving a DMX signal. I forget what the LED is labeled, but I can look if you would like.

Hope that helps!