Will a gam check work through...

zac850

Well-Known Member
....a 50 foot multi cable (plus the break in/break out) and a 5 foot jumper?

I just convinced my dad to get me a gam check, and I have a lamp that I suspect is not working. This lamp is in a Source 4 that is about 35 feet in the air, and I was wondering if I could use the GAM check lamp check feature from the dimmer room.

In theory I guess it should work, I'm just thinking that the resistance of all that wire may be to much for the battery of the gam check.
 
Having not used a Gam check I cannot comment but in terms of resistance, I would imagine that it would work. Essentially, what you are checking for here is continuity of the circuit and you could also use a multimeter if you have one.

I build myself lamp checkers that I plug into the end of the looms that I use for bars of par cans. It is a simple box that has a connector and 4 LED's wired up with a 9V battery and works well through a hefty length of cables and headers.

Is there any chance of damaging the Gam check by doing this? If not, try it and see (if unsure, wait for someone who actually knows about them to reply). If you have a multimeter, test it using the meter and compare it with the Gam check.

Essenially, if you get a resistance reading on the multimeter, you have continuity in the circuit. Hopefully this means the lamp is OK but would also show up a short between the hot and neutral.

However, if this is the case and you know the unit isn't working (as you suspect the lamp is blown) you probably wnat to pull it down and have a look.

Hope this is helpful.
 
I use a $35 DMM and I can check just about anything. Lamps, DMX, components, etc. It has never failed me yet. I dont need any expensive toys to get the job done.
 
Digital MultiMeter
 
woops, I got to stop abreviating things... sorry about that. :)

But, if you really want to test electrical components, get a multimeter. You dont need a fancy one, but you will be able to troubleshoot alot of gear with one.
 
My dad has a multi-meter that I steal from him a lot, I just didn't know how much resistance would be in the wires. Anyway, I'll give it a try tomorrow, and see for sure.
 
Remember the post about power loss in speaker cable and DMXtools provided the math on how to calculate this. Well, all you need to do is calculate the resistance in the wire.

If I remember correctly, I sent you a copy of the Excel calculator I made up to do this? If so, just fill in the cable length and gauge and it will do the calculations for you.
 
Mayhem, would you mind sending me that Excel spreadsheet?
 
me too plz. i use a rather dubious one at the moment
 
What is the LD Calculator?
 
Chris is correct, there are various calculators available out there.

However, the reason that I have done one myself was that I have found that most of the "off the web" calculators are imperial not metric, so I have to do two sets of calculations. Also, some of the things that I work in are a mixture of the two.

As such, the power loss calculator that I did does Feet*AWG, Meters*AWG and Meters*mm. If anyone does want this, you can get it here:

http://www.mmp.au.com/downloads/plc.zip

Additionally, this one actually takes the simple calculation of working out resistance (as you need a reference chart) and combines it with another calculation to work out the power loss in a specific length of a specific diameter cable. For this fact, I recommend that you read the following post for the background reference, especially the one by DMXtools, as this describes the math and reasoning behind this. In fact, DMXtools has done all the work, I simply took his information and put it into an Excel spreadsheet.

http://www.controlbooth.com/ftopic-1239-0.html

For the purpose of simply calculating the resistance of a length of cable, all you need to fill out is the length of the cable and the diameter of the conductors.

In fact, the only reason that I mentioned the calculator on this forum was because I had already given it to Zac when I initially done it.
 
Mayhem said:
Remember the post about power loss in speaker cable and DMXtools provided the math on how to calculate this. Well, all you need to do is calculate the resistance in the wire.

If I remember correctly, I sent you a copy of the Excel calculator I made up to do this? If so, just fill in the cable length and gauge and it will do the calculations for you.

Duh, of corse, I completely forgot about that. I've got the calculator sitting on my hard drive. Thanks.

As it turns out, the light in question turned on perfectly well yesterday, so I donno what happened, but it works now, so until it stops working, I'm happy.
 

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