timsabre

Thanks I'll try some phone calls in the morning. Usually work better than emails...

not pc at all, totally bespoke

Our X32 has just died... just after the 3 years warranty expired. On power up there is a very brief flash of a few buttons, then nothing. It appears to be a fault with the power supply module which is an easy swap, but I cannot find anywhere to buy a replacement (except from USA) and Behringer say it must be returned to an authorised service centre. Does anyone know if it is possible to buy replacement boards/modules in UK?

Indeed, N-channel fets used to switch the ground side are usually 60V. I wouldn't be too surprised at 31V, everything has a custom switch mode supply these days which is inherently regulated, so maybe 31V just works out best for the LED stack.

You'd be better off with a DMX-pwm dimmer module in between the psu and the led string. Most rgb dimmer modules will probably do 30v even if they say 24v, the limit will be the regulator used to make 5v for the microprocessor. Dimming the mains will be disappointing.

That device should work. Most desks that use floppy have ordinary computer drives, with a floppy connector and 4 pin floppy power connector. Just unscrew the old one, insert a USB emulator one, and it should work straight away! This is not necessarily the case, we are not talking about a PC here, this is a very old console from the days when the floppy drive was the latest thing and a microcontroller of that time had to use all sorts of tricks to be able to read the data off it fast enough. Avo consoles used custom motherboards and will have had bespoke software to control the drive, which may or may not work with a floppy emulator.

I would try telephoning Adam at Avolites as suggested in that forum post. A lot of the Avo people have been there from the start and will know the rolacue desks, but their main support system is understandably for their current products so you may need a bit of persistence to get through to someone who knows. Individual email addresses are on their website too, but I would try phoning if you can.

This is my experience with mains dimmable LED on all triac dimmers I have tried, and I've tried most of the professional brands. The problem is the triacs latch on due to the capacitive load rather than switching when they are meant to. Trailing edge (IGBT) dimmers work much better, I think ETC do have a type of IGBT dimmer so maybe that is what they used to test. But you still can't dim below about 20%.

Sorry yes, terminology wrong. But, yes, DMX driven. Should dim smoothly to 0% if it's DMX. What Tomo was saying applied to mains-dimmable drivers (which is presumably what you had before)

edit: sorry... duplicate post

Those aren't dimmers, they are LED drivers. What are you controlling them from just out of interest, DMX?

It's physically big though. Hard to fit in a S4 mini. A mains-dimming LED driver, which works out the dim level by measuring the cutoff point on the mains waveform, is fairly simple in concept. In real life it's hard because the mains waveform is often badly distorted and a lot of mains dimmers are rubbish and can't handle a very small very capacitive load.

Not familiar with that desk, but when this happens to me it is usually a master fader somewhere set to Off. Is there a way to view the memory contents so you can see whether it has actually recorded the intensity?

No.... it's a DC power supply. You need an AC power supply with centre tap, basically a transformer in a box.

As jive says, if the cables test ok for continuity, it will be dodgy connectors or wiring within one or more fixtures. This causes loss of one side of the DMX which makes it unreliable. You can make a test plug with a red led + 220 ohm resistor from pin 2 to 1 and a green led + resistor from pin 3 to 1. Then go round plugging it in and check you have both red and green lights. When one is missing, you can track down the fault.

It is an earth loop, very common problem when projecting from a laptop. You need to run the audio through an isolated DI box (i.e. one with an earth lift switch) A good test is to run the laptop off battery, this should also fix the problem temporarily as it removes the earth.

I've been up in a lot of theatre roofspaces, and decorative ceilings all look extremely dodgy from above, held up by random wood struts or bits of wire mesh. They seem to rely on the adhesion of the plaster to the wood, or the little nibs of plaster squashed through gaps. The question is, would an experienced eye be able to spot a problem?

Blue is expensive... do you really want to pay more for a blue PCB?

I really don't think it's worth the complexity, just buy some starquad cable and use 5 pin connectors, and have a splitter box at the vision mixer. That gives you 2 colour tally easily. On a camera rig all cabling is a home run anyway so there's no advantage in making it work on the comms loop system.

It's usually very hard to solder an XLR onto cheap headphones because the cable is often enamelled or tinsel wire. Even if you manage it the joint is fragile. Keeping the jacks is probably more reliable.

It's true, and don't call me Shirley. All you can do is program a chase with the same fade time between each step, which will run through automatically. As far as I know there is no way to single step a chase on that controller. You need something a bit more advanced to do that. .

Curiously the HOT error was just being discussed in this thread: http://www.blue-room.org.uk/index.php?showtopic=36034 and despite the message it's not about temperature, it's to do with the light sensor

I have a nice simple circuit using the Allegro A6210 for 0-100% dimming of those Ledengin LED arrays. However you do need a PWM control signal from somewhere which could be hard to achieve in a retro-fit like that.

You can solder to metal clad LED boards like that, I do it regularly. It's just a case of having a chunky enough soldering iron to transfer the heat. I've got a 45W weller with a big chunky tip and it does it no problem. However if I fit a narrow tip to the same iron, it won't do it. Obviously (I hope) you should solder the wires on before you put it on the heatsink, otherwise you really will have problems.