timsabre

You definitely shouldn't connect pin 1 to earth/casing in the cabling but some products (incorrectly) have it connected inside the fixture. In this case the missing cable screen as in Sunray's fault would not cause a loss of DMX as the ground continuity would be kept via mains earth. Other products I have seen use a 100R resistor between pin 1 / system ground and earth which is slightly more tolerant to mains faults.

Yes sorry typing on my phone is too slow... According to avo troubleshooting page the tt2 does have spare dnx chips https://www.avolites.com/support/titan-troubleshooting/

Almost certainly damaged DMX transceiver chip on the TT output, sending one-legged DMX.

I believe this isn't possible on the QuickQ consoles. They are designed to be a low budget range of consoles sitting below the main Chamsys range (which can do multi-celled fixtures). As suggested, contact Chamsys to see if there is a backdoor way of doing it - then update us here as it's always useful to know this sort of thing.

The thing with HMRC is, they take the position that if there is any doubt then it's PAYE. If you need to ring up and ask - it's PAYE. If you use their online checker - it's PAYE. I don't think a lot of it would stand up in court if it came to that, but they seem to be hoping that they can frighten everyone away from self employment without actually doing too much enforcement.

Ah I see what you mean. I just took the period of time as information about the required commitment. So what you are asking is, would HMRC link a job advert with an invoice and use it to prove that the job should have been PAYE. I think this is very unlikely, but I guess possible if they are doing an in depth investigation on you.

I know someone who has a full time 9-5 job and uses their holiday days (and weekends) to go and work events, with the approval of their employer (they value the extra skills gained) - obviously this limits how much you can do and there is a definite concern over the effect on your paid job. Many events would typically involve 9am get in through to a late finish so you aren't going to be doing another job those days. You may be able to work a flexible 4 day week and use the extra day for events - there are ways to do it. In my situation I am my own boss for the 9-5 job so I work that round going to do events.

In my opinion, you would invoice an amount for doing the whole job and that would be fine. My accountant has always advised not to state hourly rates or times on an invoice but just to invoice your charge for doing the job. HMRC would like to make everyone think that everything should be PAYE, but until they have the legal precedence behind them to back that up, I think it's not the case yet.

That's true - you won't be designing the lighting rig or running the show straight away. But if you know your way around a DMX system, you'd probably get to be a lighting tech on shows if you find the right production company, which is all interesting stuff too - and once you've proven your ability the opportunities to design or operate will start to come along.

I would add that with your skills you have a choice of what sort of life you want to have - to make a living from lighting you have to be prepared to work most evenings and weekends, it can get a bit all-consuming - this can be fun if you are a young singleton, if you've got a family or want a social life it can be less good. You could have your software engineering job to pay the bills and do am-dram or freelance for local events companies to scratch the live events itch - that's where I've ended up after doing lighting full time for some years, until I got fed up of not having a life outside work, and never seeing my kids.

RS485 isn't a balanced signal in the same way audio is, it's a differential signal and it absolutely needs the ground reference connection. As you say, you'll get away with it providing all the end points float within the 12V common mode voltage range of each other.

Did you check the rest of the cabling, I agree it sounds unlikely. I too have seen DMX work perfectly over some awful wiring including multiple passive y-splits and lawnmower cable. But I've also seen reflected twitching like you describe...

Sounds like a data reflection at the fault point, I have seen this happen before where the fixture just before or 2 before the fault flickers.

Avolites T1 dongle (1 universe of DMX) is currently available for £199 in UK, is it really 500usd in your part of the world. Or if you have an artnet node get an editor avokey from Avolites website for £60 and you can run 1 universe over artnet. As dje says Avolites have made a commercial decision to require you to buy a certain level of hardware before you can use the Titan software - this was mostly to combat the problems they were having with counterfeiting.

If you know absolutely nothing about it, Patch 24 dimmers onto the top bank of faders and work out what each channel does. Then go to the Avolites Fixture Finder https://www.avolites.de/test/d4find/ To find a matching personality

This sort of arrangement powering fixtures from a dimmer which isn't locked into switching mode always makes me anxious. It is too easy to accidentally feed dimmed power to the fixture, maybe Mac250's will stand being fed dimmed power but a lot of fixtures will suffer power supply module failure if the channel accidentally gets dimmed. If the racks have hot (mains side) patching then it is much better to arrange a local set of permanently live outputs to patch into. Or hardwire the dimmers as suggested. Leaving it up to the desk op is risky in my opinion...

I've never found the directional paddles to be all that directional - they definitely have better gain from the front than a dipole antenna and less from the back and sides but as long as they are pointed in the rough direction of the stage they should be fine. Having a bit of separation between the antennas to allow them to pick up different signal paths as people move around seems to be the most important thing.

Doh yes you are right. On 8051 reset is active high so it should go high on power up then low, not what I said above.

U9 29SF040 is flash, I would think for user programmable storage. Device firmware will be in the micro. I would check the reset for the processor (PSEN on pin 29). This should be low on power up then go high. If this is not going high then the firmware will not run.

My first guess (see lots of posts back) was faulty crystal. It is just a bog standard 24mhz crystal. The micro will be an 8051. I think U9 is a latch for the combined data/address bus that the 8051 uses.

Do what Rob said and check for supply voltage at the main ic's, then trace back. If it's a dc input supply then caps are not likely to have much influence.

The top line flash on the display shows that it's getting power but not being initialized by the microcontroller. So I would guess that isn't running. It looks like there's a crystal mounted underneath the 40 pin dil chip with a label on which I would guess is the micro. Try replacing that, I've known quite a few "non running" faults be due to an aged crystal.

We've got a bunch of the Stageline/Pulse ones at our church. They've probably done 15 years service - I have had a couple fail where the pad switch becomes intermittent and another couple where one of the jacks has stopped making contact. But at the price just replace it.... They are transformer coupled and work perfectly well.

I think that does have a fan, look at the pic showing the backside, looks like one of those whiny 40mm fans. Beam angle is supposedly to half brightness but I think they just guess for a lot of the cheap stuff. That fixture is cob LEDs in reflectors with no lenses so the beam will be fairly undefined. 3m away should be OK though. I have found the colours to be a bit wishy washy on some of the COB LEDs but not used that particular one.

Assuming this is an event during daylight, and this is a standard clearspan marquee without blackout lining, I'd definitely go for multiple TV's. RP projector contrast will be rubbish with a 7K projector - if they tent the rear of the screens to make a projection "tunnel" it'll be slightly better but I would still go for the TV's. If the marquee is blacked out or it's night time then it's a different story. Also not sure you were asking about sound but the flown speakers will give better sound distribution without blasting the people at the front, than ground stack, in my opinion.