alistermorton

Looks like it has the same number, other than an A rather than B revision. Ray's suggestion of a donor machine may be the only solution, but without probing with a 'scope, voltages only tell us part of the story.

Sounds very familiar.

7 hours ago, sunray said:

my first s/l unit was before LEDs were a viable purchase

Right, yes. Band pass filters, pulse transformers and thyristors, presumably. 

Remember the P.W. "Chromatheque"?

I remember Gary Nattrass making a sound to light by "balancing" the spring of the switch on a switched socket so that it was just  at the point of "on/off" so that the sound from the speaker caused the light to flicker in time.

14 hours ago, sunray said:

Oh dear...

Why "Oh dear"?

My first S-L was based around a free PCB given away in one of the electronics mags. It was only meant to drive 3 5mm LEDs but I replaced those with optoisolators and added some big triacs. 

From the video, maybe you can loosen it by twisting to unscrew the lock nut at the bottom - maybe that's why it's jammed; someone has twisted the top, tightening the clutch so it won't release.

Oh no. Cancer really is a b*stard. 

There's still the problem of "no name" (for want of a better expression) fixtures which are nearly but not quite copies of better known fixtures. You still end up having to create a profile for them, don't you?

Yup, works fine. 

2 hours ago, Barney said:

If I'm understanding this correctly, the RC4 unit can drive the LED tape directly (i.e. without the need for a standard DMX decoder/driver)?

Yes, a DMX4Dim would drive a length of RGBW tape directly. What we have also done is use the el-cheapo LED dimmer boards you can buy on ebay as extra channels, driven off the DMX*DIM's DMX out socket (which is just a 3.5mm jack).

I've used RC4 wireless dimmers for LED tape. They're pretty easy to set up, and you can hire them. Are these plain LED tapes or pixel addressable? The RC4 units I've used have built in dimmers which work really smoothly with LED tape directly, but if you needed to add a pixel decoder they also have a DMX out socket. For power we typically use 12V 7Ah sealed lead acid cells, as they're something we have stock of (one of our crew works in the alarm business and can get them cheaply through his trade channels) but rechargeable AA cells can work well too. You'll need a transmitter and one receiver dimmer per truck.

City theatrical also have excellent solutions, I've just not used them. I recall that DrV is au fait with them

That is visible to me whereas the originals weren't. 

It may also be worth looking in to the user groups on FaceBook - I think there's a ColorSource group there, there's certainly a very active EOS group (and pretty much every other major console).

One clunky solution I've seen suggested is to map the same submaster to the same handle on each page but I'm not sure if that works on this particular desk.

Scrub that, I think I've misunderstood what you mean by "always active" and go it barse ackwards.

I've come across LED fixtures where channel 1 is an enable/disable channel for the whole fixture - 0-127 fixture off and 128-255 fixture on.

Good shout. Those ZRs just keep going

Minack's FLX still catches our ex-GSX designers out sometimes. It's near enough to feel familiar but with occasional subtleties that trip you up. 

I worked on a show in 2012 - Olympus, a race against time. It was videoed, but the recordings were lost.

Well, they thought they were. 

They turned up this year and 11 years on the edited highlights have finally been released. 

Just at random, something like these, perhaps?

You can get connectors that clamp on the tape and take a solder or IDC connection for the wiring (a quick search on led tape connector threw up various versions) but TBH I just solder direct to the tape using something like 4-core burglar alarm cable if the run is short.

Does this sound like this thread? I don't recall it ever being resolved. @Edward- Z88 - did you ever get to the bottom of it?

It might be possible to use just the mosfets in the controller to control the LEDs. 12V PSU with -ve to the -ve (common) of the controller, leds between the 12V PSU's +ve and the controller's LED output terminal. So instead of using the +ve supply of the controller for the LEDs, use the external 12V supply.

Cue the "Not the nine o'clock news" sketch.

An ETC element would probably feel very familiar to you. You can download the software to a PC or Mac and try it out to see if it feels right (although you can't control and lights without some extra hardware). 

If you're using your GSX regularly, changing the internal battery every 5 years or so is a good idea; they do eventually leak and can cause irreparable damage to the main board.