J Pearce

It’s quite possible that the venue’s transmitters on 868 are intermodulating with your 865, or that the filters on their 868 are wide enough to pick up your 865.

Have you spoken to Solotech? Or ask the dealer that's providing the loan who else they've sold to who might be able to help out.

They're perhaps not as widely hired as some other options, with a lot of hire cos sticking with Yamaha and Digico.

I'd install a separate system. Leave the basic room lighting to the site management to look after, otherwise it'll be your fault when the lights won't turn on for class/cleaners/Sunday hires etc.

Install something else for your houselight/space lighting, perhaps some DMX LED warm white floods?

Going quiet and getting hot suggests a fault in the output stage.
If repairing the amp costs more than £30 I'd move on. You wouldn't need to spend a lot to achieve a significant upgrade. 

The Pea Soup machines are well built with good spares availability. They might feel a bit cottage industry compared to the gloss of a larger company, but I've had good experiences with them.

The Look Solutions machines are reliable and repairable, though not in a position now where I have to repair them, so can't comment on availability.

The old Jem/Martin machines are good, fairly simple, and work well until they don't, when they're usually repairable at a component level - if you can get the bits as Gareth highlights.

[Edit to add vaguely humorous anecdote]

In a previous job, some years ago, I contacted Le Maitre to ask what I could do about a whining hazer fan. Their response was "sometimes, a smart whack on the motor spindle with a hammer fixes it". To be fair, it did fix it for a month or two.

I've done all sorts of audio and DMX (and RS232 and others) over CAT5/6. It works well and uses flexbile infrastructure.
Ratsound make the RAT-CAT boxes, and there are now cheaper versions on the market. Clearcom have used RJ45 connectors for their analogue 4 wire ports for many years now.

The more sensibly chosen pinouts avoid POE issues (and proper POE has handshaking to limit fallout), but users should be wise to the risks of crossplugging in any infrastructure where different protocols use the same connectors - this is no different to party line comms (or 12V PAR16s) on XLR3 being crossplugged with audio cabling, or XLR4s being both comms headsets and scroller/wheel cabling.
 

Script or music on screens might be a good application. You could timecode your page turns. Or use osc buttons/pedals (or sensors or...) for next/prev.

A google search gives this pdf, of which pg 11 is relevant.

As others have suggested, my usual solution is an off the shelf wall mount and half couplers added to suit my rigging requirements. Unistrut can also be useful if tube and half couplers starts getting bulky.

I’ve used gravlocks on vertical beams, subject to risk assessment that reduced the risk of slipping and reduced the hazard created by any slipping.

I’ve not seen any “do not use vertically” warnings, though there are the very obvious warnings about using them in pairs.

We should be careful with the term back projection. Amongst non-experts it has become a term for “projection at the back” rather than a specific technical term regarding rear projection with the projector upstage of the surface.

I’ve done plenty of projection on to ‘rustic’ surfaces. If you’re realistic about brightness (as you won’t get the screen gain of a proper surface), and don’t expect photo quality content you can do some rather lovely things.

I’d usually prefer a scenic finished surface rather than trying to recreate a scenic finish onto a perfect surface with projection. The former tends to blend better and look more integrated.

I'm a big fan of Doughty Supaclamps for this sort of thing, though a hook/tube clamp of choice and a suitable bolt or thread adapter would also sort you out. A ball head might be useful for focussing.

9 hours ago, Ynot said:

I suspect that using a server based system is all well and good, allowing for that latency, but you'd always be at the mercy of that server losing connection

 

Modern digital comms (like Clearcom's Helixnet) are just a server feeding data to/from clients. It's just a matter of having a suitably stable server. Greengo is slightly different being a serverless peer-to-peer system.

What Tim said. Make a loom. If it’s too long coil the slack.

I've not really paid much attention to model numbers, just whether it has the features I need.

10 hours ago, sunray said:

I just wish I could find a camera to cope with the dramatic light changes better.

As above, the Bosch Dinion kit is good at this. You'll need to spend money on a camera with exposure and shutter settings, any of the cheap auto exposure CCTV cameras will struggle with the dynamic range of a stage lit production.

7 hours ago, Stuart91 said:

My lot have specifically said they struggled with count-ins, it's the down-beat at the start of a piece that is the biggest challenge. (Slow pieces seem to need more precision than faster ones, interestingly)

I'd be suspicious of the digital camera and distribution before the flatscreens. All of our MD camera setup is on flatscreens, and I haven't had any complaints about latency.

At my previous job the opera MD insisted on CRT and for what they were doing the very small latency from a flatscreen was perhaps an issue.

8 hours ago, ABB125 said:

Thanks everyone so far - analogue isn't something I'd previously considered as everything we do currently is digital(ish)!

Is this the sort of camera you mean @J Pearce? I think we have something that looks similar bodged onto what looks like it might have once been a mic stand, I'll have to investigate. We (and an associated organisation) have a random collection of various analogue video things, when I have time I'll have a proper look through to see if any of it might be useful (assuming of course that it works!). 

In terms of a composite splitter, are the really cheap plastic-y things like this "good enough", or does more money need to be spent for something of a better quality?

Is composite to VGA workable, so that the existing PC monitors can still be used? Various adapters appear to be available, should something like this work or would it have to be a powered device like this? I'll also have a look at the assortment of random screens* we have to see if there are any with composite input.

 

*ranging from what look like small black and white CRTs to 15 year old "commercial-style" big screens which came out of a library I believe...

Yep you've pretty much picked the setup that has just run a rather large musical at the Rep. Those DAs work fine, and the Bosch Dinion cameras are excellent, and very affordable on the used market.

I've not tried composite to VGA, I guess it'd depend on the signal delay of the specific converter. Some screens may support a passive cable adapter, it'd depend on their supported scan rates. I'd recommend avoiding converters and sticking to screens with native composite video input (or SCART with an adapter). Small black and white CRTs are ideal and probably go with the camera on a mic stand.

As you're local to me and my venue if you wanted to pop over and take a look send me a DM.

1 hour ago, Stuart91 said:

I'm afraid I've had horrible service from Ampman recently.

That's a shame. My experience was 2021, so a while back now.

Most flatscreen TVs have a tolerable latency on their composite input. Some have a 'gaming' mode which improves this. I generally find that the more modern the TV the more likely it is to have fancier upscaling processing that increases latency.
For opera I'd be looking at CRT or low latency native SD resolution screens, but if you're after count ins, ends of pauses, and dynamics etc. then most flat screen TVs should be ok.

Most digital cameras are not remotely optimised for low latency live output, until you're into proper studio cameras. Add in digital processing and the frame delays get far too long for conductor cameras.

The Canford 4 ways are standard at the hire cos I use. Very hardy if terminated well, sufficiently flexible and well coiling to be useful on a tour.

Ampman repaired my X32 Rack, but they don't currently list Behringer on their website - worth contacting them though.

HDMI encompasses a few standards. SDI is far more specific. Your HDMI computer monitors will be expecting RGB colourspace, in a variety of resolutions/frame rates. Your SDI adapters will send only video standards down SDI, then only video HDMI standards out of the HDMI - so 720p/1080i/1080p in YUV colourspace. TVs will display these standards, many computer monitors will not.

Unless you've got the cash for something like a Marshall SDI camera, I'd stick with composite. Most big musicals are still on composite for MD cameras (though there is now a growing move to SDI for FOH picture). Get a good quality composite camera (I recommend the Bosch cameras which can be found quite affordably on eBay), a composite video splitter (or distribution amplifier to use the proper term - again, plenty on eBay), use your existing BNC cabling, and either use cheap TVs (could be higher latency) or SD native screens - varying sizes available in varying ruggedness at varying price points.

CueOne don't seem to be around anymore. Stage Sound Services have a good stock of CMX8s so may be able to assist with servicing.

Excellent news. Hope you find it useful!