Rebadged Soundtec dimmers

[Brian]

As I mentioned somewhere in another thread, I'm fairly certain my Showtec type units glitch on power-up where all outputs go on full for a fraction of a second. I meant to check this out but as yet haven't. Maybe this weekend....

 

Also out of interest does anyone know what the highest address is that the Soundlab will go up to? Or even better if someone has a copy of the manual in electronic format? I didn't have any luck finding a manual on their site.

All the way to 511 according to the manual. It talks about 'DMX parallel' and 'auto parallel' as well - can't remember what those do.

[nick123]

It talks about 'DMX parallel' and 'auto parallel' as well - can't remember what those do.

 

I recently started working with one of the soundlab units from CPC, and after being caught out initially with the crossed pin 2/3 (interestingly the box showed the more usual pinout but the labelling and wiring of the unit was reversed), I've found these to be capable units. It is best if your control software or desk lets you supply a custom dimmer curve so that you can correct for the less than ideal default curve. The parallel feature drives all outputs in parallel based at least on the level of the first channel received. I'm not sure if there's a defined behaviour in that mode if levels are received on channels 2, 3 or 4.

 

Since getting the surprising present of an Enttec DMXpro from my g/f at Christmas, I took this as the push I needed to replace the 25 or so X10 dimmers that I put in first of all with something that should work better - this is a house of course, not a venue I've written a generic lighting control engine since then that currently supports the DMXpro, and found not too surprisingly that an exponential curve with suitable offsets works well to give a decent response curve. Driving anything lower than 50 watts such as two 20 watt halogens gives odd behaviour with instability from the triacs but this is not uncommon and I doubt that such low power is used by many people here! Driving a 100 watt incandescent revealed some flickering that appeared to be instability from the level drifting while DMX was being processed, but this wasn't noticable with even a single 50 watt halogen, and it's probably not noticable at all driving higher power loads.

 

The units are basic, but with software to handle the wrinkles and at a price cheaper than 4 X10 dimmers, for my current use in HA they're a bargain. Being able to press an X10 remote or X10 wall switch and now have a timely, reliable and proper scene change is great!

 

Nick

[tokm]

Do CPC still do these dimmers.. Don't think so.

 

Was having a look for some cheap small'ns the other day to install in a large set piece for practicals. All I could find are the ones by botex for 70 quid odd. Which they didnt have in stock, only other ones on their were the 4way chauvet things..

 

Oh well, lucky those who managed to get some of these dimmers out of CPC before they went away.

 

Suspect it was something to do with ROHS.. and their non-compliance.

 

Tom

[Jamtastic3]

As I mentioned somewhere in another thread, I'm fairly certain my Showtec type units glitch on power-up where all outputs go on full for a fraction of a second. I meant to check this out but as yet haven't. Maybe this weekend....

 

Yup, I have a Showtec Multi-dim and this happens. When you turn on the power to it, all the channels are sent to near full on for a split second. Not sure why this is becuase it doesn't go down well when you have 500W cold pars and you're almost blowing a bulb before you've even started! Even having the control desk on first doesn't stop this action from happening.

[nick123]

Do CPC still do these dimmers.. Don't think so.

 

Not the multidim's, but CPC still sell the G018VA badged as SoundLAB at £47, and that unit doesn't have the problems of any glitch at startup. Just beware that pin 2/3 may be swapped.