Strand 300 Weird Problem

[B.Morris]

Hey, new to this site and already asking for help. ;)

 

As a student at my school I recently became head of the modest lighting crew and equipment that we use for school shows, musicals and so on. Our main board is a strand 300 and the primary cause of our problems. The underlying problem is that given the person running the desk tends to leave school every 2 years training is underdeveloped and hurried. The strand was bought by a student with a great understanding of both technology in general and lighting itself. Sadly he was followed by a art student who barely progressed beyond how to bind a sub, who then trained another student of the same understanding and then me. Having spent muchos time searching the Internet and deciphering the manual I believe I have gained a rough and ready understanding of how everything fits together. I manage to use most of the different abilities of the desk without a hitch these days. I'm telling you this because I will make mistakes or fail to understand simple terms because I do suffer from huge gaps in my knowledge. So if I do seem utterly moronic please be patient :P

 

Basically when the lighting desk starts up (strand 300) the manual faders (top two attachments of basic faders on scene 1 preset) only allow lights to reach 1 (out of 100 in the live screen), 5 minutes later they can reach 6, 10 minutes 16 and so on. There is nothing on the Internet/ manual about this and I have tried a OS reinstall to clear it, to no avail. The desk works perfectly apart from this with sub masters and manual commands 1 thru 36 on for example instantly taking the lights to the required values unlike the manual faders. After a hour when the total has reach 100 everything works perfectly. The lights take the same time to reach a value (for example 1 second whether it is from 5 or 60 which suggests that it is not the fade time that has been messed with), its just that their total is limited.

 

Any ideas?

Many thanks

[gareth]

Odd. My first guess is that someone's made one of the subs into a grand master (the Function column on the subs screen will say GM) and applied a long fade time to it.

[dave singleton]

Preheat related thing?!

[gareth]

Unlikely - it sounds as though it's mastering channels (i.e. limiting their top intensity) rather than not allowing them to go below a particular level.

 

Actually, re-reading the initial post, you say that the rest of the desk works fine (presumably this means that you can use the channel control or the X playback to bring the channels up as normal?), in which case my GM theory is pants. Instead, check on your submaster screen that a fade time hasn't been applied to the submasters that are giving you problems. The Up/Dn time (third column along) should be showing 0/0 in black - if it's showing a fade time in yellow, this could be the cause of the problem.

[B.Morris]

Unlikely - it sounds as though it's mastering channels (i.e. limiting their top intensity) rather than not allowing them to go below a particular level.

 

As you say it is only the top intensity that is affected. I was wondering if it could be some kind of diagnostic? Everything else works perfectly and you can use channel control or the X playback to bring the channels up as normal.

 

Call me crazy but wouldn't the sub masters be affected by a misconfigered sub-master setting (as they work perfectly from the very moment to board runs.)? Instead it is the manual faders which I have tried re-patch in case it was a mess-up there btw. Sorry if that wasnt clear.

[gareth]

Do you have some web space that you can upload your showfile to? If so, stick it up there and I'll download it and have a look. Otherwise, PM me and I'll give you my e-mail address to send it to (not going to post e-mail addresses in the open forum!).

[mike]

It's a while since I had a 300 infront of me - but I do remember this problem.

 

Somewhere around the main panel there is a small fader (similiar to the ones for operating in a manual fade time mode)

I can't remember the top level, but the bottom is certainly marked with the infinity symbol - this will affect all the chanels - this will need to be disabled.

 

I think - and I'm sure someone will correct me If I'm wrong - that if you press the MODE button (near the Playback side of the desk) you can change from MAN/MAN and other options including running in a show mode with programmed fade times.

 

Get out of Manual time.

 

- in short - you have a very long fade time applied to all the channels.

 

lose this and all your problems should be solved

PM if required.

[Oovis]

My 2p worth says it may be power issues related to the analogue to digital converter circuit. It sounds like something taking an eternity to get to working reference voltage.

 

Maybe a call to a Strand service agent would help. You don't say where you are in your profile so no recommendations for your nearest, I'm afraid.

[B.Morris]

In the UK sadly so getting a Strand technician in is somewhat hard given that they shut down a few months ago. A vague memory that we had the same problem before but the solution does not present itself.

When I get back to the desk I will try that mike thanks allot.

If that doesn't work Ill get you that show-file Gareth.

Thanks everybody! Its been really helpful.

[paulears]

the manual fade time faders don't have a button to turn them on, so unless you program a macro to act as man time, those faders don't do anything. Strand's work around was to use a 500, programme the macro using the man time button, then load that into the 300. I've not used one now for a year - did they ever do a software update curing this one?

[Ynot]

In the UK sadly so getting a Strand technician in is somewhat hard given that they shut down a few months ago.

Just cos Strand have gone as a supplier, there are still quite a few companies with engineers trained on desk support.

[Kazeja]

My bit for what it's worth is to go back to basics and start with a clean console.

 

Go to archive and select the clear option on the LCD. Tick all available options and clear everything out.

 

Let me know if problems still persist and then we'll have to take it from there.

 

 

 

P.S. would also appreciate a copy of the show file if poss. Thanks

[tokm]

Yeah, do a clean wipe, and re patch.. If students have been bodging together lighting states/chases/lx cues, over the years since that student who bought the desk/knew how to really use it, left. God only knows what crap could be sitting on there!

 

Like Kazeja said, if you still have problems come back to us. Assuming your desk channels and dimmer circuits are ok being patched one to one, you shouldn't have any trouble getting the desk to be able to work ok and ready to go for you instantly after you do a wipe. Just go to the patch screen and do 1 thru ? (however many dimmers you have) @ 1 thru (same number as dimmer channels you have) then */enter.

 

All the strand programmers here might know some neat trick of doing it quicker, but how I just stated works for me :huh:

 

HTH.

 

Tom

[JMC]

[PATCH] {DEFLT} {DEFLT} :huh:

[Germaine]

I'd agree that the first step is to clear the desk down, so save what you need onto disk and do the following

 

Report

exit

shutdown

shutdown

 

Now you'll see the usual "it's safe to shut down screen" at this point grab your keyboard and type

 

220clean

 

followed by enter, this will wipe all your temporary dat files and is the best way to clear all the gunk out. If I remember correctly you'll also get diagnostic options and scandisk etc.

 

Give that a try and come back to us. But bear in mind this will wipe everything that isn't saved but I'm guessing you probably don't have 200 movers with bespoke personalities, and a million macros so it wont be a big deal.

 

Germaine