Neil Hampson Posted December 8, 2011 Share Posted December 8, 2011 As part of the Panto this year, our lighting designer requires more smoke, therefore on stage, we have a ZR33 on each side plus a small Technohaze for a downstage boost, and a Glaciator upstage centre.The glaciator will not respond properly to DMX, so that's ended up in manual control, but my biggest headache is the other smokies... The DMX comes from the buffer/splitter in the control room, the DMX patchbay on DSL to the first ZR33, looped back to SL patchbay to DSR DMX patch, to Hazer, and finally onto the 2nd ZR33 with terminator. With the whole loop fully connected the hazer and the 2nd ZR33 work without any issue, the 1st ZR33 however, will not respond to DMX (the LEDs show it's ready)If I unplug the DMX out from the 1st ZR, it works no problem, I can even plug the others in while it's running, and they will then work. All machines will then respond until the 1st ZR is stopped, then it won't fire again until you pull the DMX out plug I've tried to find a cable fault through substitution, with or without termination, I've bypassed the Hazer. The only thing I haven't done is physically swap the two smokies over to see if the odd one will behave at end of line. If I put it on a separate DMX loop from the control room it works fine (but I then have a huge length of cable from FoH) Any suggestions??? The Galciator is also a puzzle, we could not get it to work through the desk, so I plugged it into the spare LX desk on the stage, single length of cable to the desk, patched to channel 1 the refrigerator has a mind of its own, however I do get control of the fog level: 0% is full fog, 100% is no fog... it will not work on any other address. Now it was late last night and I had no more time to play, does this mean I simply need a phase inverter? despite the fact that it's printed on the machine pin 2-, pin 3+.Again any suggestions?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timsabre Posted December 8, 2011 Share Posted December 8, 2011 This really sounds like a cabling problem - probably 2 cables with pins 2 and 3 swapped. Test all your cabling with a multimeter, swapping stuff around is not a good test if you have more than one fault present. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted December 8, 2011 Share Posted December 8, 2011 If you buy no other present for yourself this Xmas buy yourself one of these (or better yet several)... With a few simple adaptors, RJ45 -> XLR5M/XLR5F/XLR3M/XLR3F/etc, you can test all you data cables by yourself. Your adaptors are simply wired pin 1 to pin 1 etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Hampson Posted December 8, 2011 Author Share Posted December 8, 2011 I have tested the cables through (not the installation infrastructure though) using some known adaptors and a Behringer cable tester, Sorry, I didn't mention that. All of the cables appear to be OK. I tried to reduce the issue to two single, isolated problems, the ZR ring issue and the Glaciator. The Glaciator is currently being tested with a completely isolated system of spare desk, one DMX cable to the Glaciator. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted December 8, 2011 Share Posted December 8, 2011 Have you checked for continuity through the ZR33's internal DMX wiring. Or does anyone know if it has an active loop? Maybe with some undocumented master/slave feature? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Hampson Posted December 8, 2011 Author Share Posted December 8, 2011 Due to another problem, I've had both of the ZR's in pieces recently. they are passive loop through for DMX. Although I have replaced the 3 pin with 5 pin connectors recently I could have wired the DMX out wrong, but I'm pretty sure I checked that. When I go in this afternoon, I am going to swap them over to see if the problem one works at the end of line, witout affecting upstream. What are the symptoms of pin 2-3 reversal? I always thought it would never work, regardless Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted December 8, 2011 Share Posted December 8, 2011 What are the symptoms of pin 2-3 reversal? I always thought it would never work, regardlessIt can often work albeit oddly. If some of your low channels are at zero a badly implemented receiver will see them as the DMX break signal and start counting from there. Your control channels then work upside down with inverted data and the wrong 'range' caused by interpreting data bits as start bits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timsabre Posted December 8, 2011 Share Posted December 8, 2011 What are the symptoms of pin 2-3 reversal? I always thought it would never work, regardlessIt can often work albeit oddly.If some of your low channels are at zero a badly implemented receiver will see them as the DMX break signal and start counting from there. Your control channels then work upside down with inverted data and the wrong 'range' caused by interpreting data bits as start bits. Actually it's the idle time between packets which looks like the break, but yes, it sometimes all works upside down.If you have swapped the 3 pins for 5pins, another common error (of mine) when you're soldering in a fiddly place is to wire to pins 5-4-3 instead of 1-2-3. This often works, but unreliably. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbuckley Posted December 8, 2011 Share Posted December 8, 2011 I have access to a smoke machine that is fussy about where in the chain it goes, to the point now where I just give it its own cable from the buffered split, and then it always works reliably. It is, of course, made in China. The smoke machine that is. Its a Proel Drago something or other. I've never bothered into looking why it gets all pissy if it goes after a few things, but it is a tad annoying. And yes, Brian is right, pins wrong way round can lead to stuff working "sometimes" and "sort of". Which isn't nearly as odd as a Pulsar dimmer I was sending -10V control to, and the dimmer delivered nothing up till 52% and at 54% delivered full output. Finding the switch on the back of the demux had been set the wrong way took a little finding. But I'd never have thought that a negative control voltage would make a positive dimmer every respond to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigclive Posted December 8, 2011 Share Posted December 8, 2011 And if you end up with a pile of mis-matched equipment all purporting to be 100% DMX compliant, but having issues, then a DMX buffer/splitter solves lots of problems. Does require individual cable runs to the affected equipment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Hampson Posted December 9, 2011 Author Share Posted December 9, 2011 Well both problems have been solved for the show at least. The ZR33 will not share DMX with anything, even at the end of the chain, therefore as Clive suggested, it now hogs it's own dedicated DMX line, and is perfectly happy. (although, Why is another question for quieter day) On Speaking to Jem/Martin yesterday, it would appear we have a bad DMX card on the Glaciator, as last night it wouldn't do anything. The replacement that the hire company sent out on an overnight appears to have no refrigerent in it, so fingers crossed, we are getting another in time for the opening matinee at 1, which gives it 50 mins to coll down before the transformation scene. I'm just hoping it's third time lucky. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted December 9, 2011 Share Posted December 9, 2011 The ZR33 will not share DMX with anything...I wonder if one leg of its DMX transceiver chip, which is almost certainly an SN75176 or variant, has gone bad? Either by no longer being connected to the XLR pin or by actually having failed internally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Hampson Posted December 9, 2011 Author Share Posted December 9, 2011 I don't know, I can't understand it at all, I swapped out the DMX PCB between the units, and the problem stayed with the machine. It points to a wiring fault, but them it would then work at end of line...Maybe I've got two problems that are somehow cancelling each other out. As soon as Panto is over (only 5 more weeks to go) I'll get them both on the stage with a desk and some known good DMX cable and play about, it's hard to fault find during the dress. The more this goes on the more I'm doubting the soldering on the connectors, I wonder if one of the pins is touching the ground. I'll need to check my soldering properly, I remember there wasn't much room. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted December 9, 2011 Share Posted December 9, 2011 The more this goes on the more I'm doubting the soldering on the connectors, I wonder if one of the pins is touching the ground. I'll need to check my soldering properly, I remember there wasn't much room. This might not be relevant but this caught us out recently... The symptoms were that the house tie-lines would test fine, as would our cables from control to the ties, and from the other end of the ties to the flown kit. And yet when plugged up it didn't work. In the end it came down to a missing cable clamp in the Neutrik connectors on one of our cables. As well as clamping the cable it also stops the connector body moving backwards in the metal shell. Without it there the body would move backwards enough so as not to mate properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Hampson Posted December 12, 2011 Author Share Posted December 12, 2011 Well after 3 Glaciators being supplied by WL, I found the problem, and I do blame myself for not checking this out earlier; The 5-3 DMX converter sent by WL with the unit was a phase inverter, but marked as a standard. everything we tried after that was bound to fail... With this in mind, there was probably nothing wrong with the 1st machine, the second was low on refrigerant and wouldn't cool down at all.As a side note, I have personally not spoken to WL again yet, the colour codes of Grey (5-3) and Purple (3-5) for the adapters, is there a different colour for the inverter cable? I'm wondering if a previous hirer has re-soldered it for their own needs as I would expect WL to have a very clear marking of non standard cables Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.