Bad Avo ART 200 dimmer

[matta80]

Hi Guys

 

On the show im working on at the min we hav 3 art 2000 dimmers in use.

last night The issue we had this evening was with a channel on the 3rd module of rack 3 that we have not had problems with before, during one scene in the show it started to pulse from the level it was set at to full. It carried on doing this even after I wheeled it out and un-patched it. We resolved the issue by patching it to another dimmer channel on a different module. Looking at the module it was on after the show, there was an error message on the rack screen displaying "Bay 3 Dimming control stopped, control now restarted".

 

Any idears on what can cause this???

Turned the power off at the end of the show then back on again and this seemed to clear it

 

Any help would be great

 

Thanks

Matt

[leofric]

Prior to Christmas we also had a Art 2000 go rouge on us, bring up random channels at full all on it's own.We didn't have the luxury of enough spare channels to re-patch them all to different modules but PRG with there usual efficiency managed to get a replacement to us that same afternoon, and unfortunately with the pressure of the tour I didn't get round to following up on the cause.

[niclights]

I've had similar issues with heavily loaded racks and it's something I wanted to find more about. If you have time I'd try to speak to JB at Avo.

[EmmaThompson]

Did you try calling our tech support? Lee in service or Adam for out of hours would be your best bet, numbers on our website.

[ed_ld]

On older modules in the Art 2000 racks, the zero cross caps (grey in colour) on the bay trigger board were rated to a lower operating temperature so when operating under a decent load and getting nice and warm, would break down over time and cause flickering or pulsing to full. In bad cases you can see them bulging or splitting open. Seems to happen most at around the 15% level when we test for it.

All the newer racks now have better caps in (blue in colour) with a higher operating temperature and the problem seems to have gone away, we're still swapping out the grey caps in our hire stock as we find them.

 

HTH

[hadyn.williams]

hmm, that error message jogged my memory to something I read in the instructional manual a few day ago (and no, I wasn't just reading it for pleasure...)

 

 

6.5 Dimmer Engine Control Problems

If the system cannot start-up one or more of the four dimmer engines the

following message will appear

 

 

Line A 001 DMX ok Line B 001 No DMX

Status Warning Mode Test off

---------------WARNING--------------------

Bay 1 dimming control has stopped!

Check ic's in the control module! Power down and restart.

The remaining bays will work as normal and the dimmer can be used

 

Suggests checking the "ic's in the control module". Anyone know what the "ic's" are? I'm guessing it means something screamingly obvious that has skipped over me...