Strand 200+ compatability

[Taurean]

Hi guys/girls, our Community Theatre group in Perth, West. Aust. recently purchased (against professional advice) a nice, new, cheap Strand 200+ lighting desk and have coupled it to our 4 dimmer rack-stack. The dimmers are daisy chained together as #1 (1 to 12) Tinhao, #2 (13 to 24) Strand, #3 (25 to 36) Tinhao, #4 (37 to 48) Strand. The racks have been in use in this configuration, without problem, for three years coupled to an early LSC Maxim M desk which committed suicide in the middle of a show. (As they do!).

Apart from a couple of ID-10-T errors and teething problems getting used to the desk during the shows initial rig and plotting, the entire kit was working well until last night when we lost DMX to dimmer #1 sporadically.

The lights on the FOH bars (downstage lighting) went into a slow, insidious, fade to a varied length blackout and then (at their leisure) snapped back up to full.

Yet racks #2, #3, & #4 had no loss of signal what so ever, leaving the center and upper stage fully lit. This occurred four or five times.

 

We originally thought that a scene fader had failed somehow and attempted to re-record to another on the fly but no amount of frantic re-jigging was able bring the lights back up until they were good and ready. Hours of checking and re-checking after the show and finding no fault with the dimmers or physical connections seems to indicate that there may be a compatibility issue with the TinHao units. (Perhaps the new desk doesn't speak "chinglish". Strange though, only one of them lost DMX. Ah.... It is a puzzlement!)

 

(And NO - no-one had touched anything. We had moved away from the desk before the first incidence of this because of a 45 minute "change free" lighting state and neither of us were anywhere near it.)

 

I was wondering if anyone has ever come across this oddball occurrence before and if so, do they know the cause and can they offer a solution? (Preferably other than petrol and a match.)

 

I will freely admit that this has me perplexed...My knee-jerk reaction is to blame the Strand desk, but I want to be absolutely certain before I tell the club committee to stop penny pinching, return the Strand to the supplier and buy the more expensive 36/72 LSC Maxim S board that is both rack and Op friendly and was recommended in the first place.

 

(It might be my macabre sense of humour, but I found a certain degree of hilarity in the actors re-blocking themselves upstage and then down again as the lights played their silly games! I have honestly never enjoyed any Harold Pinter play quite as much as I did last nights offering. Thank heavens it was closing night - I would not be able to work it again with a straight face!)

 

P.S. Oh - By the way, the fader delay issues on the Strand 200 referred to in previous posts (back in 2003) have not been resolved and are still present in the "plus" model.

 

Thanks for letting me vent,

Hoping for a "fix" soon,

Taurean.

[DrV]

The stock reply is "How long is the DMX cabling and is it terminated correctly?" If that's all in order then it sounds like a fault within that rack. The input and output are probably simply connected together so the signal would happily pass straight through to the other racks.

[Brian]

DMX refresh rate? Can it be adjusted on the 200+?

[Don Allen]

I had to do a factory reset on this desk last night for the next show bumping in, as they could not get the desk to do anything. It has been talking to the Tinhao dimmer correctly since then. Will look at it today and look at DMX refresh rates from the desk.

 

The DMX cable was about 5 metres, racks are next to desk, will check last racks termination today.

[mpeters86]

I had to do a factory reset on this desk last night for the next show bumping in, as they could not get the desk to do anything. It has been talking to the Tinhao dimmer correctly since then. Will look at it today and look at DMX refresh rates from the desk.

 

The DMX cable was about 5 metres, racks are next to desk, will check last racks termination today.

 

Don,

 

 

Do you know what version of software the 200+ is at? When the lights went to blackout and then back to full, did you happen to see the levels change on the console? Let me know, thanks.

 

 

Matthew Peters, Strand Tech Support Specialist

 

Matthew.peters@philips.com

[Kazeja]

From this

 

"Yet racks #2, #3, & #4 had no loss of signal what so ever"

 

I gather racks 2, 3, 4 carried on working and responding to the desk/DMX. If so, I would start looking at a fault local within rack 1. Possibly a power supply component sitting on the edge. What age are the racks, in particular rack 1?

 

K

[ianknight]

I would check the earth for the dimmers is secure as well and that nothing is interposing noise on the earth - I've had issues before with some of the more "economical" racks where they misbehave like a 3 year old toddler if the earth isn't actually clear of all voltages.

 

If you can find one - a DMX buffer between the desk and racks would be worth a shot - it could be a cable capacitance problem causing the DMX waveform to be altered occasionally. Some desk transceiver chips seem more prone to this than others.

[Don Allen]

My involvement with helping the visiting company set up their lighting has finished, but I will try and fill in some gaps.

 

Dimmers 1 and 3 are Tinhao AT2000 12x3kw dimmers. These two racks were supplied about a year ago.

 

Dimmers 2 and 4 are LSC ePAK ePAK manual These racks have been in service for many years. LSC e series forum

 

The Strand 200+ desk is running REV 1.32 software (text from lx op) I was not near the console when they had problems, but they were able to get lights up at the start of the day.

 

There is a DMX cable running from the last dimmer rack to the stage, about 30 metres, for use with led's, which had not been there for a long time. When I looked on the Sunday night, the DMX cable was not terminated, but was connected to the last dimmer.

 

The lx operator did not have time to learn how to use the Strand 200+ so it was swapped out for an LSC maxim XL. He also wanted the 36 dimmer channels in use on the top preset row and the recorded scenes on the second row for tweeking the cues. I think you would have to record individual channels into groups to do this on the Strand 200+.

 

I have set up their three RGB led zooms on stage and donated a line terminator to the theatre. Everything has been stable since Monday.

 

 

It may be a few weeks before anyone looks at the setup, as the maxim has to go back to its home and the Strand 200+ will be used on the next show.