dmoorcroft Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 Hi Guys, One of the venues I work in is currently experiencing a problem with a couple of channels in one of the ETC smartpack dimmers. Two channels (3 and 4) are flickering. This happens regardless of whether the pack has DMX or not. And the channels have "proper" loads on i.e. 1k fresnels. When ive seen this happen with other dimmers its been a case of replacing the triacs. Just wanted a second opinion before I swap this out from another working pack.Annoyingly the packs are hard wired into soca and in a different room to the studio space which is making troubleshooting take longer than it should! Thanks in advance, Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ynot Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 I have 2, possibly 3, Smart Racks exhibiting just this fault - in my case it's proven to be on FOUR channels which correspond to one of the dimmer 'cubes'. I haven't had chance to experiment with swapping known working cubes to see if it's them, or if it's some other common issue with the control hardware. But you can prove it one way or another by swapping them over and checking the lanterns on those circuits. TAKE CARE though if you've not replaced the cubes before - they have sturdy enough PCB mounted spade connectors for the power in, but the control circuits are on quite flimsy pins on the cube (the heatsink jobby in the middle of the rack) and these can easily get bent when re-mounting. Of course, all precautions should be taken when messing inside the dimmers - like isolating the mains power in... :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dmoorcroft Posted April 6, 2014 Author Share Posted April 6, 2014 Thanks for the advise YnotPurely for information purposes, in case anyone encounters a similar problem, I did a factory reset of the dimmer pack and it seems to have solved the issue. Looks like one of those problems where I'll never know the actual cause Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blip2 Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 Dave, I talked to an ETC rep after the problems we were having during Fringe (I'm pretty sure we tried a master reset though it was a different issue)... Apparently there are a bunch of 'engineer' settings in hidden menus controlling how the packs behave, ETC tech support know how to get into them and I was advised to give them a call next time I had an issue. It may have been some of these settings had been messed with? I would expect the factory reset defaults to be able to handle a 1k. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gibbothegreat Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 I'll throw in a left-field suggestion too: do you have a wireless DMX set up? We have all Zero 88 dimmers with the exception of one Smartpack, and for reasons that I haven't been able to discover yet, the ETC just can't get along with the wireless - mad flickering ensues, although the degree seems to be quite random, not related to any particular levels or use that I can tell. We have to take the latter out of circuit for showtime, then it's absolutely rock solid. For info, our wireless is an ELC Focushand 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dmoorcroft Posted April 6, 2014 Author Share Posted April 6, 2014 No WDMX in the venue. Was going to give ETC a call but its a sunday and didn't feel a couple of flickering channels quite warranted calling their emergency out of hours number. Blip2 - Useful to know you've had good experience with ETC support - will be my first port of call should the problem recur. Thanks all Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ynot Posted April 6, 2014 Share Posted April 6, 2014 Thanks for the advise YnotPurely for information purposes, in case anyone encounters a similar problem, I did a factory reset of the dimmer pack and it seems to have solved the issue. Interesting... The manual doesn't seem to point at a factory reset option and I'm nowhere near a rack to try the menus at the moment - so where is that pray tell...?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dmoorcroft Posted April 7, 2014 Author Share Posted April 7, 2014 Thanks for the advise YnotPurely for information purposes, in case anyone encounters a similar problem, I did a factory reset of the dimmer pack and it seems to have solved the issue. Interesting... The manual doesn't seem to point at a factory reset option and I'm nowhere near a rack to try the menus at the moment - so where is that pray tell...?? Its on the menu as "Deep clear system" which according to the manual, "resets the unit as if it were new" You need to be in advanced menu mode to see this option. Hope that helps! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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