GDS Bluesystem

[Chrishaynor]

Hi All

Had the GDS bluesystem installed for a few years (know they are now owned by ETC)

We’ve had a lot break now and have 6 out of 9 not working.

 

They are not used loads of the time, so wouldn’t have expected them to break by now. 
 

We had quite a few issues with their house lights too, but they are now sorted and was components on the drive board.

 

Wondering if anyone else has the GDS blue’s and if they have broken quite soon too?

 

Thanks

Chris

[Bryson]

We have put them on a number of jobs and haven't heard anything about them failing.

I can tell you that the actual "fixtures" themselves are surprisingly reasonable - most of the system cost is in the PSU/Controller so hopefully replacement won't be super onerous.

It might be worth casually asking ETC Tech Support if this level of failure is expected - they may be able to help you with replacements.

[strand600X]

We have them installed in 3 venues and in one of them they are failing big style.

We also have have the GDS house lights which in two of the venues have started not going out.

We figure that it's becuase a new 5G mast has gone up quite close.

We have now hard wired all the ones in one venue and no problems since...

Baz

[Jevans]

The venue I used to work for had two sets of ArcSystem Pro kit, the main houselights were installed in 2016 with some extras in 2018 in lobbies. The 2016 stuff has been absolutely fine (and I should say that the whole system was hardwired from the start - the 2.4GHz band being very congested there) but we had lots of trouble with the bits we bought in 2018 - almost everything had to go back and be replaced. This was around the time that GDS was going through the process of moving/selling the ArcSystem range over to ETC, and the dealer told us at the time that we weren't the only people having QA issues - something about issues with solder joints in the fixtures. I've heard a couple of versions about what was going on at GDS at the time and it wouldn't surprise me if they were going through a rough patch. I don't remember if the replacements ended up coming from ETC rather than GDS. 

We also bought some BluesSystem kit at the same time, which has as far as I know been fine. That said, we did buy the 'mains' version of BluesSystem to retrofit to existing circuits, not the extra low voltage/dimmed version, so there's less to go wrong. The mains version got discontinued when ETC took over - I've asked and apparently the numbers being sold didn't make it worth it compared to the ELV version with the driver that most people buy - so if it's the mains style you have you may be out of luck.

[Chrishaynor]

Thanks chaps, good to know. 
 

Have the 2 cell and single cell houselights in our other venue. We had 4 singles go out within 6 months. That was a diode in them all apparently that was too close to tolerances, so they replaced all the driver boards for the singles. So far so good. 

Interesting about the mains vs dimmable. I’m not sure what ours are, but if I had to guess I’d say mains, so that’ll be interesting. A bit of investigating then before I get in touch with them. 

Good to know it isn’t just us.