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PeterV

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Everything posted by PeterV

  1. When opened to replace what we thought was a faulty breaker, turns out is more serious than we thought as a cable appears to have been arcing and damaged wiring around it. Photos and description being sent to Keith direct to check repair options.
  2. OK here is the result of our tests with this Betapack 3: I investigated dimmer channel 6 today. On arrival and test Ch 6 worked fine, having left it not working. Some time later it failed again. I set the Betapack to manual and faded up on the front panel push buttons. The lamp started to come on and then there was a nasty cracking/spluttering noise that seemed to come from (or behind) the breaker. I suspect the breaker is faulty. As I will have to take the breaker out and trot around trying to find one of a similar physical size, the Betapack will be out of commission for a while. So I think we should leave working on it until after the guest show on 25 Feb.
  3. Thanks for the comments guys. We are in production this week and everything is stable at the moment so the running crew don't want to mess with the dimmer yet, but will do so soon after the current show closes on Saturday. I will report back results of the tests shortly. If there's anything else worth checking at the same time, let me know. Peter
  4. Is there a reason why no-one from Zero 88 is giving any advice?
  5. Hi Edward - thanks for the thoughts. I have passed them on to the running crew but they might prefer to wait until the current show is over (as our control position where the dimmers also are is extremely cramped). If they can do a test I will report results here. Peter
  6. One of our Betapack 3 packs has lost its channel 6 (channel 5 is fine) - it has completely failed, in that it does not come on when called up on the console. It was working at the start of the dress rehearsal week, then went intermittent then failed. The socket wiring to the bar and lantern and back has been checked and found to be working correctly, and has been swapped asis to a spare channel on another pack and is working fine. The pack is a Zero 88 Betapack 3 with serial number CC0030711 143201 3698424601 (not sure which number is the actual S/N but those are all the numbers on the unit.) I think it was purchased in November 2014. Obviously we have checked the breaker. Is there anything obvious which is worth checking, or any additional P/D needed to narrow it down? Peter Vincent, Chesil Theatre Winchester
  7. Hi Ian - thanks for the info. Yes we have a brilliant electrician who used to service the old packs who would be comfortable fitting a new board (or transformer) if Zero 88 agree this is what needs to be done and send us one to put in.
  8. This report was sent to support on Monday, but no-one has been in touch... Rather disappointingly, one of the Betapack 3 we purchased in November 2014 has lost dimmers 3-4 completely. No output, no CBs tripped or any indication that anything is wrong. We have tried a factory reset but this made no difference. We readdressed it with the first failed channel number (9) and DMX 9-10 worked fine on dimmers 1-2 no problem, so the correct DMX is being received from the desk. We have put everything back to how it was and are just missing out these particular channels for the time being but have a show coming up in a few weeks. Our theatre is not manned as it is amateur owned and run, and I am quite a long drive away but we do have a fully qualified electrician who lives fairly close who could do some additional problem determination on the phone if this is useful (and who used to service our elderly Betapack 1 which these units replaced). However it would need to be physically taken out of service if it needs to be opened up. The pack is fed by a 32A single phase socketed feed. Please can you let me know how to proceed as this unit should be covered by the 3 year warranty? Serial number provided on original email. Peter Vincent, Chesil Theatre, Winchester
  9. Hi Raymond The LEDs inside the flash buttons are normally off as they are only used when programming various things, like palettes. They don't light up to say a channel is patched or is in use or anything like that. Do you have all the necessary manuals, as you can download them from here? If you have just bought the Fat Frog, do you know the condition of the internal battery (if not I would replace it now) and secondly does it have the final version of the software 10.12 installed? Peter
  10. Nick - change the battery pronto. You will find this causes all kinds of problems, even if status shows as battery status is "normal". See this item on BlueRoom when our Fat Frog similarly lost its mind in what seemed a random fashion to see what I mean.
  11. If you format a floppy in the FF, and restart it does it give the same message or does the diskette run for a bit then desk startup as normal (which is what should happen)? I presume that you have been using it to save and load shows? If not: Have you opened up the desk and check that none of the cabling has come adrift? Is the memory behaving between power offs, if not change the battery as this has all kinds of undesirable effects if it goes flat. Have you cleaned the diskette drive recently (you used to be able to get cleaning diskettes but might not be so easy nowadays)? If the diskette drive in the FF is working normally when the FF formats the disk, this is a mystery although not impossible that one or other drive is misaligned to each other. As far as converting to USB, see BlueRoom near the bottom of the first page where PaulDF says what he did which basically I copied (and detailed in following page). Beware that what you get are up to 100 x 1.44MB partitions on a USB stick which runs at the speed of a floppy disk. The changeover was very easy and has worked fine since. Also be careful there are MANY models of this drive which LOOK exactly the same on offer, only one [or a few] of which will work on the FF. Peter
  12. What do you mean your PC won't read the floppy? We have converted our FF to USB now, but before that I used to prepare floppies [including formatiing] for it using a cheap USB-connected floppy drive from my WIndows 7 PC, which the FF happily read (and wrote to for show files). The physical floppy disk used must be 3.5” PC compatible formatted to 1.44Mb (HD DS) and not bootable. Pre-formatted diskettes worked fine for me on both the FF and other desks (such as Strand 520, Strand 300, ETC Express). Peter
  13. Thanks Keith for checking and confirming. Kevin - my long post doesn't quite read right - we have three models of RGBW Philips Selecon LEDs - PLCYC1, PLFRESNEL1 and PLPROFILE1 - and these are the ones I want to use colour palettes with. They all have the same LED engine so all 13 of them can use the same ones. We also have two other types of LED - UltraBright LED PAR64 and Lanta Orion. These are RGB so tend to be used with only simple intense colours (red, green, blue, yellowish, pinkish, cyanish) so don't need colour palettes. Peter
  14. Hi Owen - here is one I bashed up this morning. You might want to load into fixture editor and adjust default values (such as for pan/tilt as these are not clear from your description). At the moment all default to 0. Pan and Tilt are defined as 16 bit parameters (using 1+3 and 2+4). I hope this is helpful. Peter Stairville MH-X25 12 Channel.ift
  15. Hi Glenn - your definitions look fine to me. I have tried your profile on our Fat Frog and it goes back to 1 after 12 wheel groups have been displayed (as you have 6 x 2 wheel groups to allow for RGBW). I can't find the limit documented anywhere but I suspect that 12 is the limit. Hopefully Jon will confirm tomorrow. If that is so you can still get a working profile in one of two ways: 1. "Compress" your colours so they fit onto 12 wheel groups (so second group would be 1w-2r-2b and third 2g-2w-3r etc). 2. Put the four missing colour groups into beamshape or position along with the "real" parameters. Neither is ideal but both will work. I tested "1" above by deleting your 3-wheel groups and loading the profile like that and it uses 11 colour wheel groups but back to front (highest number to lowest) presumably due to parameter order. Peter
  16. Thanks Kevin - I'll include it in the written up version. Peter
  17. Hi Kevin Here is what I sent to the other LD's this morning. In our case it is one of the four types of DMX device on which I regularly want to use colour palettes for (to match the ones Philips Selecon presets on the lanterns themselves). Hopefully it will make sense as a cold read! The “LED Guide Issue 4” documents the colour presets used internally by the Philips Selecon LEDs in a table. As part of the third LED workshop, I programmed these as colour palettes on the Fat Frog meaning that I could select these colours from the desk (rather than on the lantern) so that they could be saved with normal memories to allow colours to be crossfaded as needed at the Chesil. There are 24 colour presets and they were tedious in the extreme to put in, but worked well. In real life, the palettes can be used asis or as a shortcut to get roughly the colour required then fine-tuned as needed for a particular show (the loaded palette could either be left as it was or overwritten as required). Unfortunately there is a snag. The colour palettes on the Fat Frog are programming time options – which means that you must select which fixture types and numbers (1-12) will use a colour palette WHEN the cues are defined. You can’t come back and add a fixture later or change an existing fixture control in any way. So when a colour palette is defined: You must have already setup the fixture controls with the FINAL profiles you are going to use. All the Selecon LED fixtures you want to use the palette with must be selected (you can never add to this). Then when you program a cue, the above must have been true when the palette was defined in which case you can select it very easily: Select the fixture controls containing the Selecon LEDs you want to use a colour from the palette with. Hold down the Colour button – if you have a monitor attached you will see the 24 defined colours by name. Press flash buttons 1-24 to match with the colour you want. Release Colour button. Check colour set on each fixture and you will see it says “Pnn” above the control wheels (but NOT on the monitor which will show DMX values) on each one where nn=colour number. You can override RGBW individually if you want to in the normal way by moving the appropriate wheel(s). The 24 colours are: Warm White, Cool White, Daylight, Arc White, Red, Yellow, Daylight Blue, Magenta, Aqua, Medium Amber, Lavender, Blue, Light Pink, Green, Pink, Amber White, Dark Fuchsia, Light Amber, Steel Blue, Light Green/Blue, Orange, Medium Pink, Cyan, Purple. What I have done is prepare a “Show99” which is a complete reset of the desk to default patching and settings plus: Fixtures 1-12 are all defined as “SELECON PL1 16-bit”. Colour palettes 1-24 have been connected to each of these. No DMX addresses have been patched. So if you want to use the colour palettes you need to do it before your start programming: Load show99 from a special USB stick which is to be prepared [just finished doing this Ed.] Remove the special stick and put your show one back in! Adjust allocation of fixtures as needed for your production (leaving Selecon LEDs where you want them). WARNING: If you clear a fixture control then redefine it as a Selecon LED, the colour palettes will NOT be available to it. So change the fixtures you want to be something else and optionally clear any you don’t intend to use, so the Selecon LEDs you are using remain intact. Patch DMX addresses to each fixture control (remember you can have multiple addresses [max 100] on each fixture control, for instance for cyc lights). Programme your show in the normal way. However don’t forget: The Selecon LEDs will change colour when you tell them to (either to a colour in the palette or one you setup yourself). The time to change colour is defined on each cue as “LTP Fade” which defaults to 3 seconds (which is immediately below Fade Up and Fade Down times). The time to change INTENSITY is controlled by Fade Up and Fade Down with everything else (as this it HTP). [LTP = latest takes precedence, HTP = highest takes precedence]. To avoid the situation of the colour changing when a LED is faded up: Change LTP time on the fade up cue to be zero so the colours will “snap” to their new positions at the start of the cue, OR [Note this might be undesirable if other LEDs are crossfading colours at the same time which will now also snap] Include the colour change in an earlier cue while this fixture’s intensity stays at zero, OR Add an extra follow-on cue to the fade out cue to change the colours so they are in place when you fade up again. As intensity is HTP, if you want to edit the intensity of a fixture in a cue you may find it locked at the level currently stored in the cue (as highest = playing memory is taking precedence). To get around this, select the cue you want to change and press the “Edit” key which will allow the intensity to be adjusted using the control wheel. Press Edit again when you are done (and reply to warning message to save changes). I will add these instructions to the next issue of the LED Guide. Peter
  18. Just for the record, I have found that if I try to patch a fixture so that it uses the last n channels of the 512 available, none of the outputs respond for that fixture. Move it one address back, so that it doesn't use 512, then it is fine. I was using a fixture with 15 channels patched to 498 (which the FF chose for itself as being the highest available) which should have been fine. Changing to 497 fixed this. I am using the most recent version of the software.
  19. Hi Kevin - yes I was aware of having more palettes, it is just a coincidence that we have 24 we want to use (which match the 24 which are defined as presets on the lanterns themselves, but which are NBG for our use as they "scroll" when crossfading). I think I have tried as you suggested already - basically when I define the palette it will only apply to the fixtures defined at the time the palette was created. I can't get new fixtures to "join" this pallete even if they are of the right fixture type. This means even if I define all the fixtures as PL1 then define the palettes I want, as soon as I change any of the fixtures they get disconnected from the palette and can't use them anymore, even if I put PL1 back. Even more confusingly if I define/redefine a PL1 fixture later on, I CAN select the colour palette and they show that the palette is in use, but all the colour channels are at zero when I try to use them. This suggests that there might be a way of fixing this, as something might be holding the colours down? So I will try a few more experiments and see what I can figure out.
  20. Hi Jon - We have 13 x PL1 (which we always run in the same mode and on which we want to use palettes) + 3 x other LED1 + 3 x other LED2 + DMX to Sound box any of which MIGHT be used for a particular show (and might well also have haze/smoke at some point). On PhantomFrog I setup a PL1 on fixture 1 and programmed a simple colour palette which works fine. Now I add a second PL1 on fixture 4 and select the colour palette - which shows as PO1 on the displays but colour outputs are all zero (fixture 1 is still fine). There doesn't seem to be a way of picking up an existing palette as far as I can see? I have also tried defining all 12 fixtures as PL1, programming the colour palette on all on them, testing it works then changing one of the fixtures to something else then back to PL1, but now this one can't use the colour palette - again it shows PO1 but colour outputs are zero. Putting in the 24 palettes we want takes quite a long time and is very tedious (I did it for real on Sunday) so I was hoping it only needed to be done once. I suppose I could repeat last experiment and save this as a starting configuration on a special floppy (USB in our case) which is write protected? So at the start of a show if the new LD (we have the luxury of 5) wants to use some or all PL1s (he'd better!) then he can load this first then change any fixtures needed to something else but the PL1 palettes will still work. Of course some numbskull is bound to undo the write protect and overwrite it at some point, but this sounds possible - unless there is an easier way? Peter
  21. We now have more LED lanterns than the number of fixture controls on our FF, so we pick and mix what we need for each show. We have done some research and have prepared 24 colour palettes for the bulk of them (which are all Philips Selecon PL1 range). I can see how this can be done for an individual show, but as they are applied per fixture the colour palettes will potentially need to be redefined each time. Is there any way of defining the palettes once and using them again with the fixtures in different places? Peter
  22. Hi Are you using one of the profiles already in the standard library, if so which one(s)? What model(s) exactly are the Robe movers you are trying to control? What DMX address is each of the four units set to? Peter
  23. Hi Kenny, unless I need new glasses the Fat Frog can hold 999 memories? I can't pretend that at our little theatre we have ever got close to this but that's what the spec says. So I think your best bet is to load up the 400/999 memories with the looks you use most often and save this in a master show file. If you save show files with other scenes in them, you could reload them, extract the details (basically by writing them down), reload master show file then overwrite one of the cues to create a new master show file. It sounds like this is as close as you will get to what you want? Of course, this only really makes sense if your lighting rig is static (which is not the case in the theatre where the rig is different for every show - or should be!). Thank you for an interesting puzzle!
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