Urgent Help Requested - Martin Mac Quantum Profile Error?

[scottydog75]

Hi all,

Hoping our new moderators, or other skilled & experienced users may be able to assist. Ideally need to sort before programming starts tomorrow at midday (GMT).

I have hired four Martin Mac Quantum Profiles, running in extended (27ch) mode. I have no control of CMY, but all other parameters work on the fixture.

Have tried swapping to 'basic' (19ch) mode, still no control of CMY.

The fixture personality looks like it matches the DMX charts in the manual when I got into the edit options on the desk.

I have patched 27 standard dimmer channels and have proved that CMY does in fact work on the fixture, leading me to believe there is an error with the fixture personality?

Hire company said these fixtures worked fine on an ETC ION only the other week.

Any advice what I might be overlooking?

Manual here for ref: https://www.martin.com/en/site_elements/mac-quantum-profile-user-guide

Thanks in advance,

Alex

[Davidmk]

Not sure I can help since I've no experience of CMY fixtures. I've scanned through the manual and not spotted any quirks that could trip you up. Best I can do is ask stupid questions and, maybe, you'll see the problem for yourself by answering them.

Have you tried a colour or full fixture reset (channel 22 or 19)?

Is the colour wheel at "open" when you are trying to colour mix? 

What output is the fixture giving? Is it (apparently) stuck on white? Black? Something else?

What does the desk's DMX output screen say for the CMY, colour wheel and shutter channels?

I see from the manual that these fixtures can display the DMX values being received. Do they agree with what the desk says it is sending?

Have you contacted @kgallen? He's generally more use than me.

 

[kgallen]

2 hours ago, Davidmk said:

Have you contacted @kgallen? He's generally more use than me.

Oh I doubt that!

@scottydog75 Not sure if it's timely enough but I can have a go at making a new fixture profile later tonight (using ye-olde Fixture Editor which you may well be similarly familiar with).

Other idea if the definition might be suspect is to use the fixture patch search feature to try and find another fixture definition that closely matches the luminaire you have in terms of which DMX channel controls which feature. I was re-watching one of Edward's videos the other day - might have been 7.11 update video which reminded me of this.

Sorry I can't be of more immediate/direct help. I'll have a think, but I think @Davidmk and yourself have suggested/tried the obvious things and I know you're both not newbies with the desk...

[kgallen]

Just to check, if you select the fixture, in the Colour window do you get anything on the encoder wheels - and try paging over too. Anything on the Colour Palettes if you hit the "Auto create palettes" button?

I wonder if the fixture definition didn't use e.g. "Cyan - positive" as the "Special" type in the colour definitions. You did say you were able to confirm at least the existence of e.g. "Cyan" - as a name at least - in the desk editor, but maybe this is not actually attached to the Colour attributes section.

Maybe check in Beam and Shape to see if there is anything colour-wise on those encoders. Homeless parameters tend to get dumped there.

Also see if the DMX window shows any numbers changing in the appropriate channels whilst you have a play around.

Later I'll see if I can patch the same fixture on the desk and have a mooch around.

Sorry these are probably all things you've already tried (although I'm certainly guilty of "panicking" and not trying some of the "obvious" things when stuff doesn't work!).

[scottydog75]

Have fixed..  full update tonight. Thanks both!

[Neil Macmillan]

Had a quick look through the profile on Phantom Zeros and I don't see anything obvious. My expectation was that there may be some mode option which was a default value other than zero, which was causing something weird when the profile operated, but when you put it in as dimmers, they were all defaulting to zero, so it started to work.

Given this worked via dimmers, I'd bring up the profile and watch the dmx values being sent out to see if anything obvious is raised above zero, other than those you were doing with the multiple dimmer channels.

Otherwise, an RDM issue if it's enabled, jumping to something unexpected, or perhaps a mode issue on the light settings or just a general communication issue.
Will be interested to head the full update on what fixed it though!

[kgallen]

@scottydog75

Here we go, give this a bash.

martin_mac_quantum_profile.ift

[scottydog75]

Update as promised:

Using the personality in the desk, and when viewing the DMX Output charts under the Z Key, the values corresponding to CMY remained on '0' even after changing colour parameters, or running colour effects etc. Definitely confirmed it was a personality error at this point.

So using the inbuilt fixture editor, I took a copy of the existing personality and amended the CMY control channels to be 'Other Colour' control parameters. This worked and enabled the encoders to control the CMY parameters, however colour palettes or picker didn't work as the desk didn't know what colour they actually were.

So I then edited the 'copied' personality, changed the 'Other Colour' parameters back to CMY, which then worked as it should have done so in the first place. I now have full control of CMY, using colour palettes or the colour picker!

No idea what was going on, but quite the oddity and an annoying time sponge trying to resolve!

Either related or unrelated, I also had the desk crash four times throughout plotting, so will forward on the crash reports to the team after the show is done.

Thanks again all for suggestions, research, and the created fixture profile @kgallen

[Davidmk]

You should report the CMY issue as well I think, maybe include your before and after show files if you have them.

[scottydog75]

Darren @DMH, Ryan @RJP any thoughts on the matter, is this a bug?

I also cross posted to the Facebook group, someone called Bobby who also appears to work at Vari-lite left me with no solution either. 

Disappointed at the new 'service' level!