Alpha Pack Dmx & Wifi Problem

[eamon]

Hello

 

I was on an outdoor theatre gig last night and we had some strange problems with the alpha packs & W- DMX wifi system.

I was on the crew as rigger and troubleshooter & had not a lot of say in the setup.

 

The set up was:

 

4 wifis receivers in seperate locations each 1-4 alpha packs running off them depending on location.

 

The rig was all generic and a mixture of 650w F's, Source 4 profiles etc

 

The power was taken from outlets locally

 

The reason for the wifi was for a central control point and cable runs etc

 

The layout:

 

The wifi was picked up into the first alpha pack & daisy chained respectively. Some of the racks "appeared" to not like DMX from the wifi source. The green status LED would flash in the first pack and consequently no control of rack was possible from the wifi signal. The 2nd rack would take the DMX signal fine. Even with swapping the cable runs around, belling all cable out etc, the problem would still exist.

Local control was fine.

 

 

I used my Swisson DMX tester to generate DMX locally(obviously bypassing the wifi) and control was no problem. The green LED that was flashing became static. Problem returned when we restored the wifi DMX control.

 

I ended up using the tester as an in line buffer and found the rack would accept the wifi DMX signal then. Some of the racks down the line(about 30-50metre cable runs) would still flash and not accept wifi DMx control. My theory here is that the tester does not have enough juice to strengthen the signal that much.

 

All the packs with flashing LEDs took local DMX from my tester & the LED remained static when this was done.

 

My question after that rambling intro is do the alpha packs have issues with the "quality " of signal and are buffers required in line with each wifi DMX point?

Some of the wifi point ran the wifi DMX fine with out any problems.

So, would it be the offending dimmers themselves or the "quality" of the wifi DMX signal?

 

many thanks

 

 

eamon

[Paul]

You mention 30m-50m cable runs with some problem Alphapacks. Did you have terminators on the end of the DMX runs?