Fat Frog acting cold blooded

[LCronin]

Somewhat new to the Fat Frog and in need of help.

 

I have a Fat Frog that is installed in a church that controls approximately 24 Source 4's and 4 Mac 500's. I was not present when this was all installed and programmed. After several years of operation and about a month ago, the routine that extinguishes the Mac 500's (memory 900) failed to work. I found a way to bypass this through information in the Submasters button. Flashing submaster 11 is how we normally ignite the lamps of the Mac 500's and I learned that flashing submaster 12 extinguishes the lamps. I have no idea why the original memory 900 sequence failed. There are multiple users but they are shy and don't venture out into pushing buttons they don't understand.

 

Next issue was with one of the Mac 500's which I don't know if it is related to the board or not. It seems to have lost control of the second color wheel. I opened the fixture and found everything in place to make it functional (sensor, magnet and wiring).

 

I then added two Chauvet Colorado 3's. I added them from an update to the fixture library. I am not sure which version now that I have read some of the other posts. I will have to check if it is the 21 version or the 22. Everything worked fine one week. Three of the Mac 500's and the (2) LED's were great. We had a concert that afternoon so I left the board up and the lights on while I took an hour lunch break. When I returned for the concert rehearsal, one of the Mac 500's was off. I played around for an hour until it came back up and was functional. As soon as I got the one to work, another went off. I have not been able to control it since. I worked my way throught the concert with just the LED's. I went into the super user mode after the concert and found that the board was in "limited" control mode. I have no idea how it got like that. I returned it to "full" function and regained some control of (2) Mac 500's.

 

The following week things seemed to get worse. Now when I adjust any slider on the board, it returns the Mac 500's to home. Pushing the "go" button brings all settings in the LED's to 255 (full bright white).

 

It seems like there is some kind of crosstalk happening between all of the channels. I disconnected the permanent DMX cables and ran a new temporarily to see if it made any difference. No luck, the problem seems to be in the board.

 

HELP!

[Jon Hole]

Hi LCronin,

 

There are several problems there, each with several possible solutions!

 

My first thought is that however much people are 'afraid' of pressing buttons, buttons will get pressed. If the desk has been used for several years, and has never been fully reset, it could be that several of your problems are simply that over time odd cues / submasters / settings have been deleted / overwritten or modified. I would highly suggest taking a day to fully reset the console, and go back and re-record everything that you want from scratch. This will 'clean up' the console, and you will know exactly what is programmed, and how it has been done.

 

After this, if there are and hardware problems with your console, it will hopefully be a lot easier to find them!

 

It's also worth noting that Mac 500s themselves are quite old, so be aware that there is the possibility that they have a problem too.