Test mode quirk

[delicolor]

I had a play with the test mode on my desk. I seemed to be getting continuous slow random press and release messages in between the genuine key presses but eventually noticed that there was some level movement on my DMX IN signal (I’m not certain what from though, the DMX 2 goes into an RDM splitter and on to a couple of led driver decoders with a termination. I’ll explore if there is some noise pickup offline). When I pulled out the DMX IN cable all keypress messages stopped (other than genuine ones).

The faders and buttons seem to be well behaved, however I was puzzled as to what the four faders and six buttons at the bottom of the screen were there for? I expect it is something obvious with hindsight!

[Edward Z88]

Hello,

16 hours ago, delicolor said:

I had a play with the test mode on my desk. I seemed to be getting continuous slow random press and release messages in between the genuine key presses but eventually noticed that there was some level movement on my DMX IN signal (I’m not certain what from though, the DMX 2 goes into an RDM splitter and on to a couple of led driver decoders with a termination. I’ll explore if there is some noise pickup offline). When I pulled out the DMX IN cable all keypress messages stopped (other than genuine ones).

What was the DMX input connected from? If channels on the DMX Input are raised or lowered quickly, this will display Press and Release on the status display. 

16 hours ago, delicolor said:

The faders and buttons seem to be well behaved, however I was puzzled as to what the four faders and six buttons at the bottom of the screen were there for? I expect it is something obvious with hindsight!

The six buttons bottom left of the Front Panel display, show the Remote Switch inputs. If a remote switch is pressed they will highlight.

Hope this helps,

Edward

[delicolor]

Hi Edward, thanks for your reply. The DMX IN feed came from the THRU of a DMX splitter, the IN of which came from desk DMX OUT 2. One of the four splitter outputs is cabled off to a pair of DMX LED drivers and 120 ohm terminated.

So I wouldn’t have expected to see any DMX signal but I suspect interference as one of the tapes is very flickery at low levels (a second one with identical components on the other side of the hall is fine) and it is an RDM capable splitter so pickup might be possible. 

As an aside, fixture 1 on DMX Universe 1 was flickering during the test (until I pulled the DMX IN) and it does use channels 1-7. It may have been freestyling & causing the rogue DMX, or more likely responding to pickup if in is patched to out 1:1 during test mode. 

Anyway, I’m happy the desk is functionally fine.

I had tried using faders 1-48 to trigger scenes on playbacks and whilst it worked, I found that the LTP level matching was a bit unpredictable unless I removed all intensity fade times and even then sometimes a playback would not follow the fader. As it seems to work fine on phantom zeros I now wonder if interference on the DMX IN might have been making it misbehave and will look back again at getting scenes onto faders as some volunteers struggle with the concept of playback paging and where light is coming from.

[delicolor]

35 minutes ago, delicolor said:

As it seems to work fine on phantom zeros...

I may have spoken too soon. I'll do some more testing and start a new thread.