Davidmk

We all have questions from time to time. Build your knowledge - Zero 88 training is free and well worth doing, there's the videos and, of course, there's the manual. When you run across something you can't solve then you may be able to find a previous post on the forum for the same or a similar problem that will give you the answer. If not then the forum is the best place to ask, there's a lot of very experienced people in addition to the experts from Zero 88. You'll usually get help pretty quickly and it seems that someone from Zero 88 is keeping an eye on new posts at least during office hours and often beyond. Try not to have problems during the Edinburgh Festival though - they are pretty busy then 😁. I've been lighting stages for about 50 years (DMX and desks as we know them now weren't invented for the first couple of those decades) but I still have questions and still learn better ways of doing stuff so don't be embarrassed to ask. The only dumb questions are the ones that aren't asked. Enjoy your journey 🙂

Fixing an address issue is much harder than doing it right in the first place. Everything has to be right for it to work and it's easy to skip over things because you don't believe they can be wrong - especially if it used to work and now doesn't. @Edward Z88 suggested, you can patch these fixtures as multicellular fixtures (as long as they are in the library). This might help avoid these problems and allow the desk to use the fixtures in the best way. Stick with what you've got for now though - until you are more confident. Try and follow a logical sequence when diagnosing. For example... If a fixture doesn't appear to respond to the desk, even it it is doing mad random things you are not telling it to then check the DMX connections. Start with a terminator plug at the end of the line, swap out cables one at a time in case they are faulty. Worth noting that a wiring fault will often - but not always - start part way down the line and affect all the fixtures further on. Beware of cheap fixtures aimed at the DJ market. These often have a mode where the first one generates a colour/movement/strobing pattern and controls the fixtures further down the line. Sometimes this auto mode kicks in if there is no DMX signal owing to a missing/faulty DMX cable. Nothing against such fixtures, use them myself, but it is an extra headache. If all the wiring seems good then addresses and/or modes of the fixtures not matching what you have patched is next. If there is some sort of overlap this shows up as the fixture doing something just not what you expect. This is the situation you were in. Easy to be sure of this in hindsight but it was what @Edward Z88 and I suspected because it matched the symptoms you described. If there's no overlap then the fixture just sits there and doesn't respond. No shortcuts to this one, you have to look at the fixture,check it's mode and address and then go back to the desk and make sure they agree, if they don't then change one or the other. The desk doesn't let you overlap fixtures or choose invalid addresses so it is more likely to have the right address than the fixture so you'd probably change the fixture. If the fixture has the mode you want then you might have to change the desk and (in extreme cases) you might have to re-address a load of fixtures to do this (if the mode you want uses more channels than the mode you've got). Finally, there's the possibility of a faulty fixture. Setting it to the same address and mode as a known good fixture will tell you if it is working properly. There is a chance that it is some setting other than address and mode but a hardware fault is probable. You can also get situations where a fixture works fine but messes up the signal to the next and subsequent fixtures on the line so it could be the immediately prior fixture causing the issue. Finally, a fixture plugged directly into the desk with a short length of cable may fail to work when it's out in the rig. This take you back to the first set of diagnostics but bear in mind that the signal degrades over distance and number of connections so the last few fixtures don't work as they should. The official DMX standard specifies that a terminator is required. "Pro" (i.e. expensive) fixtures often have this built in but cheaper ones may not. If you don't have one then the signal reflects back off the end of the wire and confuses things.

Fair point. We've established that the fixture works correctly with one starting address so it should be OK with any starting address. So, set it to the correct address (making certain that it is in 36ch mode) and make sure that the address of the first cell in this group on the desk is the same and see if it is OK now - it should be if you've got addresses and modes correct.

The address on the fixture is the first address that fixture uses. On the desk it has been patched as 12 fixtures of 3 channels each. This is perfectly OK. If you had an FLX S desk you'd be in trouble as those desks are limited to 24 or 48 fixtures but a full FLX desk has no restriction on number of fixtures only on DMX channels. Glad you've got to the bottom of this. Hopefully you've learned some stuff about DMX now which will help when you run into your next patching issue.

If, as you claim, 5 & 6 have the same starting address, are both in 36ch mode and neither is faulty then this should not happen. Bit of a long shot this but take the DMX line from your desk direct to fixture 5 and unplug 7 from 6. If you have a DMX terminator plug it into the DMX out of fixture 6. We are looking for a bad DMX connection here. If there's no change take the feed from the desk to 6 and connect 5 to the DMX output on 6. Move the terminator to 5 (If you don't have a DMX terminator then get a couple, they are fairly cheap on ebay/amazon. Put them in your toolbox and always try them first if things don't behave as expected.)

Can you post a link to the fixtures manual or, failing that, photos of the pages detailing the fixture's modes and channels.

I think you have. It looks to me as if you've made the address changes on the desk - what @Edward Z88 meant was to change the address on the fixture and leave the desk alone. In this case the desk only "sees" one fixture but both fixtures should behave the same.

Absolutely it is OK to have two identical fixtures with the same address - as long as you want both fixtures to do the same thing at all times.

OK. I'm just getting in for a gig so I can't do a more detailed explanation of these things right now so I'll direct you to the desk manual here. Should have some time later to do something more specific. Be hours, not minutes though.

Three possibilities to check first... The address of the odd fixture doesn't match the patch in the desk. Correct one or the other. The odd fixture is working in a different mode to the others. Check and, if necessary, correct the odd fixture. The odd fixture was in a different mode when the show was recorded but has been corrected since. Check the patch and, if necessary, correct the patch of the odd fixture. Don't forget you can display and examine the desks DMX output to see if it is sending the same thing to all the fixtures but make sure you know what addresses the fixtures are actually set to. Don't rely on the patch or a paper record.

After restarting the desk, hold Shift and press View to display the output window. It seems likely that the affected fixtures will be at 100% but note what colour they are and check the manual here. Then select the Source tab. Hopefully these two actions will give you a clue to what it is that is setting the colour and intensity of the fixtures and you can correct it. If it doesn't help then try the DMX outputs. Press the Z key, select System Information and then DMX Outputs. Using the address of one of the fixtures locate the values being sent to it make sure they reflect what you are seeing - if not then the fixture may not be patched correctly, have the wrong profile or be operating in the wrong mode. If the intensity and colour values are all zero then the fixtures own settings need checking. Finally, try recording new default values for the fixtures. See the manual here.

I agree, perhaps an option to make the fader speed or size or both. Rather like it can be, for example, beam or position or both.

I have the opposite, a bunch of LED PARS that need less green than any of the others but it would still be useful.

That is a good idea. Just the ability to apply the simple colour and position values of an existing pallette to different fixtures would be a real time saver. It would have to come with the caveat that visible results may not exactly match the original, particularly for colour.

I'm sure someone from Z88 will be along with a more authoritative explanation but I imagine they are enjoying a very much deserved Christmas/New Year break so it might be a while. In the meantime, here's what I think... Your strip will normally have a colour assigned before you raise the fader. This may be the last colour you had it set to or it may be the default colour (usually white). This is the colour that will apply when the fader first starts to move - the new colour doesn't apply until the fader reaches the trigger level. See the manual here. You can try adjusting the trigger level as described in the manual - this will snap to the new colour when the fader reaches the trigger. If you want to fade from the old colour to the new one then you need to modify the fader controls, again see the manual here. As an alternative, at the bottom of the same page of the manual you will find a tip about setting the playback button to "Go" and using it to prep the colour before raising the fader. If you are busking then you might want to consider creating colour mixing faders rather than recording specific colours on individual playbacks. This is mentioned under "fader controls" but I think there is a longer explanation somewhere. Essentially you create three playbacks one for Red, one for Green and one for Blue and use these to mix your colours live. The trick is to make sure that the required colour is the only one tagged when recording each playback.

I don't think that was the case. Maybe it depends on how you select (touch screen, keypad or next/previous). I'm in theatre for a conference Monday so I should be able to report back then. Good to know it is on the radar though and possibly fixed although I'd have preferred it to just stay where it was. Thanks for the feedback.

I busk most of my shows so I have a pretty extensive default setup meaning I have something repeatable covering all the features I use but I was still on 7.9.5 or 6. I also have Captur set up for the matching rig. So I upgraded my FLX, straight to 7.10 on Monday. Loaded up my default show, had a bit of trouble re-establishing the link to Captur but otherwise no issues. Changed all the "red" fixtures to the new library. Had to hunt a bit for one fixture type, ended up with a generic IRGBAWUvSt but otherwise had a match for everything. Tested again on Captur, all good. First show was on Thursday, no desk issues (the band were a different story 😀). It was a simple show though, not a serious work out. Of course there's a few differences, been so used to where all the beam parameters were it's fun finding them among the beam/shape pages but I'll get used to it in time. Slightly annoyed that one thing didn't change - if I'm setting beam parameters (usually zoom & focus) and I select the next fixture the parameters change to the last page and I have to change it back. This happened on the old version but I hoped it would go away 😞. No "proper" workout until 8th December (all conferences and touring lights until then) but I'll report back if I find anything.

As with you, don't do this much but I'd say it does it practically every time.

Defaults can be set or amended in a similar way to cues and pallettes. Select the fixtures you wish to change, set the parameters how you want them then press Update then Home. On the screen, select Default. This is covered in the manual here. Les valeurs par défaut peuvent être définies ou modifiées de la même manière que les queues et les palettes. Sélectionnez les appareils que vous souhaitez modifier, définissez les paramètres comme vous le souhaitez, puis appuyez sur Update puis sur Home. Sur l'écran, sélectionnez Par défaut. Ceci est couvert dans le manuel ici.

What you've done should work - I've done similar many times. Sounds like you may have recorded the zoom parameter with your intensity. Delete the intensity playback and re-record it making sure beam is not selected. Also, if you haven't already, press & hold setup and press the zoom playback button then select the general tab and ensure beam is selected under fader controls.

Similar, I've acquired a merger to make the switch to a scene recorded on my tester and I'm adding a splitter with a hold facility. Idea being the splitter gives the signal to the tester (so I can record the walk-in state) but also holds the current state. If I have to go to interval or end show I can just set the tester to send and it should all happen without swapping plugs. Might be overkill, might never happen again but it's peace of mind.

Some are, others are not. In particular, one group of LEDs starts strobing if they lose DMX. I can't change settings, other people use the rig and a different desk so changes are down to the technical manager. I have a partial solution that will maintain the state while I restart and I'm working to improve that. I'd be pretty stuck if the desk didn't come back. I could fall back onto the house desk but it would take a while to program it before I could use it. I should really prepare an ETC showfile with the basics already in place. Away from my usual venue I have no fallback but I guess that's the position for most people. Perhaps I should look at a PC solution - Phantom ZOS or something else.

Perhaps, when you are looking at partial load you could look at some way to select what gets left out when transferring a show from FLX to FLX S. We've also discussed making the MIDI notes start selectable rather than fixed at PB1.

Doh! Thanks That was the intention Bit of background... I'm looking for a backup solution because I made my FLX hang in the middle of a show on Saturday. First time I've had the problem and I don't know what I did immediately prior so can't make a useful report. Plus I'm a few versions behind (still on the old showfile format). The FLX was still sending DMX so I got out of it by powering up the house ETC, programming something similar to what was on stage and then quickly swapping the XLR from one desk to the other, restarting the FLX and swapping back. I've obtained a DMX merger with backup mode and my DMX tester can record & replay a scene so I've changed the setup on my desk to send U1 on both outputs and, if it happens again, I can record the current output from the 2nd output, set the tester to replay it and then disconnect & restart the FLX. With the FLX restarted I can then set up the same output and reconnect it. That's all a bit clunky and what if the FLX doesn't come back? Hence the interest in having a backup desk, it'd be handy too if the FLX ever needs to go in for repair. However, from the replies, it would seem that only another FLX would make a satisfactory backup so I guess I'd better start looking for a used example at an attractive price. Bit annoyed though, there was one on eBay last week, gone now. Thanks both for your input though, saved me from a bad decision.

I'm thinking of acquiring an S48 as backup to my FLX but I've got a couple of questions... Regarding the 96 fixture limit. I have a number of channels with more than one fixture (with different DMX addresses) patched to them. Does the limit apply to channels or patched fixtures? Regarding the playback limit. My default show has a lot of playbacks that I trigger with MIDI notes and these have to start at PB1. Obviously I wouldn't be able to use these but I would need to load this show and get pages 8 & 9 of the FLX playbacks mapped to pages on the S48. Can this be done and how does it work? Anybody think of anything else that could trip me up? Also, if anyone has an S48 they want to sell could they message me with a price and their location?