Hey guy's, How ya doing?

I'm Mike and I am having some issues with a lighting upgrade.

I run a small sound company and up until recently I was providing 16 par38's run by 4 DP-DMX20L and a basic DMX-512 operator.

I just purchased 4 AMDJ Dynasty Scan's and upgraded the board to a MAGIC 260.

Problem is when I hook up the scan's inline with the dimmer packs the signal is crapping out. I can run just scan's or just dimmers but not both together.

I'm using all dmx cabling and have line terminator's.

Do I need to keep these on separate boards?

Any advise is appreciated.

Mike.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Mike Kirkpatrick,

Mike,

This may not help but i have ran into an issue like this once before in a much larger system and i found that moving the dimmers so that they are the last thing in the DMX chain and termanating at the dimmer fixed it for me.

Just tried and that didn't help.

Thanks for the suggestion.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Mike Kirkpatrick,

mike do u have a DMX line tester? if not se if u can get ahold of one and test the signal goin in to the dimmer and then the signal goin out of the dimmer. just a thought. the dimmer really shouldn't be doin that though. peace! jingles.

I will get one immediately.

Thanks jingles.

no problem. see if u can find on old discontinued dr. dmxIII. we used to sell those a while ago but has been since discontinued. if u can find a similar product that would be great. peace! jingles.

I've looked everywhere and cannot find anything at all about the dr. dmxIII. I've tried spelling it every which way but nothing.

Any other suggestions on a good 3pin tester?

hee is a link to an adj one. try looking at a few dealers stores for this to find an even better deal http://www.americandj.com/product.asp?ProductIDNumber=1...at=Other_Controllers
peace! let me know if this helps. also the dr.DMXIII was discontinued that is why u prob didn't find it.

Hi Mike,

On the dimmer side, what do you mean by crapping out exactly?

Hey John,
I can have all 4 dimmer packs hooked up with everything running fine. I run up the dimmers to 100% on one channel for reference and everything will be fine. As soon as I hook up any of the 4 dynasty scan's into the chain the par's that I have at 100% will go out and then all the par's just flicker at random and any scan's that are hooked up will also flicker.

Mike,
This might be a stupid question but have you addressed the units and the dimmers so that they overlap addresses? Dimmer DMX address 1 along with one of the scans If they overlap they will act like they are carping out when you use an attribute in a moving light. Dimmer unit 1 address =1 Unit 2 address=5 scan 1 address =9 and scan 2 address=15… The magic 260 will allow you to chose what the start address is for each fixture.

Hmmm..
It sounds like you are having data issues.
This means that either one of the cables is not working well.
or 1 light or dimmer has a bad output.
Here is what I recomend.
Try connecting one thing at a time.
1 dimmer, then 1 light, 1 dimmer then 1 light I think you will find the problem this way.
As you connect each dimmer, make sure you bring intensities to 100% before you connect the next light.
When you find the problem, change the cable.
And if all the cables are good, then change that fixture that would be causing the problem out of the line and continue with the rest.

Best regarsds,

I GOT IT!!

I was using the auto patch feature so I was confident of the addressing.

I didn't realize there was a pre program for the DP-DMX20L. I was using the generic 4ch program and the dimmers didn't like that.

Changed the program and put the scan's last in the chain and PRESTO, we now have stability.

I also moved the scanners addresses further away from the dimmers.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Hopefully I can return the favor someday.

great! glad to hear it mike! congrats on figuring it out yourself! let us know if u need anything else! peace! sincerely jingles!