Elation Design Spot 250 Pro Lamping off at random

Just checked the universe that all my movers are on, and it is properly terminated.

Hey welcome to the forums. One thing about the msd discharge lamps on most moving heads is once they are on and warm up they usually stay on for hours and hours in end. Most msd lamps last anywhere between 1,000-2,000 hours. However once the lamps are turned off they have a wait time of about 10-15 mins before they can be turned back on. This is the nature of these lamp types. They cannot hot re-strike. So that explains your wait time until they come back on. No way around that.
One other thing you can do to trouble shoot is grab a user manual for the fixtures and look at the dmx traits and find the channel number and dmx value for lamp off and check your programming in all your scenes and make sure for those fixtures those values are not included in the scene data. If it is, simply change the channel value to a value that will have no undesired effect on the fixture. Most cases there is a "normal" value set for the channel in which the lamp on and off values are in. Let me know if this makes sense or if you have any questions.
Sincerely,

since your new to the lighting world if your not comfortable messing with the programming yet... you can also try disabling the fixtures ability to perform a lamp off command through dmx via the fixtures on board menu settings. This would at least isolate your problem as to whether it's something in the programming or not without having to touch the programming.

Hey,

Sorry for not getting back to anyone sooner, this week's been kinda' hectic, but thank you for your advice.

I'll try to do some digging into my programming next week once our schedule calms down. Though, James, are you suggesting that my lamp off problem may be something programmed into a playback? As far as I know, no one playback triggers the two to lamp off, it seems entirely random. But then again, our old avo board can be buggy, so maybe it's periodically doing something every now and then that I'm not aware of.

As far as disabling the lamp procedure via dmx, that may be hard, as our movers are hung from the ceiling of the venue, and so to lamp them on and off every day would require me doing a lot of climbing. Leaving the things on isn't an option either, my boss already gets on me about that. Still, I can maybe try it again sometime next week and just leave the things on locate and see if they do anything funny without input.

Thanks again guys, I'll let you know what turns up.

St. Thomas LeDoux

if its not programing then it could be the light itself. remove the upper metal panels on the base (make sure its unplugged) inspect the wires at the ballast just to be on the safe side.

best regards,
Gines Gines
Elation service manager

Update:

Haven't gotten a chance to do any experimenting, but did have a third mover start doing the same thing. At this point, they never really go off at the same time, but rather individually, and then lamp back on once the bulbs are cool.

Also, had an LD come in today and he wiped my board and started programming from scratch, and the problem still occurred.

I won't rule out a DMX signal causing the problem, but I'm more inclined to think the problem may be in the fixtures themselves, or the power running to the fixtures. Any idea what to look for if/when I crack these babies open?

Thanks again y'all,

St. Thomas

see if the head fans are working. i think they probably are not. this would explain your issues. let me know

Best regards,
Gines Gines
elation service manager