Sudden dropouts

This will take a little bit more information to troubleshoot.

Your best bet is to be looking at the Output window when it happens.

Do the levels change in the window?
Do the lights on the Widget change?

If not, then check the dimmer rack and see if you can tell if the entire rack is flickering or just some individual lights?

This one will be a little more difficult to troubleshoot over a message board.

J

This could also be symptomatic of a fader on the fritz.

Do you have a playback wing attached? If so try disconnecting it for a while and see if the problem persists.

Jon and Marty and Others:

As far as i can tell heres the answers:

- i saw no changes on the board when it happened, the levels dropped for less than a second, the widget i didnt see.

It was every channel that i have on the dimmers, so yes, the entire system is affected

It occurs at very VERY random times, i cant find a way to predict when it will happen again. I can create a simailar effect by trying to do something else with the computer like (for example) loading things off a USB thumb drive. but this is unusual because nothing else is going on with the computer, no cross fades actually running or anything.

I do have a playback wing attached, but the effect has been at various times and only once when the system was running from a fader, the rest of the time, the other times it was in the programmer and in every case EVERYTHING blinked.

TIM

OK, but if it is your Grand Master that is on its way out, then you would be seeing your whole rig "drop out" like that.

Another thing to check is to be sure ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE is running on your PC...remove all other programs that are not essential to your OS. Don't forget to kill things like screensavers, Norton, McAfee, Quicktime, iTunes, etc, etc. Windows likes to run things in the background on you at strange times and these can steal away resources needed to run things like Hog-PC. Make your computer dedicated to running ONLY Hog-PC if you plan on using it in a show environment.

Hi marty -- makes sense -- would the master have to be moving for the dropout to occur, or could it happen if it was just sitting there not being touched?

As far as i know i killed all the auxillary programs but i'll have a look a bit later today (if this day EVER settles down (I teach in the school the church sponsors) -- its been NUTS already)

Thanks for the input

TIM

Tim,

No it wouldn't need to be moving for this to happen if the fader is staring to fail due to an intermittent connection inside the fader. The other thing that could cause a fader to "jump" like this is severe vibrations from loud PA systems, pipe organs, whatever.

A completely different problem could be improper DMX termination causing a ground loop, but you probably would be seeing other problems if this was the case.

Easiest thing to start with is disconnecting the playback wing and seeing if the issue persists.

I would also recommend looking at and trying new data cables and terminators. You may have one on the edge causing intermittent problems.

another thing that i've run into sometimes, is a little dip on the dmx, coused by cheap dmx-splitters.. and i've also seen this with some dimmer's.. there are some timing "slack" in the dmx protocol, and i've seen dip's like that before with different equipment using and tolerating different timings on the dmx..

There are all sorts of things that could be going on here. If could be a problem with your DMX chain, including a bad cable or bad termination. It could be a power problem. It could be that you have picky dimmers that don't like the signal they're seeing from the hog. It could be that other applications running on your PC are interfering with the DMX transmission.

I think that your best bet for tracking this down is going to be hooking up a DMX tester to your console output so that you can watch the DMX data being sent. Just about any tester would let you see this, but I really like the interface of the software application DMX Workshop II. You buy their dongle to accept DMX into your PC and it will graph channel levels or refresh rates for you (in addition to all sorts of other goodies), so it would be easy to see momentary drops in levels or signal.

I hope this helps.

Did you every get a resolution to this problem that you could share? I am having a similar problem running Hog2PC with a widget and no wings; I have a single channel device (a projector douser) that is showing erratic behavior with the Hog, but when I plug it into an ETC Express, no problems.

ya - the problem went away when they stopped messing with the power connections outside our building -- it was service dropouts

ITM