I apologize if I am posting in the wrong section. I am new to the forum and lighting in general. I am running Hog4 PC in a club I work at. Self taught and programmed everything my self. I recently have encountered the first problem I have not been able to fix on my own. Several of the fixtures lose their signal from the PC. They behave erratically, shut off, sometimes turn on 100% intensity and position randomly. They won't take any input from the programmer. My suspicion is that my hog dmx widget is going bad (if that is possible). Or maybe one of the wires/connectors. Does anyone know if this is likely or possibly the problem. Any advice is much appreciated. I apologize again, new here and self taught on all the lighting stuff. Thank you
Im guessing no one responding because I have not provided nearly enough info or something of the nature. I tried to keep it brief. Maybe someone can answer just this question : What does a failing DMX widget look like, symptoms? I can't understand why several fixtures all of the sudden are losing connection with the PC. There are two DMX widgets, if I unplug either one half of the lights go out. If I unplug both, all of the lights go out. If I switch the usb going into the widgets to the opposite widget the same lights are still malfunctioning.
Flickering and random stuff happening is mostly a broken cable or some "DMX gosting". This might happen due to broken cables, too long cable-runs, etc etc. You might put a DMX Booster/Splitter in line and or a Terminator at the end of the run
Awesome, thank you guys. Michael, a "bad data run" means messed up signals going through a particular line? I get what you are saying from the context but couldn't find the definition anywhere. Knowing proper terminology is an area I'm seriously lacking as well.
I will start with the terminator and go from there. There is also a couple of architectural rgb lights that have begun flickering. Back in tomorrow I am going to start with the suggestions. I think if the widget was the issue all lights would be going out that are run through that widget. Thanks again
I mean one of your data cables could be going bad. Could also be one of your lights, I have seen that when a light is starting to fail it can send bad data to all fixtures in the data link. Like Marc and I stated I would start with a DMX terminator.
I agree with Michael about a bad light *could* mess up DMX both downstream AND upstream. I've seen it happen a few times. After step 1 of troubleshooting with adding a Terminator, if that doesn't fix it, you could try bypassing lights one by one. By that I mean, start at the first fixture in a run, unplug the IN and OUT DMX and plug them together, bypassing the fixture. Then restore the lines and do the same thing with the next fixture in the run. Keep going through each fixture (one by one) and see if the problem goes away.
