Pearl Expert Swop Crash

[Dan]

Just got our Pearl Exp back from a service after the rolacue had died many-a death.

Reprogrammed a generic club-night style show into it this evening (am actually sat in the club night now).

One problem we have had a couple of times previously, and I assumed would've been a random problem that would get fixed in servicing (it hasn't).

We tend to run constantly in Run Takeover mode, and I haven't managed to pinpoint the cause yet, but swop gets "stuck".

All of the playback fader swop lights go out, and 1 thing is left outputting - for some reason this consistently seems to be our blinders (which we tend to use the flash button on the most - could be related?).

It seems like a swop problem because pulling down the swop master stops it outputting... but we're in takeover mode?

Anyone seen this before? Is this just something small and silly i'm overlooking? I've been using varieties of Pearl for quite a while, but i've never seen this before - only on this Expert!

Help most appreciated

Cheers,
Dan

[niclights]

I think what you're experiencing here is the one genuine issue I have encountered on the desk.

As far as I can tell it is not getting stuck so much as slowing down significantly enough to make you think nothing is happening. I would bet that if you wait a while the output would remove itself. Swop master discovery is new though. Duly noted!

Anyhoo. This always seems to happen when there is a large amount of flash button use. Since I tend not to operate using flash buttons it doesn't occur for me, but it has done now around five times in a 1.5yr period when other ops have been on.

This has been known for a while but proving very difficult to trace. We've found no evidence in Windows Event viewer and I can't make it happen no matter what I try.

The solution is to restart software.

[Dan]

Ah.
Trust us to find the one issue... Amazing. Haha.

Well, if there's anything we can do (trace software to run, or something like that) let us know. I have a feeling this will be quite a common occurance - flash keys on our strobes tend to be used pretty much exclusively.

The club night tonight, opened at 10pm. The desk broke just before I posted, at about 11.45pm. But yeah, restarting the software cleared it up fine - we obviously can't leave our strobes going until it fixes itself!

So yeah, more than happy to help in anyway! (Though, this is in an SU, and the last few club nights of the academic year are coming up...)

[niclights]

Obviously this is a serious problem. I suggest you contact Avo direct and explain the symptoms - ie. freezing after heavy use of playback flash. The Swop master affecting might be significant.

Unfortunately, until there is a repeatable condition it is going to be very difficult to trace. Hopefully as more people encounter and describe what was happening/happened a pattern should emerge. Possibly along with showfiles.

Not that I would wish people to encounter it at all!