ChromaQ Colour Block trouble

[lwilson]

Can anyone shed any light on the cause of this unusual problem?

I was using a pearl (2004 1.1 sofware) to control an in-house system of dimmers, scrollers and CP Stage scans, supplemented with 50 ChromaQ Colour blocks. I connected to the house system first, using 2 universes of dmx, and then rigged the battens linking them into universe B, using an in-house splitter. I set all the batten PSUs to dmx 500, mode 8, which is 3 channel – Hue, Saturation and Intensity. I patched a “CQColBkHSI” to handle 28 on dmx500, universe B. When I operated the Hue control a number of the blocks flashed on and off in a strobe like manner. The remaining blocks changed hue as normal. This happened at any Hue value other than 0 regardless of the values of the other attributes.

I removed a number of possible factors by connecting a new dmx cable directly from the desk to the colour block system, but the fault was still there. I then plugged into each colour block PSU alone in turn to no avail. I tried patching to a different handle, patching 3 dimmer channels instead of the personality, crossplugging and re-patching to Universe A, all without success.

I then figured that the only thing that had remained constant was the dmx start address of 500. So I changed to 300 and this eradicated the problem. I then re-connected and re-patched the system to the original configuration without further trouble.

[Phil]

I've looked at it, and it seems consistently reproducable.

I think, but I'm not sure yet, that it's an obscure problem with the Color Block software that you've managed to uncover. I'm going to get in touch with AC Lighting and talk to them about it, and see if between us we can work out exactly what's happening.

I'll let you know how I get on.

[lwilson]

many thanks phil.

[Phil]

It's a known issue with the color blocks apparently, and it happens if you set them to address 100, 200, 300, 400 or 500. Something to do with the software incrementing something by one somwhere.

Anyway, AC's advice at the moment is to try and avoid setting any blocks to those addresses for the moment. Presumably they'll then fix the problem in a later release of software.

It's an interesting effect though, even if it's not quite what you want on your show!