Mid-show crash last night -- Could I have prevented it?

[Clayton]

Hi, all -

Ran our first show last night with Avolites Titan. (Yay!)
Experienced a system-wide mid-show crash. (Boo!)

Fortunately, the crash was late in the evening after all the critical performances. I was in the middle of crafting a fairly simple cue, when suddenly all lights went dark and I saw my movers reset. Uh oh. Buttons on Titan appeared to be responding like normal (that is, the laptop was not locked up), but no DMX was reaching the fixtures. I quit Titan and re-launched. Still nothing. I quit Titan again, pulled the console's USB and reseated it, checked all DMX output lines, launched Titan again. On this second re-launch, it came back alive. Whew. Had about 1-2 minutes of nervous black-out. If not for the VJ's projections, it would have looked much worse.

As a newbie, my fearful question is: does this kind of crash happen frequently?
Any suggestions on prevention?

Running Titan Mobile 8.1 on Windows 8.1.

Thanks!

[clublights]

I've never had it crash mid show EXCEPT for two occasions


1: the USB connector was lose ( solder joints had become weak on the DMX board replaced connector problem solved... but seeing as it seems yours is new I doubt this is an issue tho it could be a bad cable .. try a different USB cable )

2: Radio transmitter too close to board/computer... this can be a walkie talkie or a wireless DMX base. I've had a walkie talkie take it out completely forcing a full restart of the computer and unplug/ replug of the mobile. W-DMX has not caused me an issue but the show baby stuff has made my touch screen stop responding only in titan but worked fine on the rest of the computer. just keep these sources at a decent distance ( I keep walkie talkies on the back of my belt so I shield the desk with my body ) and I keep wireless bases at least 3 feet away .

[Clayton]

Thanks for the insight. Great suggestions.

I will swap the USB cable.

We did have a W-DMX transmitter next to us on the desk. Might move that further away next time.

Thanks!

[clublights]

Just to be clear by W-DMX I meant the Wireless Solution’s W-DMX based stuff ( I use the elation branded ones ) these have not caused an issue yet and I just did a month long run with the transmitter closer to two feet away rather then the 3 I stated before. ZERO issues.

The City Theatrical ShowBaby 5 is what caused the issue

[niclights]

That's sounds awful. Even more so that it happened the first time you used it! I've never had a console crash in any version but when it's laptop based there is a certain risk as the operating system can't be secured in quite the same way. My instincts are also that it is Usb related - might be worth checking Windows power saving options just in case. I also wonder if it would be beneficial to collect the logs and send them to repairs at avolites dot com along with as much detail as possible. To collect logs use Log Collector. If the resulting file is very large then use one of the free file transfer services like dropbox to send.