Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: House Lights

This is topic House Lights in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Terry Velandra (Member # 2531) on 08-12-2005, 08:24 PM:

I am having a problem with house lights, I work at a 15 plex that was originally a 10. The problem we are having is with our expansion, and has been a problem since the install, and with all the projectors that were installed then.

The problem is that the automation will not pulse to ½. If the cue is set for full, they go to full, if the cue is set do down, they will go down, but if you set it to ½, they go down all the way. This is the case with the all 3 programmable cues, as well as the 4th cue which is supposed to pulse for half at the start of the credits. So after the show we are stuck with house lights down until the end of the credits. [Frown]

We are running Strong optimax 2 consoles, with Strong PG-2100 automation.

Posted by Edward Cox (Member # 3303) on 08-12-2005, 08:49 PM:

TERRY!!!!

What's up?!?!

I'd recommend tearing all of the wires out, and throwing them up into the rafters and then... aww hell... who knows... that's pretty much the best advice I can give.

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 08-12-2005, 09:26 PM:

I know with our automations (different from yours) there is a set screw adjustment for half level and low level. Likely if you look in the manual (if you don't have one look in the downloads section of this site) it will tell you were on yours the adjustments are.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 08-12-2005, 09:27 PM:

If it's not an adjustment problem, you might have a defective "triac." (Rhymes with kayak) It's the device that actually does the dimming.

Do the lights actually fade to off or do they just snap to the off position? If they shut off quickly rather than fading, it's definitely a triac. They're cheap and easy to replace.

Posted by Terry Velandra (Member # 2531) on 08-12-2005, 09:34 PM:

Oh man ED COX, it’s been awhile… I am close to taking your recommendation. If I don’t get this working soon, they are going to make us change the cue locations, and then we wont be able to see it cue down after the coke ad, and you know what that will cause with the cue detector’s sucking the way they do in the expansion.

The lights do fade, it is not a problem with the dimmer pannel, i can short the house common with the half and they will go half way. i disconnected the dimmer from the projector and put a conunity tester on it and the projector is pulsing it to off instead of half.

This is like this on all 5 of the projectors that were added, not just one.

Posted by Heath Dutton (Member # 3265) on 08-12-2005, 11:07 PM:

Sounds like a miswiring job. Strong consoles are funny when it comes to this because (in ours) there isn't a way to have stage lights dim half way, at all!

Anywho, if the adjustments in the dimer are correct, then I'd open the left side of the console and see how they wired the thing.

Posted by Terry Velandra (Member # 2531) on 08-13-2005, 01:50 AM:

We dont have the option to dim the stage either, but we dont use stage lights anyways. as for the wiring, the wires going from the projector to the dimmer pannel are correct, so it may be inside the console. I'll check it out tommorow