Open Forum

Hello,

So I'm a Director at an Elementary School Theatre, and we're about to mount our first musical in our facility since before the Pandemic started. 

Prior to the pandemic, we would normally borrow gear from a local who unfortunately passed away during the time since our last show. Since he passed, we've gained a gigantic lighting board that belonged to a high school, a couple of DMX dimmer packs, and some DMX cable to replace the equipment we would have traditionally borrowed.

Unfortunately I have no idea how to make it all talk to each other. The board we now have is significantly larger than our old board, and the dimmer packs now come with a DMX brain that is sort of useless in this situation.

All we're attempting to do is take four trees with four pars each, and make them dimmable from the board. Our board is an ETC Express 72/144, and the Dimmer Packs are this ADJ DP415R. 

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Steven Newport
Drama Teacher
Foothills Elementary
AZ
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So the short answer is that you need to set an address on the dimmers and then use that to program the board. whatever number you assign to each dimmer should be the dimmer number on your board and then you patch that to a channel. 

If your express is patched 1 to 1 and you address a dimmer at 1 then moving slider 1 should control that fixture. 

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Aileen Zeigler
Theatre Arts Director
AL
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OK first of all...

you will need 3 PIN DMX cable to plug in from pack to pack.
you will need to get the manual for the dimmer packs and address the first pack to 1, second to 5, third to 9, forth to 13.
from the first pack to the light board you will run a DMX cable and get a 5Pin to 3 PIN DMX adapter cable to plug into the console
I recommend resetting the console to factory status
then you should have 1 to 1 control on your channel sliders
once you have this you can record preset looks for your show to submasters or record cues for the go button playback

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Jerry Onik
V.P. Theatrical Supplies and Equipment
Heartland Scenic Studio
NE
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Jerry's post should get you going in the right direction.  

User Manuals are helpful:
https://www.adj.com/dp-415r
https://d295jznhem2tn9.cloudfront.net/ItemRelatedFiles/11443/dp-415r.pdf
https://www.etcconnect.com/Support/Consoles/Legacy/Express/Other-Documentation.aspx
https://www.etcconnect.com/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=10737461089

The 5pin to 3pin DMX adapter should be something like this: https://www.amazon.com/SinLoon-Turnaround-Connection-Spotlight-Output/dp/B073WW6RFS/

The dimmer packs can be daisy chained. You may not need one, but with a long run of daisy chains, sometimes a terminator at the end of the chain is a good idea: https://www.amazon.com/Hosa-DMT-414-3-Pin-DMX-512-Terminator/dp/B000PO1H94/

The DMX address for each of the dimmer packs is the "starting" address for its four channels.  That's why the first unit would be addressed at 001 (which is 1 thru 4) the next at 005 (5 thru 8), then 009 (9 thru 12) and 013 (13 thru 16).



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Guy Barbato
Theatre Teacher/Director
Leonardtown High School
MD
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