stuttering glitch

[voodoo]

Hey guys got a problem here, just picked up a pair of mad spins for my light show and was going to start programming a few shows for them but when i conect them to freestyler they are a bit manic and random, if i move the barrel slightly it doesn't sit in the one position like it should it keeps shaking and moving back and forward randomly, it does this with all the channels ie. gobos, colours, rotation etc.

the dmx led on the fixture is constantly flickering when using freestyler but it is a nice solid led if i use my botex hardware controller with no movement (works as should).

Anyone any ideas??? as i can't use it like this.

[Mattotone]

This does sound like a case of incorrect polarity, try swapping pins 2 and 3 on one end of your dmx cable.

[voodoo]

already changed the polarity as they are the opposit to the rest of my lights, if i address the fixture to channel 1 it works fine and no stuttering but if i address it further down the chain say at 16 it stutters and jumps about like a mad man.

Any ideas???

[djSupport]

I never thought i'd say this but - terminated?

[voodoo]

yip terminated, got to admit i don't always do it but the first sign of trouble and thats what i look at first.

[djSupport]

you dont have a conflicting light on channel 16 do you?

[aquas]

I, sorry my english... Some machines don´t leave all 512 channels away, understand? So sometimes they leave only 255... etc.
try to check if you dont have a machine that generate the problem like this.

cumpr from Portugal

[voodoo]

How do you mean conflicting? channel 16 was just an example altho it does seem to start there

[p.k.roberts]

I don't know if this will help, but here are a couple of problems and solutions I've encountered which might be relevant. First one happened shortly before a show when all lights went a bit 'disco', partly under control, but partly doing their own thing - it turned out to be an intermitent short from pin 1 (screen) to one of the cores on one of the DMX cables. The second issue I had was with some mid-priced colour changers which affected everything else on the DMX chain apart from themselves! It turned out that despite being switched to DMX receive mode (rather than master/slave or stand-alone) they were, in fact, still producing some kind of signal/interferance on the DMX line. The only solution was to actively split the DMX line and run them off their own 'spur'.
So my approach to your problem would be to begin with one light on one known good cable and check it's functionality (over a range of base DMX channels) and gradually add stuff until the system starts to misbehave. It might not offer an immediate cure, but might reveal the culprit.

[djSupport]

He has a very good point there