We recenlty had an element installed in our school with 48 new lights. An ETC rep, give me full training, but I can not seem to remember if he trained on this topic or not. I spent 5 hours setting up my lights in the proper config on the 4 bars above my stage, but when I got to the 3 bar, and turned on the lights:
each fader controlled 2 lights on the bar.
Well, I cleared and reset all the patches. That didn't hlep.
I checked the channels and addresses, and they all seem to be 1 to 1.
None of the channels or addresses are listed as channel doubling.
So, are my lights configed wrong, or is it some setting on the element board I am missing?
My guess, you have dimmer doubling. I've never worked with Dimmer doubling but as I understand it, each dimmer has two lights plugged in, and by changing a setting on the console to allow dimmer doubling the dimmers and specially designed twofers can control the lights separately.
But, if you vendor never mentioned it he might have simply plugged them into the same dimmer. What type of dimmers do you have? how many do you have?
Which kind of dimmers do you have, how many channels per dimmer pack and how many packs?
It's unlikely that you've got dimmer doubling, as this requires a special kind of twofer adapter. The two 'channels' are sent down the same wire until the special twofer, so this kind of setup would have a single socket, a twofer, and out to two Source Fours fitted with the 77V HPL lamp.
If you've got your lights plugged into hard-wired sockets, then you almost certainly aren't seeing dimmer doubling.
The most likely reason for this kind of behaviour is that there are actually 24 channels of dimming (eg two 12-channel SmartPacks), wired out to two sockets per channel. This is quite common in smaller installations, as it allows lower initial installation costs but usually a simple upgrade if and when additional dimmer budget becomes available.
Alternatively, the dimmers themselves might have been accidentally patched such that the DMX addresses overlap - eg four 12-channel SmartPacks, with two set to a start address of 1 and the other two set to 13.
Keep on trying till you run out of cake.
I know that I have 48 Lights installed on 4 bars. On two of the bars, two lights have the same label. So I know that those 2 lights are assigned the same thing (same dimmer, I am assuming). I have 24 dimmers with 2 power switches on each dimmer.
Can each dimmer only control 2 lights?
It's hard to say exactly what might be going on, not knowing your installation. It is common, as Richard states, to have two circuits on different positions controlled by the same dimmer. It does sound like this is what you're seeing, but it's best to check with the installer.
If this is the case, it is of course normal that one fader on the Element will bring up 2 lights.
-luke-