# The board wanted to end the show early...



## LDtheLD (Mar 27, 2007)

Yeah, so our studio theatre's lovely 500-year-old Strand Mini Light Palette is going to choke out its last breath any day now, so has decided to misbehave all it can in its last period of life. First, the go button seems to no longer work...in this show I just did, I programmed the cues, tried to use the go button, and it would bring up the cue, yet not actually bring up the lights...however, if I used the Go to Cue button to go to each cue, it worked fine. However, this meant having to frantically type "Go to Cue" then "4" or whatever the number for every cue throughout the show, and all the numbers are STUCK...I had to pound at them to get them to work...there were some fast changes and therefore some panicked moments. 

And tonight, the last show, right before the last scene, I typed in Go to Cue and the next cue which was a blue set change cue. Now, error on my part is possible, I will not deny that, but I SWEAR I typed the cue in correctly...hit enter...and it just decided to go right back up to cue 1...the preshow house lights. Yay. I said "Oh sh--" rather loudly. I frantically typed the cue in again and this time it went to the right one. 

But yeah, for about 4 seconds everyone must have been confused and thought the show was ending strangely, with no curtain call and actors standing out there with set pieces in their hands.... Oh well, something to look back at and laugh.  But we so need a new board in there!


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## Van (Mar 27, 2007)

WOW ! I'd rather run a show off an old EDI scrimmerpac board than something miss-behaving that badly. Any chance you could open it up and do some dusting and cleaning? Sounds like some contact cleaner and a check on a few solders might really come in handy. If you kill the power, and unplug the keypad some medical grade alcohol will do wonders on a sticky keypad, if you are afraid of completely disassembling it and cleaning all the contacts.


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## soundlight (Mar 27, 2007)

Also, remember that if you see any reasonable sized capacitors in there, discharge them first. I've made that mistake before 

Some good contact cleaner and medical grade alcohol, as Van mentioned, will do absolute wonders. Also, when you're done with that, get one of the "canned air" cans, and blast the rest of the crud out of all of the cracks. It's amazing what this can do to dusty, sticky, or crackly electronics. But make sure to leave the circuit boards out in the open air overnight to let them dry completely (but make sure not to do it in a dusty room, because that'd be completely counter-intuitive!!!!).


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## LDtheLD (Mar 29, 2007)

Definitely something worth trying, Van and soundlight, and hopefully it works...after the other night I've about had it up to here with that thing.


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## Edrick (Mar 29, 2007)

some keypads are just a pain our innovator board you have to press pretty hard to get it to recognize some of the keystrokes

Sub 12 @ Full enter!

What houselights ?! that's sub 1! ohhh it only put a 1 in **** it.


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## astrotechie (Apr 17, 2007)

see that is ****** stuff we get since we are in the arts section. If it was sports everything would be new and cleaned every second


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## PhantomD (Apr 18, 2007)

Our BRAND NEW BOARD decided to reset on me and cut all lights in the first scene of a musical last year...

Talk about confused cast.


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