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Audio, lighting & Showmaster

Part of Dome troubleshooting — start there for quick triage. These are the symptoms in the show-control layer: the DiGiCo/Crown audio path, the ETC Element 40 lighting path and the Showmaster that normally triggers both.

TODO verify with senior technician

The causes and step sequences on this page are informed reconstructions pending review — see the note on the main troubleshooting page.

Audio channel missing​

The dome runs a 7.2 system used as 7.1, through a DiGiCo mixer and Crown amplifiers.

  1. Determine whether the channel is missing at the source (content), at the mixer, or at the amplifier.
  2. Check mute and routing on the mixer before touching amplifiers.
  3. Check amplifier power and fault indicators.
TODO verify with senior technician

Add the speaker-to-amplifier-to-mixer-channel mapping and the location of the DiGiCo and Crown racks.

Image to add

Photo of the DiGiCo mixer channel strip layout (or a screenshot of its routing page) and of the Crown amplifier rack, matching the mapping above once it is verified. Suggested files: static/img/dome/troubleshooting/digico-mixer.jpg and static/img/dome/troubleshooting/crown-rack.jpg.

Lighting is not responding​

House lighting is an ETC Element 40 desk driving 142 Philips Color Kinetics fixtures plus four zoomed spotlights.

  1. Restart the Showmaster first — most control faults clear with a restart of the unit that triggers the lighting. Open showmaster1.c.itn.liu.se, go to the Systems tab of the tech interface and press the orange Showmaster button under the Reboot Section. The unit is back in under a minute.

    The Showmaster tech interface Systems tab with the purple power-cycle buttons for each render node above the Reboot Section's orange Showmaster button

  2. Does the desk respond locally? If yes, the problem is in the DMX path or the fixtures.

  3. If the lighting is normally triggered from the Showmaster, test the desk directly to split control-system faults from lighting faults.

  4. Check the MIDI, relay and RS-232 gateways if the trigger path runs through one.

Unresponsive computer nodes

The Power Cycle Section on the same tab (see the screenshot above) has a purple button per computer — the Atlas, Bravo and Draco render nodes plus the HDMI Matrix. If a node is unresponsive, press its purple button: power drops for one minute, comes back, and the unit starts up again.

Image to add

Photo of the ETC Element 40 desk in the control booth showing its DMX output connections, so the local-versus-triggered split above can be made on site. Suggested file: static/img/dome/troubleshooting/etc-element-desk.jpg.

The Showmaster is unresponsive​

Showmaster 1 is the dome's controller. Three ways to restart it, least disruptive first — full detail on Showmaster.

  1. Reboot from the Showmaster itself — browse to showmaster1.c.itn.liu.se, open TechPanel, enter the password, go to the Systems tab and press the orange Showmaster button under the Reboot Section. Completes in under a minute.

    The Showmaster tech interface Systems tab showing where to restart the unit — the orange Showmaster button under the Reboot Section

  2. Reboot via Medialon Showmaster Editor from another machine on the same network. For the dome this means VMIX-01 (172.19.6.0/24). Start the editor, accept the UAC prompt, choose Showmaster → Connect (Ctrl+Alt+K), select the unit, connect, then choose Reboot.

  3. Power cycle via ePDU — note that the tech panel's Power Cycle Section has no button for the Showmaster itself (it only covers the render nodes and the HDMI Matrix), so this must be done from the PDU directly. Takes roughly two minutes.