Power Tower lighting

Someone mentioned this in a separate thread, but I was interested if anyone had some definitive perspective.

Was lightning actually responsible for knocking the lighting out of sequence? As a designer and programmer of electrical control panels, it seems highly unlikely that a PLC logic program set up to turn lights on and off (even if tied into the master program for the tower) would reset/change itself without making changes to the program.

Just curious if anyone in the know can answer? What is the electrical setup on PT? PLC based controls, PC based? Remote I/O?

Rideman maybe?

While I'm not sure, I seem to remember those instruments being High-End Systems units. These, like most types of automated lighting are controlled by a single controller using the DMX-512 protocol. The control signal daisy-chains from one unit to the next by a three or five conductor cable often terminated with XLR connectors. Each unit is individually powered generally with its own breaker.

While I can't dispute the guy who worked on the ride, my observation was that at least one unit had a stuck color wheel at one point (on lower part of west Turbo Drop).

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Jeff
Webmaster/Guide to The Point
"And he says 'I'm goin' crazy up there at the lake...'"

My understanding is that those lights use some kind of color wheel for the color sequence...so it seems to me that the most likely scenario is that the color wheels got out of sync with each other...something which has nothing to do with the program, because the system programming just says, "Switch to the nect color...".

(This is, of course, at best a guess...)

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Depending on the type of fixture, some can talk back to the contoller, informing it of errors and such. In most cases, the color isn't a sequence, but a direct selection. In other words, the controler can tell a set of fixtures to go to color four, and they all go to that position in the wheel.

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Jeff
Webmaster/Guide to The Point
"And he says 'I'm goin' crazy up there at the lake...'"

Interesting. Hmmm...But if the color wheel sticks, then it is possible for the instrument to get the wrong color associated with the wrong wheel position, unless there is a 'home' routine set up so that the instrument can detect one of the color positions..........

See, I *don't* know everything...!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Upstairs in the control room there's a pc that controls the lighting. I'm not exactly sure how or why it happened, but i do know that lightning did mess up the lighting controls.