Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

This may well be user error, but I'm stymied and need help. I have two Einsteins and a Cyber Commander. The lights and CC are set to Frequency 1 and the lights are assigned to Channels 3 and 4. When the "Studio" opened, I noticed that the displayed power range of the two lights on the CC differed as did their recorded types:



Notice that the light on channel 3 shows up as "Einstei" while the one on channel 4 shows up as Einstein 640WS. Also note that the power range shown for channel 3 is not the same as for channel 4. The power of the light on channel 3 can only be reduced to approximately 8WS using the CC. Also, on two power-ups, the CC did not see the light on channel 3. I've swapped CSXCV transceivers but that had no effect. Both lights have SW 0173 20.

User error or do I have a problem?

Thanks much,

Dave F.

Is it possible that Channel 3 on the CC had something pre-configured that's not being overridden by the "Open All From Studio" command? You could rule this out by setting a different channel number on the light that's misbehaving. Please let us know what you eventually find as the root cause.

When I first turned my Einsteins on, I worked with the lights only before using the CC and had the same thing happen to me that you are having. I had my lights manually set to different power settings. What I did to fix the problem was to manually turn the lights all of the way to the lowest setting, then go back and read from studio with the CC and that fixed the problem that I was having. Now my lights all read equally and will be controlled equally, then just save that as your setting if it works.
Give that a try and let me know if that works.

Definitely our problem - not yours. Please take it up with tech help by phone or email. This looks like a bug we are unaware of and will have to correct. We are doing some firmware update work right now and will address this and find the little bugger that's causing it.

I've passed your post to the firmware developer and tech help . . they're pretty fast.

Sorry for egg on my face.

Thanks for the update Paul. My system is working fine after doing what I did to get it working correctly. I thought perhaps it was a bug, but when it did not work correctly, I remembered that the lights were all set to the minimum when I first turned them on and worked with them manually before starting up the CC, so I simply started over at the beginning with the first settings out of the box and that fixed the problem. Then I just thought maybe it was something that was left out of the manual or that I possibly overlooked that information.

Very happy with the Einstein/CC combo.

I tried your "fix" but, unfortunately, it didn't solve my problem. I set both lights to minimum power and, on the CC, reopened from Studio. Interestingly, the CC left the power setting at minimum on the good light while resetting the power to maximum on the questionable light. The power range of the misbehaving Einstein, as before, was truncated bottoming out at 8.7WS. Also, where previously the CC reported the questionable light to be "Einstei", now the ID field on the CC display is blank.

Thank you for the suggestion. I'll call PCB today and report back if I learn anything of forum-wide interest.

Dave F.

Thanks for the late Sunday night follow-up, Paul (are you always on the job?). I will indeed check in with your tech guy(s) this morning.

Dave F.

Sad to hear that it did not work. The described situation sound nearly identical to mine. I had one E light that went full scale and one that went down only to 8.7 Ws on the CC and did not show the name at all. I used Ch1 and Ch 2 were you are using 3 and 4. Since you can manually adjust without the problem then it simply has to be a small software bug in the transmitter or receiver.
While waiting on the fix can you try other channels and freq's to make sure some outside electrical interference has not occurred.

The only other problem I had was that one of the pins on my receiver was bent straight out of the box and I had to bend it back into place before inserting it into the Einstein.

I had to do the same thing to get my CC to see that the Einsteins were capable of the same power range. Before doing that the CC would startup and show the lights had different minimum values but the same top value. It appears to be a little quirk for the CC to use the startup setting as the light's minimum value. At least that is what I've seen so far.

Maybe setting up one Einstein at a time will fix the issue temporary until there is a firmware fix?

RMS