TCN9 use Coemar De Sisti to changeover their dimmers

Andrew Veitch from TCN9 Sydney had been looking for a replacement for their aging Strand dimming system in Studio 2. Overtime Andrew and the engineering department at TCN9 had been looking at ways of upgrading the dimmers, this included modifying their current dimming system. The current dimmer system had past it’s used by date and you could not get replacement parts, in addition TCN9 wanted to add RCD protection to the system.

This dimmer system is constantly in use and services many prominent TV shows including The Footy Show, Funniest Home Videos, Kerri-Anne show etc. After much searching Andrew decided on the LSC Eko wall mount dimmer racks, Coemar De Sisti organised to carry out the change-over in the down period of December-January.

The installation was quite complex, Coemar De Sisti had to disconnect and remove the existing Strand dimmer system and install 24 new dimmer racks, this involved disconnecting and re-connecting over 2000 wires.  One very important aspect was that TCN9 did not want any new cabling done (except for a DMX network) so we had to ensure we could use the existing mains supplies and load cabling straight into the new LSC Eko racks. Coemar De Sisti worked very closely with LSC to ensure that this was possible and TCN9 installed a unistrut frame (designed by CDA/LSC) to mount the LSC Eko racks up high to utilise the existing cabling.

Coemar De Sisti installed 24 LSC Eko dimmer racks, close to 600 channels of dimming and when they went to commission the system not one wire had been installed in the wrong place, quite a feat with so many wires (see photos). The installation went very smoothly, in fact Andrew had the following to say about Coemar De Sisti’s work “The installation work by Coemar De Sisti was brilliant”.

In addition to the dimmers, TCN9 also purchased a LSC Houston remote monitoring software system which enables TCN to monitor all of the dimmers from a remote location, this system has proved to be invaluable to Andrew recently when they had a problem with the air conditioning system in the dimmer room, yet they could easily see how the dimmers where performing from the control room (the dimmers worked faultlessly even without the air conditioner working).

Also added to the system a few months after the dimmer installation were some custom software to allow remote upload/download of the dimmers configuration data (ie. Dimmer curves, DMX soft-patch, Max levels, min levels) over the LSCnet connection.

This installation in now added to the long list of TV studios Coemar De Sisti have been installing LSC Eko dimmer systems in, and further strengthens these dimmers as a “standard” in the Australian TV lighting industry.

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