Question for system designers/installers

[NewYorkDave]

I've done a number of design/install jobs in radio and TV plants, and I've tried all kinds of different schemes for assigning cable numbers. What I've settled on is assigning the number based on the patchbay position. For example, cable 101 goes to jack 1 on patchbay 1. This is normalled at the patchbay to cable 125 (assuming a 48-position patchbay with two rows of 24 jacks) or 149 (if using a 96-position TT patchbay). Of course, if you anticipate using more than 9 patchbays, it would be "0101" instead of "101." The "leftover" numbers are assigned to cables that don't go to patchbays. For example, if I see a cable numbered "197" I know it can't go to patchbay #1 since the patchbay doesn't have 97 jacks.

This system has been working well for me but I'm curious to hear about the schemes used by other designers and installers on this board. The main flaw I see in my scheme is that if you change to a different type patchbay, it throws everything off--although you usually don't change patchbays except as part of an overall system upgrade.

 

[soundguy]

I labeled my last bay installation like this:

Bay # / Jack Position / Row

So, the output of the first jack on the third bay would be 3-1-top

I used the top or bottom designation to keep the numbering down, and so you dont have to think hard about it to hard to figure it out. 3-1-T is pretty easy. What got confusing was adding snake numbers and edac numbers to the bays that had several snakes coming out of them. I tried to figure out what I had done without looking at my documentation for the install and its not too hard to figure out if say down the line the console changes hands a few times and the documentation gets lost which was one of the main reasons I did the number like that.

dave

 

[pucho812]

hmmmm. When ever I have to do installs I usually will label each cable with Bay#/Row top or bottom/1-48 With 1 being far left jack.

 

[Kev]

All often depends size of installation as to how far your numbering needs go.

We use cable numbers that rap around the cable and are colour coded in the resistor colour code.

I can see your identification method working for small situations but it will fall in a heap for larger and changing situations.

Bay # / Jack Position / Row

great
until we get to more than 9 bays ... add a another digit and the where is the other end ??
... another rack in another room and it has more than 9 bays.
AND
the terminations are krone blocks that can be changed depending on the production and needs.

Even when it comes to inputs and outputs / top row and bottom row sort of stuff. Both Video and Audio cable can be re-cycled for new jobs as equipment changes. Inputs become outputs and outputs become inputs ... hence the use of Krone blocks.

I'll cut to the chase,

we assign blocks of numbers for types of cable jobs
as an example
100000 numbers for control cables
200000 numbers for video
300000 numbers for reference
and so on
800000 numbers for audio
then there is talkback, RF distribution and the endless Cat5 stuff. ... triax aargghh !
all cable types have a home and all numbers are entered into a data base giving many details of both ends of the cable, installed by, equipment or equip type and much more. Not all fields of the data base are entered or kept completely up to date.

big job and this goes for OB vans as well.
:roll:

At home I might keep the number down to 4 digits and just make it up as I go.
An 8 pair cable might be numbered 8001 which means 8001 to 8008 and the second 8 pair coming back might be 8011 which contains 8011 to 8018.
left channels are odd and rights are even ...1/2 3/4 5/6 7/8 and so on.

If it makes sense to you and your people then anything is fair game.

 

[PRR]

> until we get to more than 9 bays

My biggest bay uses letters, not numbers, for the bays.

It does not actually go past "K", but obviously the wirer had run into bigger systems.

I'm not there now, but I think each bay-unit is numbered 1-24, 25-48, for two rows. (The system is a mix of normaled top-bottom and solo jacks, no top-bottom consistency.)

 

[pucho812]

if you go past nine bays like most bigger studios just continue. For me it would look something like 12-t-34 or 13-b-57.

 

[Kev]

[quote author="PRR"]My biggest bay uses letters, not numbers, for the bays. [/quote]
yep
and we dump the letters I and O
so as not confuse with the numbers 1 and 0

this may be typical in telephone krone-ing as well ... I think.

 

[NewYorkDave]

[quote author="PRR"]My biggest bay uses letters, not numbers, for the bays.

It does not actually go past "K", but obviously the wirer had run into bigger systems. [/quote]

I've seen that system used, and I used it myself when I designed our TV truck. The rows on the bays are labelled "A" (first patchbay, top row), "B" (first patchbay, bottom row), "C" (second patchbay, top row) and so on. When you run out of letters, or you want to distinguish the patchbays by room or area, you double or triple up: "AA" "BB", etc. The patchbays in the rear of the truck, near the audio mixer, start with "AA" to readily distinguish them from the bays in the front of the truck.

The lettering system is great for small- to medium-sized installations, but could obviously get out of hand in a large plant. The numbering-by-jack method (such as 1-48 for a 48-position bay) is great when you're looking at the rear of the bay, since the jacks are usually numbered in this fashion by the factory, but can involve a little head-scratching if you're standing in front of the patchbay.

Our studio was originally built by CBS and RCA engineers circa 1970 and they numbered the patchbay jacks sequentially from one patchbay to the next. What a nightmare! Unfortunately for me, my predecessor on the job chose to retain this scheme when he redid all the wiring in the studio. I've been slowly changing it to something a bit "saner" over the past few years.

I like Kev's suggestion of using blocks of numbers to indicate function. I don't know if that would work in my plant because a piece of coax, during its service life, might start out as a video line, then become a reference (blackburst) line, or router control, or timecode, or maybe even AES/EBU coaxial if we ever become that "modern." (Our audio infrastructure is still almost entirely analog, even though our video is currently a hybrid of analog and digital).

I have no problem with using the same sets of numbers for audio and video cables and patchbays since the difference between shielded pair and coax is pretty obvious to anyone who picks up the cable :green:

By the way, Kev, I like your understatement about documentation not always keeping pace with changes. I don't know how it is in your plant, but in mine, if I and the other engineer who works with me dropped dead tomorrow, whoever stepped in to take our place would be in deep shit because I don't think there's one set of runsheets in the whole place that tells the whole story. Getting the documentation completely up-to-date has been on our "to do" list for a while, but there are always fires to be put out and few quiet moments for such clerical tasks...

Hey PRR, is it snowing down in Jersey today? I took today off from work, and when I got up, I was amazed to see it snowing pretty hard up here. The snow is even sticking!

 

[Kev]

[quote author="NewYorkDave"]... I like your understatement about documentation not always keeping pace with changes. I don't know how it is in your plant, but in mine, if I and the other engineer who works with me dropped dead tomorrow, whoever stepped in to take our place would be in deep shit ...[/quote]
The time of the engineering dept is dead in my area and it's only the oldies and the people trained by them that desperately try to hold these things together.

We have one large data base ... the accountants and IT decided to turn it off.
We got as much as possible into Excel and still have very old rat'd sheets of paper.

Yes a few of our patch panels start at A and go past Z ... down to AK or AL .. I think.
We often recycle cables BUT generally keep things like BLACK and TALKBACK and CONTROL as they were originally intended however the TD's constantly snake me by doing exactly what you said and break the rules.

... :sad: the rules ... it is getting harder to stay with the rules as staff numbers and experience drop.

We have just completed a CTA Central Tech Area. It was basically for the Athens games and as an upgrade to our main Studio/Control room and is HD ready. All new video cable are HD as a matter of course as the cost is exactly the same as for old standard 75ohm.

Announcement Thursday just past.

Move digital Mixer and all ancillary equipment to another state.
:shock:
what the fuck
they have already taken the OB-trucks and outsourced all that a few months ago.

Needless to say my team decided to take things easy on Thursday arvo and Friday as we sat around and Doomed and Gloomed about our future.
Added to the announcement was No More Capital Expenditure and there Will Be Redundancies.

Studios and control rooms booked for work and no Video Mixer or DAs.
Or last job for this year is around mid Dec. and it all has to be working in the new location by 16 Feb. ?? mission impossible.

I think the leave forms began to flow. And many already have leave approved as it is Christmas anyway.

I fear the end is near.

The point of this OT side track is about documentation and people taking over after you.

THE MANAGEMENT DON'T CARE ... or even understand. Strange thing is , is that I was an Financial Analyst and Accountant in a previous life and I don't even get their financial strategies.


bottom line is,
do the cable identification to suit your needs and stuff everyone else.

 

[NewYorkDave]

bottom line is,
do the cable identification to suit your needs and stuff everyone else.

Amen.

They're getting ready to swing the axe through my department as well; but of course, they had to give us a little going-away present first. We've been charged with the installation of a new 144 x 144 router, which is basically going to entail an overhaul of just about the entire plant. And they expect this to be done before our department is effectively dismantled early next year. Bastards...

What type of coax did you pick for your upgrade? I've specified Belden 1855A for our recent projects. It's thin, easily-managed and HD-compatible over reasonable distances (although I don't think our plant is going HD anytime in the forseeable future).

 

[Kev]

[quote author="NewYorkDave"] We've been charged with the installation of a new 144 x 144 router, which is basically going to entail an overhaul of just about the entire plant. And they expect this to be done before our department is effectively dismantled early next year. Bastards...[/quote]
hey
you have the same management team that we have :shock:
just before Christmas they now want to move the Analog Router (128x64 I think)
yes
Bastards

we used the same cable ... mostly green and used orange for all reference.
Purple for the defined HD runs ... and black for studio floors.

 

[tony dB]

sorry to go off topic here.. i need to reinstall some patchbays in my studio soon and wonder what the best Belden would be?
Is only for mic and linelevelstuff.
I want to go with Belden because i've pretty good access and even better conditions on that :twisted:
Besides, i think they make very good quality too.
I don't want to go the multicable route anymore, as i think it's way more easy to label grey cable with a marker then to have to go tru a large datasheet to find cables etc and also if i want to move stuff around (i often do) the multis where always 1 meter short then my goal :grin:

And i'm really bad in stripping with a nice "overflow" to make it match the connectors etc... with simple cables i can slip and tie for a nice cableflow.

 

[SSLtech]

Our latest machine room... Two floors of it! So:

Floor 1 rack 1 is 101, floor 1 rack 2is 102, floor 1 rack 15 is 115 etc.
Floor two rack 4 is 204.

Patchrow within each rack is identified by letter. After Z the sequence starts AA, AB, AC etc. Next is the patchpoint of pair 1 if there's a multipair, or a range of pairs if they happen to be sequential, which they often are. Description is optional.

Cable ID for example: <106/F/33-48> First floor, rack six, row F, points 33-48

On this job all of the multipair/patch interfacing has been ELCO, but heres a couple of shots from when I used to hand-wire everything:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v379/SSLtech/Patchrear1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v379/SSLtech/Patchrear2.jpg

Keef

 

[tony dB]

DROOL

:shock:

OK, you've set the standard, i trie to match, if not in this live it will be in another... :green: :green:

:sam: