Christie CP2215 issues with GDC IMB's card

[David Rivero]

HI everyone,

I'm a new member of this fantastic forum that Ive been checking out for a couple of weeks trying to see any solution to my particular problem.

I'm the founder and colorist of a post-production studio in Beijing, China, working mostly on local feature films. Our theater has a Christie CP2215, with a GDC SR-1000 card to play DCP packages. It's been working perfectly fine for the last 12 months, and suddenly a couple of weeks ago we got the following warnings:
"IMB Service Door is not Armed"
"IMB Service Door Tamper"
The hardware is all out of guarantee, so I asked a couple of local engineers and they suggested I take out the card, put it back and re-marry it. We did, with no luck.
In the GDC interface, it shows as "married" but Service Door as "opened", in red. I clicked "close", but it doesn't do or solve anything.
So I'm a bit lost here.

During this couple of weeks, another warning popped out, showing "Red DMD: Sensor Failure". However, a couple days later, when I opened the Light Engine compartment to switch it for the green one （the engineer suggested this to check the failure） I saw it should be at the bottom and decided not to do it myself. When I turned the projector back on, the Sensor Failure warning was gone, and hasn't returned ever since. Not sure if it has any relation at all with the IMB failure.

I'm still hoping I got a way to fix it. I'm not very rushed, as we can play DCP's through our color grading equipment; but the GDC server is the only way we have to actually test the integrity of the DCP + Hard Disk.

Cheers,

David

[Leo Enticknap]

Did you reseat any cables while you had the light engine compartment open? If so, that likely explains the DMD sensor error.

It should be impossible to marry an IMB to a projector with a service door tamper active, and so the behavior reported does not make sense. If this happens on a Barco, it almost always indicates a failed backplane. In your case I'm guessing that it could be a bad tamper detection switch, if the logic governing the interaction between the GDC's security manager and the Christie allows the IMB to be in a married, but tampered state. Someone who is more of an expert on Christies than I am would likely be able to shed some light on this.

In any case, I think the best course of action would be to schedule a service call from a Christie-certified tech. My gut feeling is that this is a projector fault as distinct from an SR-1000 fault.

[David Rivero]

Hi Leo,

I

Did you reseat any cables while you had the light engine compartment open? If so, that likely explains the DMD sensor error

Actually I just moved a bit the cables out of the way to see where was the Red DMS sensor, but I didn't unplug/plug anything. It could be that it was slightly off and that tiny move placed it back in place?

I'm guessing that it could be a bad tamper detection switch, if the logic governing the interaction between the GDC's security manager and the Christie allows the IMB

Yeah, that was one my guesses after seeing some topics in this forum. But I checked the slot compartment after I took out the GDC card and couldn't find any switch or sensor inside, so I'm still puzzled at why it is detecting a tampering.
The warning appeared suddenly one day after we finishing checking some DCPs, we hadn't touched or do anything out of the ordinary, so one of the engineers I asked told me trying updating the GDC's version or firmware, but apparently we can't do that unless we pay for a year maintenance. And that wouldn't guarantee fixing the problem either.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I'm pretty sure the problem is a bad tamper detection switch. You might have unsocketed it from the backplane or it might have just died on you. Afaik, the switch communicates with the PIB via I2C.

[David Rivero]

Thanks Marcel and Leo,

I'll have another look at it this coming week, see if I can find the tamper detection switch.

[David Rivero]

Hi,

So I took out again the IMB card (and the PIB card as well), and had a look. I can't identify any tamper switch (not sure what I'm looking for, how they look)。
Thanks again!

EDIT： So I found at the top the of backplane board there is a connector to the switch for the Light Engine door and the door on top of the backplane (maybe this is called "Service Door"?). I reseated this connector, and pressed up and down the switch (or leveler). And that made the trick, all working fine now.

Im a bit surprised that was the issue, as the warning seems to refer to something more localized into the IMB card area, or directly related to it.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Yeah, those "doors" are called "Service Doors" and they have a switch to detect if they've been opened or not. Any triggering of those switches will be registered as a tamper. If the connection to the switch itself is bad, it will still register as open or "unarmed". It's a DCI certification requirement. Any open "service doors" could potentially allow access to the unencrypted signal between the media block and the imager. The entire idea of series 2 and up is to keep this part of the image signal(s) inside the enclosure of the chassis.