Even the go to guy can’t do everything by himself. Well, he could but it would take a lot longer. The smarter thing to do, is for him to bring in his team to help work on the problem.
The other day, one of our projectors started acting funny. It wasn’t responding to the remote control and it wasn’t showing the video. We have a dual projector setup. One S-Video signal going out of a computer into an S-Video signal splitter then an S-Video cable connected to each projector. This setup has been running beautifully for years.
I was able to resolve the remote control issue but we still had the video issue. We determined that the signal wasn’t getting to the projector for some reason. To figure out what was going on involved looking around in the crawl space between the exterior roof and the interior ceiling. I threw on some overalls, grabbed a light source and a walkie talkie. After several minutes of maneuvering around the duct-work, I was able to inspect the cables. While I was doing all this work, I was in constant communication with my team via walkie talkie.
We verified that the front projector S-Video cable condition was pretty bad and needed to be replaced. The cable going to the rear projector had been replaced not too long ago, so it didn’t cause any problems for us.
Fortunately, we were able to devise an alternative solution that would work while we are ordering the replacement cable. There was still some VGA cable that was still in the attic from a previous projector installation. We decided to take advantage of this cabling and a few minutes later the video was restored.
While we were wrapping it all up, my team suggested I plug the S-Video cable in just for fun. It turns out that it was working again. When I was in the attic moving around the cables, I must have touched the area that was shorted. We don’t like intermittent behavior in our technical equipment, so we’re still going to get the replacement cable.
If I didn’t have the team to help me, I would have been working all day trying to resolve this issue. With the help of the team, we got it done in only three hours.
Till next time, don’t forget your team is the key to your success
