Hello all - just a warning to others -- we had a big outdoor festival show last weekend with temps in the mid-90 degrees Fahrenheit and we learned the HARD way that our StageTraxx device (iPad) couldn't handle the temps. Right in the middle of a track, the click/tracks started SKIPPING. THANKFULLY it was during a transition piece where only the click/cues were in our ears and nothing was going out to the FOH, so the audience didn't hear the problem.
BUT, we did have to stop the show entirely to troubleshoot, thankfully we quickly realized that the iPad had overheated in the high temps and I grabbed the backup iPad that I have running an exact copy of our show -- as soon as I plugged that in, we were back in business. The total downtime was less than 5 minutes, but it was the most painful 5 minutes of my life. I'm the lead singer/band leader so I had to jump behind our AV rack and get everything sorted out while THOUSANDS of people just sat there watching. I also had to get all our other devices in the session back online while I still performing and trying not to let the audience realize what I was doing! (in the future I will train one of our techs or another band member to handle this but they really don't understand StageTraxx -- so I have to manage all this.)
TWO Takeaways!
Always, always, always, always ALWAYS have a backup device running an exact copy of your StageTraxx show so you can swap it in instantly. I am SO grateful to my earlier-self for thinking to bring a backup device.
Do everything you can to keep those devices cool in this weather! Keep out of direct sunlight, keep a fan on them, whatever you can think of. I'll never make the mistake again of not factoring the sun/heat in when considering the placement of our StageTraxx device!
I'll be honest, I'm a little traumatized thinking about how the skipping would have sounded if it happened in the middle of a song that the audience could hear! The horror.