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Me too, and I've never had to clean mine either. But then I use that stuff very sparingly. I use a toothpick to put a small amount in my HC/XConnect female plug holes and work the male connector in/out a few times to to spread the dielectric grease. On 120VAC connections, I lightly coat the male prongs and work them in/out a few times to coat the female connection. Then on any unused female plugs[AC plugs/CTB16PC dangles] I use a plastic child protector outlet cap to keep dirt, water, and debris out. Did that to all my AC L.E.D. and Incandescent Christmas Light strings too. But since going RGB, I retired and gave away all my AC 120V powered light strings. Only 120V items currently in use are a few Blowmolds, those still use incandescent standard, or C7 light bulbs. Although considering converting them to RGB with a bit of modications.

I use dielectric grease on all my waterproof plugs. I've never had to clean the connections.

This is particularly true for higher voltage (think 120V AC) connections, but one easy and essentially free thing you can do is to zip tie the connector onto the top of a stake and cover with a cut off 2 liter soda bottle. With that said, I have never had much issue with water in so called waterproof pixel connectors. For my year round landscape lighting, everything is soldered and covered with two layers of heat shrink tubing (the kind with the goo inside that melts when you heat the tubing up to shrink it.

Acidic cleaners need to be neutralized or they will cause their own issues later. (whty they do NOT use Acid Core solder on electronics. It gets into places that are not easy to flush. The greas is a 2-edged sword. Yes, water is kept away, Yes, Dirt now sticks where you might not want it. I cap / plug the ends (HC/X-connect) while setting up/ down. They only come off while being mated. BTW check your O-rings and make sure the connector-collar seats fully so they can work

The funny thing about waterproofing is if water does eventually get in you are also preventing it from getting out or drying up.

I used to try and seal all my high voltage connections but too many times a bit of water would sneak in and get trapped. I gave up sealing connectors and let Mother Nature do her thing. Rain would pass through the connections and dry up on a sunny day. Do use common sense and don't let the connectors hang in a pool of water or put them in the path of an irrigation head. If you are determined to keep the water away from the connectors during the show season then use some dielectric grease (found in the Home Depot electrical department). It's a pain to wipe off during teardown but gets your job done.

Honestly, in all my years I've never had an issue with waterproofing. My stuff is out three months of the year, October to mid January, and my landscape stuff is out year round. The most important thing about plugs is to keep them off the ground. If they are off the ground then they won't sit in water and the the rain will pretty much drip off of them letting the basic waterproofing work. When the season is over wipe everything down and maybe a shot of WD40 before storing, no issues.

Good morning guys. A stupid question, what kind of maintenance do you do on the contacts of your waterproof plugs, to remove the oxide and anything else that may happen during the show period??? I use the cleaning spray for electrical contacts, then once sprayed, in past years I made passes up and down with the opposite male or female, let's say to scrape away the impurities. This year I'm experimenting with pipe cleaners for drink straws, for the larger holes, while for the small holes I'm using dental brushes, which seem too soft to do the "scraping". What do you say??? is it too much, is the spray enough, or do you use some other more effective method than mine??? Thanks again to everyone, greetings from Ancona Italy, from Pierpaolo, a happy grandfather.

Get in touch with Marcus Ledet. He is the king of fountains. He is on this page.

Agree with mount controller as close to prop as possible

The reason for close to prop is 2 fold: 1 Voltage drop (low voltage types) 2 Signal degrades over distance (smart nodes) to first node. Each later nod regenerates the data stream (it might no be 100%, but good enough)

Thank you Mr P and thanks for your service. I'll do this

Controllers should be placed as close to the props as possible. It is much easier and cost effective to run one cat5 from controller to controller then 10 miles of wire because all the controllers are centrally located.

Does anyone have a good way to setup my system? I want to create a light set that is similar to LOR standard light (see attached) with the same equipment. I would like to have all of the controllers and computer in one location. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to do this and where to locate the equipment? 1. Mount the controllers on a board in a "footlocker" type box 2. Where to locate the box or whatever final equipment set up is

You would be far better off asking him what pumps and servos he is using. As far as controlling them, LOR has a board called a ServoDog that is specifically made for controlling servos. I've used servos so can't help on setting them up, but there are others here who have. For the pumps, LOR has a couple low voltage DC controllers. Depending on the pumps, you may need to use the controller to drive a relay and have the relay control power to the pumps. That would limit each pump to on / off as opposed to variable. And TheDucks beat me to some of this...

I don't think the version matters. Servos are controlled with. https://store.lightorama.com/products/servodog You can download the manuals from the LOR site for reference. Lights could be controlled by dumb: CMB 24 (there is a flood package, but they are only rain proof (you can control up to 24 relays, ungroup the RGB port setting) Smart: Pixies, and a whole bunch more

First, thank you for letting me join this forum. I am looking to build a small musical fountain in my backyard which would consist of 8 servo operated nozzles (controlling the direction of the spray) and 32 fixed jets (shooters). I came across this idea and LOR by watching videos produced by Grant’s Fountain Channel on YouTube. His latest “version 6” fountain project utilizes DC motor water pumps, previous versions utilized AC fountain pumps. my questions: What DC pumps is he using for Version 6? What hardware is he using to control them? many thanks! Tony

Thanks Jim you are and are always a great help

If you look at the item on the site you will see the Genius name right there on the board. https://store.lightorama.com/collections/aurora-core-controller/products/aurora-core-e1-31-controller-board-only So yes, there was some collaboration on the product.

Correct on wiring the input ports on the CTB. I have never used an input on a CTB, but at least on the InputPup, you can set it to be Normally Open or Normally Closed in the settings in the Hardware Utility. The CTB may be the same. As far as what devices to trigger the input. I currently have six inputs that are used every night during the year round landscape lighting. They are: 1) A light sensor that detect that it is dark in order to start the show - more on that later. 2) A magnetic door switch that is on my front door. 3 - 5) IR light beams (similar to what a store might have to detect that someone can in our out the door) in different places to detect a person walking up my walkway or approaching the front porch. 6) A light sensor that detects that the sun is coming up in order to stop the show - more on that later. The IR light beams I bought on Amazon. There are many similar products available. The ones that I used have a form C relay contact output so I can hook them up to be either NO or NC. The light sensors are a CdS cell that drives an OpAmp circuit that detects the change in resistance of the CdS cell to provide a solid voltage change to drive the InputPup . One of the things I did in the OpAmp circuit is to include time damping so a momentary change would not trigger the InputPup. That is particularly important for the Sun up detector since I don't want a random light to turn off the show.

This board seems to be a rebranded genius 16 or genius pro16 controller board. https://experiencelights.com/16-output-pixel-genius-controller.

Hi Jim, I took a look at the CTB manual, if I understand correctly, I have to use the GND and one of the 3 inputs (1 - 2 - 3) as a normal NO. Examples for using the 3 inputs please, just to give me an idea of the usage, do you all have much more sharing and ideas???? Always thanks to you and everyone.

Some controllers allow splitting a RGB channel group between universes and some will not. LOR S6 software can handle either of those situations. If you are dealing with a controller that can not handle a RGB channel group split between two universes, then you need to set the max channel setting in the Preview Editor to 170 as Don mentioned above. In that case, the 171st pixel will all get moved to the beginning of the next universe. However if your controller can handle a RGB channel group that is spit between two universes, you can set the max channel in the Preview Editor to 512 channels and in that case, the red and green of the 171st pixel will be in the first universe and the blue will be the first channel of the second universe. The image below shows part of the Prop Definition page for my P5 matrix. The matrix is 64 rows of 192 pixels for a total of 72 universes with all 512 channels in use for each universe. If you look at the first row (and do a little math), you will see that the 192 pixels (576 channels) uses 512 channels from Universe 201 and 64 channels from Universe 202. If your browser does not imbed the image, there is a direct link to it below. As I recall, the falcon controllers can handle an RGB channel group that is split between two universes. http://newburghlights.org/images/Preview-Editor_P5-extract.png

@steve synek - Nothing can handle more than 170 RGB Pixels per Universe. Port, yes, Universe No. The software is doing what it's supposed to do, based on the DMX standard. 170 Pixels times 3 = 510 channels in the Universe. (The DMX standard only allowed 512 channels in a universe.) So the 171st pixel is then placed on the next available universe. Configure a prop to use the pixels it is going to use. If it uses 200 pixels, then you'd configure it so that it spans over 2 DMS universes. You'd then configure your Falcon so that the Universes for the Prop are on the right port.

I am just starting my upgrade from s4 to s6 . I know my falcon controller can handle more than 170 pixels per port/ universe for some props I am creating with seed pixels. I am struggling with how to put these in the new preview. Does anyone have a direction to help me figure out the channel assignments as soon as I get to 170 it changes the last channels to the next universe when I choose DMX as the controller type.