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Wrong channels turning on and off


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Ok, I kind of get it. I don't know anything about electrical stuff, but I manage to get all my stuff on one cicuit. :laughing:

So to understand this, you get this problem when the LEFT side of the board is on one phase, and the RIGHT side of the board is on the other? So different controllers can be on different phases, just not the same board?

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contactmike1 wrote:

Ok, I kind of get it. I don't know anything about electrical stuff, but I manage to get all my stuff on one cicuit. :laughing:

So to understand this, you get this problem when the LEFT side of the board is on one phase, and the RIGHT side of the board is on the other? So different controllers can be on different phases, just not the same board?

Correct. You can plug one box into the same circuit with no problem. If you plug both plugs into differant circuits, both the left side and the right side have be be in phase with each other, otherwise your controller does all sorts of weird stuff.. (enough to cause heart failure)
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I use curcuits coming off of two different circuit panels so I cannot just look at the circuit panel to tell whether two circuits are in or out of phase. I found that the following works to test two circuits, however I am not an electrician:

If you cannot tell whether two circuits are in phase or out of phase you can test them using a volt meter. Take one leg of the volt meter and insert it into the hot side of circuit one. Take the second leg of the volt meter and insert it into the hot side of circuit two. If the volt meter reads somewhere around 220 volts, then the two circuits are not in phase. If the volt meter reads zero, then the two circuits are in phase (which is what you want).

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Problems resolved! My show is up and running!

After reading everyone's inputs to my thread I went back to basics and checked everything: power cables, light strings, control boxes, my wiring diagram from the ground up.

First, I made sure both power input cables to each unit were plugged into the same 20 amp outlet. Thanks for the tip Brad.

Next, my problem of lights turning on when there was supposedly no power to the control box was the result of some lights being routed to the wrong unit, even though I checked them before. Adding to this problem was a less than 100% correct wiring diagram which I used to connect wires to my boxes and develop my channel settings. As to how this diagram error happened, I'm pleading the 5th.

Finally, I discovered a blown fuse on one side of unit 02. I root caused this down to having too many C9 lights (8 strings over 4 channels) on one side of the controller. I moved 4 of the strings to the other side of the unit to balance it out and replaced the fuse.

I went back to my pc, opened the HW utility............Euraka! We have lights on all 32 channels.

Thank you to everyone who replied back to me from this LOR board and thanks to the support guys at LOR.

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Thanks for the great discussion and talk of the "phase" issues. I had no idea this would affect things and was still having channels stick here and there or just do weird random things, even after upgrading to the latest firmware/software. I found this topic and just swapped a few plugs around and boom... all fixed. THANKS!

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