just lost power to 8 channels

[Max-Paul]

Ditto a vet tells you so. But I'll ask you this. What is the voltage difference between a car and your house voltage? Note higher voltages can jump further.

[shookemup]

Thanx gents found the the fuse to be the issue and relabeled the cords. Works 5.0

[George Simmons]

Yes, because in the few milliseconds as you plug something in, there's a considerable load on the circuit.

You usually don't see it, but the components do and may fail because of overload.

It's not like your household circuit, which has ample power and surges aren't so noticeable.

So, it's best to dim all channels of a controller (or turn it off) before you plug your lighting load in.

Speaking from experience.

I don't mean to sound ignorant, but we're talking Christmas lights here, not one of the turbines at Hoover Dam. How much of load on the circuit could there possibly be in the first few milliseconds when a string of lights is plugged into a controller? And if there WAS an overload, say a newbie who hasn't read the instructions tries to pull 12 amps through a given circuit, wouldn't those fast-acting ceramic fuses which are there for that very reason protect any delicate circuitry?

What, exactly, was the experience of which you speak, if I may ask?

I've been plugging things into powered controllers for five seasons now - literally thousands of things plugged in - and I've never yet experienced any negative results, except for one time when a cord got wrapped around my ankle and I wound up flat on my ass. Nor have I ever before read or heard anything even remotely similar to needing to power down controllers to plug things in. Can you cite a source for this information so I can educate myself further?

Thanks Ken.

[shfr26]

I'm curious, if you had your cords labeled wrong, how did you get your display to look right?? If 5 is not 5, how did you get your sequences to look right??

[Orville]

I'm curious, if you had your cords labeled wrong, how did you get your display to look right?? If 5 is not 5, how did you get your sequences to look right??

I sort of suspected that could be, but gave them the benefit that wasn't the case since they had siad they had been working previously.

So I'd love to know the answer to that question too, especially when I've made an error and programmed the wrong channel and is quite noticable immediately to me. I just couldn't fathom how one could plug in half of one set of channels to the opposite side of the controller. Even during testing in the HWU, you'd see that error immediately since those channels would not be moving in sequence with the HWU testing.

So I just can't see how you could even come close to doing installing that many dangles to the incorrect channel and not notice it, again, especially during testing!

[Orville]

I don't mean to sound ignorant, but we're talking Christmas lights here, not one of the turbines at Hoover Dam. How much of load on the circuit could there possibly be in the first few milliseconds when a string of lights is plugged into a controller? And if there WAS an overload, say a newbie who hasn't read the instructions tries to pull 12 amps through a given circuit, wouldn't those fast-acting ceramic fuses which are there for that very reason protect any delicate circuitry?

What, exactly, was the experience of which you speak, if I may ask?

I've been plugging things into powered controllers for five seasons now - literally thousands of things plugged in - and I've never yet experienced any negative results, except for one time when a cord got wrapped around my ankle and I wound up flat on my ass. Nor have I ever before read or heard anything even remotely similar to needing to power down controllers to plug things in. Can you cite a source for this information so I can educate myself further?

Thanks Ken.

Not as long as you George, but I haven't had any issues either in the 3+ years I've been doing this either.

I mean, if that's the case, then shouldn't we also be turning off circuit breakers to outlets in the house, or to the outside outlets before we plug anything into them? Honestly, just doesn't make any rhyme or reason.

Although I always do plug things in to a powered controller, but the channel may not yet be programmed in a sequence when I do.

I, too, would like to know what the person experienced or did that may have created a problem and what problem or damage happened to the controller?

Edited December 14, 2012 by Orville

[Ken Benedict]

George/Orville -

It's not the controller that needs to be unplugged before changing things, but the CHANNELS on the controller need to be off.

Plugging into a power outlet that is fully on will result in a short-term (several microseconds) high current situation with incandescent or tungsten lights.

Not so much with LEDs.

It's known as Hot-swapping or Hot-plugging.

I repair a lot of light dimmer circuits in the theatre community where the triacs (dimmer components) were damaged by turning that circuit full on and plugging a theatre light into it. The short-term load is 5-10 times the actual current of the light when running steady. These quick loads can usually be prevented by the quick-acting fuses, but some may get by.

I've been making good money repairing these hot-swapped dimmers. And I let the customers know the right way is to bring that dimmer circuit down defore you plug lights into it. Then bring it up. Theatres usually pre-heat their lights to 5-10 percent before using them for a show, but that doesn't usually apply to Christmas decorations.

Christmas lights don't often encounter this surge because of the small load; a string of 100 mini lights is about 1/3 of an amp.

My display last year was a piano keyboard with 96 strings of 100 mini lights each, drawing 32 amps fully on, during the musical crescendos. Using two of the CTB16PC controllers spread over two circuits, it came close to tripping the breaker at startup, but was OK when fully on.

I'm just bringing this up because SOMETIMES people put a large load on a single channel and it may cause problems if the channel is fully on.