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Triac issues (lots of them)


Spectacular Lighting

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Robert,

 

I have more than enough spare Triacs for Gen2 CTB16PC controllers laying around.  You are welcome to them if you need them.  I'm local to you, we could meet up or I can drop them in the mail if like.

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Uncle Al,

If you could spare ONE...that would be great :-)  Be happy to reimburse you as well. Unfortunately my schedule is kind of crazy this week, even though I am on Winter Break (band director over here in Fayette County School System). If you could mail it...I will send you money back ;-)

 

[adress removed by moderator and sent as a PM to Uncle Al.] Never a good idea to put real addresses or real emails in a public forum.  

 

Thanks so much!!!

Robert

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Hi everyone,

I have two channels that are going to 50%, usually after it rains.  But I've read the posts and here is the kicker; I removed both unit (they are on two separate units) and put them on the bench and the problem disappeared.  But then the next time it rained or got significantly wet, they went to 50% again.  Both channels are all incand. bulbs and have a load of about 2amps each.  I did not try them on the bench again as I had spare channels and during the show did not want to remove the boxes again. I have many controllers, but these two channels are on units that I bought last summer.  No other units have exhibited this type of failure.  Is this the reset issue?  I did open a ticket with LOR and had them send me some triacs.  I will replace this now that the shows are over in order to get ready for next year.  Any comments?

Tom

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Tom, you might want to try the 'reverse the polarity' trick DevMike mentioned in comment #76. I believe it has solved several issues matching your description (but not all of them).

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Thanks rwertz,

I'll give that a try.  I did use different loads (all incond.); no leds were used on either of these channels. As a matter of fact, all channels on both units were incond. lights.  I use a mixture of both leds and incond in my light display, but these units had incond.  I will give that a try. 

Tom

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Wanted to give a update on the cards that I had problems with. Bench tested flip power, checked connection and reset controllers. Nothing cleared so took board out of 8 controllers and sent the to LOR for repairs. Got them back and have installed all 8 this morning and tested and now back at 100% on those cards. Did have to replace one of them while at LOR as two channels could not be repaired but got a great deal and special thanks to LOR and staff for the great work they did in getting them packaged up and back to me. Support is top notch and looking forward to great things from LOR this year. Dan thanks for taking time with me on the phone in getting LOR setup on a stand alone machine. LOR rocks !!

Jeff

Edited by Jeff Messer
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LOR has always been top notch when it comes to support.  I haven't had many problems but when I do, I know I can count on LOR. For me too, Thanks Dan and All at LOR!

Tom

 

Jeff

Did they identify any specific problems or things that we can watch out for? 

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No, Just repair and sent back ready to work. I know I may have caused a couple of them as it rains on the show I let it play. Many times I have found a bad buld setting in water and this is not a good thing. I have at least 6 LOR boxes channels just laying on the ground. I will have spare this year so not to worried now.

Jeff

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  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...

Just to add a bit of information about triacs (and in general ALL transistor type power products).

 

The Triac's are NOT, I repeat, NOT, LOR's fault, there are companies in the far-east that make "knock-off" components, yes that's right "Clone" parts, they are sub-standard at best, and unless tested to destruction, there is no way of knowing, the clones are "THAT GOOD" (view wise, NOT electrically wise).

 

Is this LOR's Fault ???? NO, I repeat NO !

 

Suppliers that LOR buy from (including ME and many others,) get product from, in turn the supplier sources the components for us, where THEY (the supplier) gets them from is the issue, heck, even the supplier doesn't know most of the time if it's real or a clone.

 

I've dealt with Triacs and power Transistors for over 40 years, the quality is there, IF, you get the real parts.

 

Greg

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  • 6 months later...

I'm fairly new at understanding all of these issues, but seem to have the same failure issues as others here.  My controller that has problems is a gen 2 unit.  I have a couple of channels that stick on occasionally but reset when the next song begins.  My biggest puzzle is I have about 40 strings of lights that run along the large rocks on the edge of my ditch.  When my show is off, these lights continue to glow dimly.  This is the first year this has happened.  I also had a GFCI that was tripping to this controller, so maybe i do have a path to ground, but that would not explain why these lights are staying on when the power to the show (not the controller)is off.  LOR suggested I try plugging a incandescent bulb in to drain the load.  This seemed to work only for certain strings.  With the show off I plugged in a string to see if it would drain the excess voltage off.  It did but then came right back on when I unplugged the incandescent string.  Now to my limited understanding this seems to indicate that a low level of power is being feed through the triac into the strings of lights.  I tried plugging the incandescents into a tri-tap where the power leg exited the controller, but it was not effective.  The incandescents never lit up, so the power involved is very low.  I don't want to have to put a snubber on every single string. Has anyone else found an effective way to deal with this? 

 

If this is a triac issue, how difficult is replacing a triac for a non-electronic guy like me?

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Have you checked that hot and neutral to the controller are not reversed? Just the current that is allowed to leak without tripping a GFCI can light up a LED string pretty bright.

If that is not it, and you do have a tiny leak through the controller, nothing says for sure that it is the triac, and not contamination on the board. If adding some resistive load helps, I would recommend building a set of phantom load plugs and using them as needed. We have several hundred, as we have 80 channels that simply won't dim correctly without them, another 80 that usually won't dim when wet without them, and other intermittent issues, that usually go away with adding a half watt of resistive load.

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I've read a couple of posts about Triac's and I'm not an electronic type person, but what are Triac's? What happens to the controller and the lights? Is the word Triac short for tracking?Just a short answer if you can.  Thank you.

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In my troubleshooting i discovered that a factory made extension cord had it's wires crossed giving me reversed polarity on that controller.  I replaced the cord with a properly wired extension cord and everything cleared up.

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