5 volt 12 volt how interchangable?

[jerrymac]

By mistake unfortunately I found out. (short answer NOT AT ALL)

I have 12 volt dumb strips and 5 volt smart strings for various ites. Using a E681 of course you can use both 5 and 12 volt on the same controller (when split properly).

After Christmas tear down, I put my 6 foot pixel tree up inside for testing. I use two ATX power supply's with Seasonal Entertainments power supply breakout boards (works great), BUT....... since both 5 volt and 12 volt outputs are easily accessible I unfortunately applied 5 volts to one half of the E681 and 12 volts to the other half of the E681 (of course OK in itself). Since my tree is 16 strings of 5 volt smart pixels with each string on one connector, my DUMMY factor over powered 1/2 of the tree (12 volts to 8 strings of 5 volt smart pixels).

Well no fire or smoke but lost most of the 6 strings, (each string now lights with what ever color they want pixel by pixel or not at all). are now unfunny looking uncontrollable little blinky things. At first I spent some time trying to find out why my E681 was failing, And the pixels would come on as soon as I powered up the 681. Then lightning hit me, Hast has made WASTE !

UUURRRGGGGHHHH !!!!!

Point is these strings are NOT tolerant of over power and if you have both (or all three) power items be VERY VERY careful when hooking up and especially when re-connecting something you already have used (probably the MOST likely error situation).

Letting the magic smoke out is NOT a fun exercise.

BE CAREFUL or breakout the debit card.

[thevikester]

Thanks for the useful tip at your expense. For those of us new to RGB, the constant reading of these forums and tutorials can save us alot of money by not duplicating the huh..."errors" of others. So thanks for sharing!

[Dave H1]

This reinforces the need for a labeling system or color coding of pixel connectors. The days of me spray painting the string color on the male/female plugs may be waining to the pixel, however, I know I will be using both 5v & 12v for 2013.

Been thinking that an alternate color Cat 5e cable would designate the voltage.

[WilliamS]

Great bulletin Jerry. The other way around may not have done any damage. The resistors are not capable of bleeding off that much power when you jam 12v down a 5v volt string. It can be expensive to learn this way but still were only human.

[edvas69]

Have you tried removing the first 2 pixels from the string because if they are just flickering now it may be more the fact that the output of the first pixel and possibly the input of the second pixel has been fried, worth a try anyway.

[jerrymac]

Have you tried removing the first 2 pixels from the string because if they are just flickering now it may be more the fact that the output of the first pixel and possibly the input of the second pixel has been fried, worth a try anyway.

I've marked those that are acting poorly (on all the time or missing one of the three base colors), and am going to cut them out of the strings as well as those were no pixels light beyond that pixel and see if the rest will work properly (ordered but have not yet received a stand alone 2811 tester (very small push button controller) to use for testing pixels. Connecting, strating up controller, accessing web page, changing test mode, turning off 681, unplugging string etc, etc..etc is a REAL pain for testing. Hopefully this little pixel controller will work and make the process a lot quicker and less complicated.

By the way the admission of my" DUMB GUY" post was to re-enforce to all "check before you power up" any time you have changed power connectors even after you checked twice when you changed the connection and most of all STOP AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE DOING !,

[Greg]

Jerry,

That sucks.... I was woried about doing the same thing so much this season I used two different Molex connectors for each kind of strip that way I didn't inadvertently hook up the wrong strings. As soon as I finish this post I will also be making a not to stick on the controller so I don't forget for next year.

[Crazydave]

This reinforces the need for a labeling system or color coding of pixel connectors. The days of me spray painting the string color on the male/female plugs may be waining to the pixel, however, I know I will be using both 5v & 12v for 2013.

Been thinking that an alternate color Cat 5e cable would designate the voltage.

This year I devised a color coding for my cat5 for data:

Green = LOR signal

Grey = e1.31 signal

So far.... all my pixels are 12v and use white connectors but for when I do plan to add 5v ...those will use black connectors