Steve Gardner Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 I was very excited to recieve my first CCR and couldn't wait to test it so I hooked it up and left the ribbon coiled up in the shipping box. As soon as I powered it on I was a little concerned to see random segments flashing throughout the strip, mostly green and blue. I thought something was wrong so I reset the controller and the random flashing still occured. I went ahead and ran through the demo steps included with the kit and everthing seemed to work properly except for the flashing. The flashing continued throughout the demo process. The flashing can even be seen while doing the power up self test. I reflashed the firmware and nothing changed. I was sure something was wrong with the system but I finally took it out of the box and uncoiled the CCR. Low and behold the random flashing went away.Has anyone else experienced this or can this be explained? Are the CCR's sensitive to self induced noise or some other external noise? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LightORamaJohn Posted October 4, 2010 Share Posted October 4, 2010 The ribbons are not subject to self-induced noise. The ribbon most likely has a bad connection somewhere that unrolling it pressed together. Before you mount it to anything, roll it up while it is powered up to see if you find a section that causes the bad behavior when flexed. It will probably have to be replaced, sorry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Gardner Posted October 6, 2010 Author Share Posted October 6, 2010 So, I have spent a couple hours trying to narrow down the problem and the best I can tell there seems to be a loose connection in the first pixel, maybe the lead in wires. The strange thing is, the flashing completely stops while I reflash the firmware and it starts flashing again as soon as the firmware update is complete. I guess that could be because the controller drops power to the ribbon during the firmware update? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nixay Posted October 7, 2010 Share Posted October 7, 2010 I actually had the same problem with one of my CCRs - the first pixel had a bad connection somewhere in it. Sometimes it would work perfectly, but most times the first pixel would be dead and the next couple of pixels would play up mainly with a flickering green. Sometimes when a sequence involving the whole ribbon was playing the whole ribbon would do random things, other times just the few pixels surrounding the problem pixel would play up.Tilting the first pixel from side to side revealed the flickering coming good at certain angles which confirmed to me a bad connection. In my case however, I only required 46 of the 50 pixels on that ribbon to fit my house, so I just cut the first 4 pixels out thereby eliminating the problem area.Like you, I did observe the problem first up while it was still coiled in the box, but I didn't know what was happening at that stage.Nixay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nixay Posted October 7, 2010 Share Posted October 7, 2010 Although, remember to power cycle the CCR between firmware flashing and unit ID changing etc. I keep forgetting to do that and it always has strange results!Nixay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Gardner Posted March 1, 2011 Author Share Posted March 1, 2011 Just to follow up on this, LOR replaced the ribbon but that did not fix the problem. When the ribbon was on the arch for Christmas it worked fine without the random flashing. I sent a video of the problem, which only happens while the ribbon is curled up, to LOR and they wanted the controller and ribbon back to investigate. No response yet but they did send me a new controller and ribbon and it works fine and does not flash when curled up like the other one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Gardner Posted March 1, 2011 Author Share Posted March 1, 2011 Just to follow up on this, LOR replaced the ribbon but that did not fix the problem. When the ribbon was on the arch for Christmas it worked fine without the random flashing. I sent a video of the problem, which only happens while the ribbon is curled up, to LOR and they wanted the controller and ribbon back to investigate. No response yet but they did send me a new controller and ribbon and it works fine and does not flash when curled up like the other one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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