Controller Problem - Not working.

[Guest guest]

EDIT: This is a CTB16PC controller V4.40 is what it said before the LOR HWU could no longer find it. Purchased sometime between or around January-Februrary 2010.

Okay, first time I've ever had a problem with a controller,

First the LOR HWU wouldn't find it, then it would, opened the box up to check and it was getting power, it would allow me to turn on the lights connected to it, but within 5 minutes or less, it would shut off all lights and still show a steady red LED showing power was still at the controller.

So I tried resetting the controller removing power, removing all Cat 5 cables and the jumper, plugged back in, unplugged, reconnected everything, unit is not resetting. Also now in the LOR HWU it is showing as an "unknown device ???", Tried to redownload firmware to it, but that did not work. EDIT2: The LOR HWU can no longer find the controller at all.

The power LED is now blinking, but not the normal blinking, it's quickly blinking off/on with very minimal in between time, that is it is almost not completely off, before it's back on. So shows power is still getting to it. But it won't turn on lights or anything now at all.

I did find some water inside the controller after a hard storm, the water was on top of the phone jack connection, which I dried off, inside and out.



Any ideas how to get this controller working again?

Or is it going to have to go back to LOR for service?

I hope not as it is (or was supposed to be) one of the controllers in my Halloween display that was to start on 10/1/2011. But if it's gone by the way of needing service, I'm going to have to figure out how to redo some things.

2 days before showtime and I have to have a controller go out and no spare available!

[jimswinder]

Orville wrote:

I did find some water inside the controller after a hard storm, the water was on top of the phone jack connection, which I dried off, inside and out.

How exactly did you "dry it off"?

I used a hair dryer and let it sit for about 30 minutes and mine started working again...

[-klb-]

1) Make sure your jumper is on the 2nd row of pins. The fast blink sounds like it does not think it has a jumper there.

2) look for any signs of corrosion on the board from water. Where, and how bad may affect the outlook.

3) I've rescued one board that was wet for several hours, and had light signs of electrolytic corrosion several places, mostly around the triacs. I wound up washing it in denatured alcohol, and letting dry completely before restoring power. I've read reports of people adding a scrub with a soft bristle brush to the alcohol wash.

[magish01]

Might try covering the board in rice..works great for getting last moisture out of a wet cellphone. But make sure you get all the rice kernels off the board before you start it up.

[Steven]

I'm not saying it was a good idea, but when one of my controller boards got wet and stopped working, I sprayed it with WD40, which I assumed (from the name) would displace the water.

It didn't work immediately, but when I let the board sit around inside the garage for a couple of days, it started working again.

[EARLE W. TALLEY]

Orville, if worse comes to worse, I have a spare controller that you could use. All you have to do is pick it up and return it when you get yours fixed.

Earle

[jimswinder]

Last year, after having problems with moisture inside my enclosures, I put 1 packet of Damp-Rid inside each of my enclosures (as I have 4 boards per enclosure) and never had another problem...

http://www.damprid.com/

[Guest guest]

Thanks for the information folks.

Thanks for the offer Earl.

Currently I was fortunate that between the remaining 4 controllers I still had 16 open circuits to utilize, so moved those items fron Controller #01 to the other 4 controllers.

Now I just have the headache of making a new sequence with the new config file, then copying from the original sequence and pasting into the new sequence file.

Already got 9 of my 30+ songs copied, so I'm not really looking forward to doing all this, but the shows got to go on.

Thankfully copy and pasting is a *lot* easier than having to start over from scratch!

Will let you folks know if or when the controller starts working again.

Oh, the water was just a blob on top of the Cat5/phone connector, didn't find or see any anywhere else inside the controller. I thought maybe that little bit of water had gotten into the open phone jack and was causing the issue. Still trying to figure out how that one small bubble of water got in there in the first place???

[Steven]

Orville wrote:

Now I just have the headache of making a new sequence with the new config file, then copying from the original sequence and pasting into the new sequence file.

You do know you can do that in several less steps by creating and importing a new config file, right?

[Guest guest]

Steven wrote:

Orville wrote:

Now I just have the headache of making a new sequence with the new config file, then copying from the original sequence and pasting into the new sequence file.

You do know you can do that in several less steps by creating and importing a new config file, right?

Steven, yes, but everytime I've imported a new config file like that it usually creates an even bigger mess of the sequence and then I have to Undo the import. So I've resorted the best way (for me anyway) is to just copy and paste from the original to the new one. Mainly because of the way I re-arranged things, the new config usually doesn't line up with the original config file.

One thing that bugs me with the S2 software is the fact I use a fixed timing grid of 15, but each time I use the new config, only the first track is set at 15, all the rest I have to set manually and doing this to 13-15 tracks every time is quite annoying after a while.

Anyone know how to make the config file save and import all tracks with a fixed timing grid?

I've tried everything I can think of, but maybe I'm missing something somewhere?

[Steven]

Orville wrote:

One thing that bugs me with the S2 software is the fact I use a fixed timing grid of 15, but each time I use the new config, only the first track is set at 15, all the rest I have to set manually and doing this to 13-15 tracks every time is quite annoying after a while.

It's not the fixed timing grid that causes this problem. This year I'm expanding from 5 tracks to 7 tracks. When I import the new config, the last two tracks get assigned to a timing grid with no timings. I think this may be a carryover from a previous version that didn't have separate timings.

[Guest guest]

Thanks for all the great info folks! Took down the controller and let it sit for a couple days as suggested, apparently it did get very wet inside, but I only saw one little drop on top of the cable connectors, so didn't think that that was the problem.

Well all is good, controller is back up and working fine. I think the water got in by human error, I have a feeling when I opened it to run the cat5 cable, I didn't full close the door and it rained that evening, which I think probably soaked it out.

Seems to be working perfectly, but since I already redid my sequences (cut back to 64 channels/4 controllers), I'm just going to relinquish this controller as a back up in case of any future issues.

Again thanks for all the great advice and tips, got it working again! Still gonna have to replace a Triac in controller 3 since it has one channel that stays constantly on at 75%. Will live with that until after the holidays and then send it back to LOR for them to verify, check and replace the offending component.

[jimswinder]

Orville wrote:

Seems to be working perfectly, but since I already redid my sequences (cut back to 64 channels/4 controllers), I'm just going to relinquish this controller as a back up in case of any future issues.

Hmmm...I would have created "new" ones from the old ones and then had two different sets...just in case you did get it working...

[Guest guest]

jimswinder wrote:

Orville wrote:

Seems to be working perfectly, but since I already redid my sequences (cut back to 64 channels/4 controllers), I'm just going to relinquish this controller as a back up in case of any future issues.

Hmmm...I would have created "new" ones from the old ones and then had two different sets...just in case you did get it working...

That is exactly what I did Jim. I still have the original sequences I created, along with the new ones that were copied and pasted from the original versions. So, yes, I do have two different sets.

So yes, I could put the controller back in service and reconnect it, just figured I'd keep it for a spare just in case I lose any other channels and would have to use it for "spare channels". Although I have enough lights and decor I could put out some more stuff, but may be pushing it. My display area is 6' deep x 60' long.


Here's a photo of part of the display area(center).



Attached files

[jimswinder]

Orville wrote:

My display area is 6' deep x 60' long.

and I thought I had a small area!!! lol

nice job...