Ray Wu Pixel Failures

[ryebred]

Is anyone else else experiencing a high rate of failure with Ray Wu pixels? I have 24 strings of smart pixels set up as an RGB mega tree and I had three failures out of the box. I had ordered two spare strings for this purpose so I cut out the bad pixels and soldered in pixels from the spare strings. I had everything working in my back yard for a month until last week when I had 4 pixels stop working. I fixed those and moved everything to my display in the front yard and noticed that two more pixels were not working. I fixed those and ran it for a couple of hours last night and three more pixels are misbehaving this morning.

 

My show is supposed to start in a couple days but I am worried with the high rate of failure. I am not sure I can make it through a month if I have to keep replacing pixels every day or two. I have sent a message to Ray as he said he had a year warrenty before I purchased the strings but we will see. I am not sure what the catalyst is for the failures. We had three days of rain two weeks ago and I did not run the pixels at all that whole week which is around when the failures started. However, I am getting new failures now and it has been dry for two weeks. These pixels are supposed to be rated for outdoor use so they should last longer than a month outdoors. I guess you get what you pay for when you order cheap from China.

[plasmadrive]

Are they the Technicolor pixels?  if so, turn your power supply down to about 8 volts if you can.

[thebaronn]

Is anyone else else experiencing a high rate of failure with Ray Wu pixels? I have 24 strings of smart pixels set up as an RGB mega tree and I had three failures out of the box. I had ordered two spare strings for this purpose so I cut out the bad pixels and soldered in pixels from the spare strings. I had everything working in my back yard for a month until last week when I had 4 pixels stop working. I fixed those and moved everything to my display in the front yard and noticed that two more pixels were not working. I fixed those and ran it for a couple of hours last night and three more pixels are misbehaving this morning.

 

My show is supposed to start in a couple days but I am worried with the high rate of failure. I am not sure I can make it through a month if I have to keep replacing pixels every day or two. I have sent a message to Ray as he said he had a year warrenty before I purchased the strings but we will see. I am not sure what the catalyst is for the failures. We had three days of rain two weeks ago and I did not run the pixels at all that whole week which is around when the failures started. However, I am getting new failures now and it has been dry for two weeks. These pixels are supposed to be rated for outdoor use so they should last longer than a month outdoors. I guess you get what you pay for when you order cheap from China.

I purchased 4000 5V 2811 pixels from Ray in October 2012. Up until the Easter show this year I only had to replace 5 pixels....

 

Well this year, yikes!!

 

When I brought out the pixels in september 2013, I had to replace 3 and I was jumping for joy. Then over the course of the wind banging the prop against the house, i had to replace 7 more before the Halloween show. After Halloween the power was off until Nov 22nd and when I turned them on, I was in shock. 15 bad pixels. So last night I replaced 15 pixels 25 ft in the air (I can hike on a cliff hundreds of feet up, but on a ladder I am not too confident....) and all seemed well. This morning I leave for work......One more bad pixel... Awesome!!

 

Granted, these pixels have had a hard life:

1. They were originally pressed through coro last year.

2. Outside for 6 months

3. Thrown into my garage cause I am so lazy.

4. They were pressed out of the old coro, then pressed into the new coro. (gently is not a word I would use to describe the process)

 

I guess I only have a 1% failure rate. But it is very time consuming. And I am lazy, I don't even solder them anymore.

 

I feel your pain!

[Rhyph]

Are they the Technicolor pixels?  if so, turn your power supply down to about 8 volts if you can.

Why 8 volts? Another thread going says 10 volts. What is correct? Where is this voltage information coming from? I just want understand it before I mess with my voltages :-)

[plasmadrive]

Because the regulator that is failing only needs 2 volts headroom to regulate. The reaso for 8v is to allow another volt for drop on the wire length.

This will cut the power dissipation down a lot.

[ryebred]

Are they the Technicolor pixels?  if so, turn your power supply down to about 8 volts if you can.

 

I have 1300 of the 5V 2811 pixels like thebaronn has. I am also using two of Ray's 5V 60 amp power supplies.

[sysco]

Check out the aussie form  there is some others having problems to

[plasmadrive]

I have 1300 of the 5V 2811 pixels like thebaronn has. I am also using two of Ray's 5V 60 amp power supplies.

5v should be ok.. the 12v ones are the problem children..

[ryebred]

I purchased 4000 5V 2811 pixels from Ray in October 2012. Up until the Easter show this year I only had to replace 5 pixels....

 

Well this year, yikes!!

 

I guess I only have a 1% failure rate. But it is very time consuming. And I am lazy, I don't even solder them anymore.

 

I feel your pain!

 

If you have a string of pixels and one of them stops working, do all of the pixels after the burned out one light up white? This makes it easy for me to determine the problem pixel but I am wondering why everything afterwards is stuck on white.

[plasmadrive]

I would guess that if you power cycled the string none of them would be on.  But they maintain the last data that was sent to them if I remember correctly.. until you power them off

[thebaronn]

If you have a string of pixels and one of them stops working, do all of the pixels after the burned out one light up white? This makes it easy for me to determine the problem pixel but I am wondering why everything afterwards is stuck on white.

Yes, the dead pixel is out and every pixel after is solid white.

Although some people say it is impossible for that to happen with 2811s......

Last year no one believed my so i had to post a video. http://doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/showthread.php?25249-BAD-Pixels

I have never had a bad 2811 square pixel that didn't turn the rest white. (I would probably never notice, lol!)

[plasmadrive]

I have had some bad 2812Bs and I have had two things happen.  From the bad pixel on they flickered and from the bad pixel on they would just not work.  I have not had one turn the rest white.  But it can surely happen.

[thebaronn]

Here is picture of the issues. (the dark area is in issue with the text patterns on the E682, the last 3 universes will not light)

http://doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=21642&d=1385930552

It will only allow me to upload a 39kb photo......not much help

[ryebred]

 

And I am lazy, I don't even solder them anymore.

 

 

How are you joining your pixels together without solder? A crimp on connector? Right now it takes me about 10 minutes to cut out the bad pixel, solder, and heat up the heat shrink tube around the newly soldered wire. Cutting that down to a minute or two would help at the rate I have had to replace pixels.

[thebaronn]

How are you joining your pixels together without solder? A crimp on connector? Right now it takes me about 10 minutes to cut out the bad pixel, solder, and heat up the heat shrink tube around the newly soldered wire. Cutting that down to a minute or two would help at the rate I have had to replace pixels.

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Ideal-Twister-Direct-Burial-Wire-Connectors-10-Pack-30-760/100140704

I use the cheap versions. But you get the idea. Soldering 6 wires/bad pixel is not my idea of time well spent.

I imagine I am reducing the over life in some way (they do get water in there) but at the rate I swap out props, nothing is together more than one season. Hope this helps!

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Ideal-Twister-Direct-Burial-Wire-Connectors-10-Pack-30-760/100140704

I use the cheap versions. But you get the idea. Soldering 6 wires/bad pixel is not my idea of time well spent.

I imagine I am reducing the over life in some way (they do get water in there) but at the rate I swap out props, nothing is together more than one season. Hope this helps!

"overall life"

[jerryb721]

I also have problems with the Ray WU pixels I bought this year. Thirteen strands 100 nodes per strand DC12V WS2811 chip and 6 of them out of the bag were bad.

Ray sent 6 replacements and 3 were bad. Several was the first pixel worked and after that all white, some 1/4 strand worked rest out.

I had not sent the 6 bad strands back so I used them to cut and splice replacement nodes. Each time I think I'm done a couple more fail.

Spent the entire Sunday cutting and soldering last weekend. Very time consuming soldering and heat shrinking each wire, but the good news is my soldering is improving.

 

Since it could either the one you suspect or the one before it I started replacing 3 nodes at a time (the one before, the bad one and the one after) to make sure.

I have them up now but randomly strands are out of sync by a pixel or two. I wonder if turning down the voltage would help?

These are not the Technicolor ones.

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/DC12V-WS2811-chip-full-color-led-smart-pixel-node-100pcs-a-string-with-all-black-cable/701799_785233760.html

[plasmadrive]

I also have problems with the Ray WU pixels I bought this year. Thirteen strands 100 nodes per strand DC12V WS2811 chip and 6 of them out of the bag were bad.

Ray sent 6 replacements and 3 were bad. Several was the first pixel worked and after that all white, some 1/4 strand worked rest out.

I had not sent the 6 bad strands back so I used them to cut and splice replacement nodes. Each time I think I'm done a couple more fail.

Spent the entire Sunday cutting and soldering last weekend. Very time consuming soldering and heat shrinking each wire, but the good news is my soldering is improving.

 

Since it could either the one you suspect or the one before it I started replacing 3 nodes at a time (the one before, the bad one and the one after) to make sure.

I have them up now but randomly strands are out of sync by a pixel or two. I wonder if turning down the voltage would help?

These are not the Technicolor ones.

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/DC12V-WS2811-chip-full-color-led-smart-pixel-node-100pcs-a-string-with-all-black-cable/701799_785233760.html

YES.. turn it down...   http://forums.lightorama.com/index.php?/topic/29539-anyone-here-order-12vdc-2811-technicolor-pixels-from-wu/

[ryebred]

On the one hand it is a minor relief to see others experiencing the same difficulty. You always wonder when things like this happen if it is something in your setup that is causing the issue. The fact that it worked fine for me for a month and then all of a sudden stopped working with no setup change is suspicious though.

 

Unfortunately, I have the 5V pixels so I don't think turning down the voltage will help like it does with the 12V strings.

 

Do you guys leave your controllers and strings powered up all the time or do you shut it down at the end of the night after the show? I was shutting it down but noticed new failures when I turned it back on so I left it on last night to see if that made a difference but I had a new strand locked on white when I woke up this morning along with another that I didn't have time to repair last night.

[thebaronn]

On the one hand it is a minor relief to see others experiencing the same difficulty. You always wonder when things like this happen if it is something in your setup that is causing the issue. The fact that it worked fine for me for a month and then all of a sudden stopped working with no setup change is suspicious though.

 

Unfortunately, I have the 5V pixels so I don't think turning down the voltage will help like it does with the 12V strings.

 

Do you guys leave your controllers and strings powered up all the time or do you shut it down at the end of the night after the show? I was shutting it down but noticed new failures when I turned it back on so I left it on last night to see if that made a difference but I had a new strand locked on white when I woke up this morning along with another that I didn't have time to repair last night.

Last year I had 5 E682 boards (One 5V PS per board) running 3840 pixels and everything was on 24/7...

During Halloween I had 3K pixels over 3 Boards/4PS. I was turning them on for the show only.

Now I leave them on 24/7 because when I shut them down and turn them back on the fan makes this horrible noise. I smack it with a stick until the fan stops making the noise. I am sure the fans are going. But Im not really worried about heat. I know, very High Tech.

Besides i like leaving them on 24/7 cause you know right away if a pixel is bad. I can get home at 5am and see a bad pixel, fix it and then go to sleep. If nothing was on I probably wouldn't know until the weekend!

[Jeff Messer]

I bought around 24 strings of 100 12v flat nodes 2811's from Ray this year. Lost is 4 pixels to date and please with the show so far. The water proof connector got me because the water entered where the wire sticks out. This caused the first 20 pixels to burn white and rest flicker only on that string. Easy fix with contact spray!!!

 

Jeff