Only two days two go and one controller bit the dust?

[Rick Rademacher]

 For the last four years, I have added a new 16 port residential controller to my show. After the last two days of heavy rains in Ohio, my second oldest board stopped working, It controls the lights on my Kolb ultralight. Some of the bulbs are full of water.

 

After unplugging all of the lights from this controller, it will still blow a fuse at the power cord house fuse connection, If I unplug the rj45 lines to it, it doesn't blow the house fuse.

 

So, is the controller shot? Is there something I am missing or should be checked?

 

Thanks for any advise !

 

Rick

[Don]

This sounds like something that happened to me my first year, (and on Christmas night, no less.) I had incandescent flood lights that year. Water managed to get into the base of one of them. Whenever power was applied to that channel, it would blow the fuse. I forget the exact problem, but I want to say it was something to do with the triac. I could have this wrong, but it *was* something tied to one of the channels that was causing the problem.

 

See if the controller works with those channels disconnected that are/were attached to the bulbs that filled with water.

[Max-Paul]

Uh Don,

He states all lights removed and still blowing fuses. Yet if he removed the wires attached to the RJ-45 connectors the fuses no long pop.

 

Rick, you mention that the house fuses popping. Are you saying that you have an old house with a fuse panel, not a breaker panel and it is these fuses that are blowing? Not the fuses on the controller? Now you note that when you removed the Cat 5 cables from the RJ-45 jacks that the fuses no long pop. Ok, was there a show going on and thus data activity on the cables. Or was there no show and thus no activity on the cables? Activity might has still been turning on outputs from the controller. And if you have dongles there might have been a short in the dongle thus blowing fuses.

 

If no show and only stopped blowing fuses when cat5 cable removed. Then too deep for me, on the forum. Might need to send in to LOR to deal with it.

[dgrant]

If its just one of the fuses on the LOR board blowing, I'm thinking a shorted triac, thanks to the water in the socket base of whatever lamp or system connected to it. I am not an expert on the boards and I don't have a schematic for one so its just a guess

[Rick Rademacher]

Thanks for all of your help. The four year old fuse/breaker that blows is built into the outdoor receptacle that I use to power that controller. The computer is on but the show is not active. With nothing attached to the controller except power, everything seems ok. As soon as I plug in the rj45 lines, the fuse plows in the receptacle. Have a ticket into LOR for help and may send it in for repair to be ready for next year. If repair cost is too much might buy a new board as this one is three years old.