Tim Fischer Posted December 1, 2007 Posted December 1, 2007 Other than my X10 woes, my show ran perfectly last night. I was expecting it to do so again today.Then Cathy came inside after taking the dog out, and told me a channel on our arch fence was on. Knot in Tim's stomach commences... Tim turns off the show controller (which was playing holiday music with no lights at the time) -- channel stays on. It's still snowing, so the two of us go out, brush off the controller box, open it up -- and the board is covered with a light mist of snow. OUCH.I've used these enclosures for years with no issues. This particular enclosure and board are brand new this year (I bought the board 2 years ago but never used it yet...) We're in the process of drying off the board to see how bad it is.Obviously the show will NOT go on tonight. And without a 16-channel board, maybe not for awhile. Cross your fingers and say a prayer for us if you would... I'm feeling quite sick right now.Dan -- once I troubleshoot the board, I might be contacting you with for help with diagnosing the damage... But lets hope it works perfectly once it dries and I won't have to (hey, a guy can hope, can't he?? -Tim
Tim Fischer Posted December 1, 2007 Author Posted December 1, 2007 UPDATE:The good news is that after drying and testing the board, only Channel #2 is bad (the original one we saw stuck on). It is still stuck on...Now I'd like to determine if this is a triac, an opto, or something else blown... Can anyone give me some pins to probe with my meter to see (it's a CTB-16D)? If it's a triac, I'll try to get that swapped out by tomorrow night. If it's something else, I'll have to limp along without that channel (painful, since it's a segment of our arch fence...)I'm also sending this to LOR support, but if anyone else can help before they do, that would be awesome.All my other controllers are powered down until I can inspect them for snow infilteration...-Tim
Tim Fischer Posted December 1, 2007 Author Posted December 1, 2007 You aren't gonna believe this...Upon further inspection (and figuring out which triac on the CB actually drove channel number 2, I found a small hair of wire sitting across the triac. I removed said wire hair, and channel 2 now works :DI have no idea what caused it to happen tonight. Possibly the moisture combined with the stray wire hair combined to cause the "perfect storm" (to use today's most overused phrase...).Now I have to figure out how to solve the snow infilteration problem... But my board is safe...PRAISE GOD!!!At least I only lost one night of display. It's been snowing anyway and our street isn't even plowed, so I don't think anyone will think too much of our being off...-Tim
fire_paramedic Posted December 1, 2007 Posted December 1, 2007 Thats crazy, who would have thought. Guess alot of these things can be afftected by the slightest electronic wire bridge, be it spiders, water or what ever. glad you found the cause and are back up and running with no major damage.
Robin Posted December 1, 2007 Posted December 1, 2007 Glad to hear it is working Tim.I can tell you how to solve the snow problem.MOVE TO FLORIDA!!!!
Guest wbottomley Posted December 1, 2007 Posted December 1, 2007 Or North Carolina mountains. We used to get plenty of snow... but now, maybe flurries. I remember the super storm of 1993 we got 48".
Brad Bilger Posted December 1, 2007 Posted December 1, 2007 Move to Texas.. we got no idea what snow is in this part of the state.. The only piles of stuff around here are Brown :shock:
Push Eject Posted December 1, 2007 Posted December 1, 2007 That'll teach Cathy to take the dog out.Charlie
medman2000 Posted December 2, 2007 Posted December 2, 2007 Ugh Tim! Glad it turned out ok. It's 3am, I'm still trying to finish a few things before hitting "play" on the entire show hopefully in the next hour or so. My wife did give me one bit of advice before she went to bed... if something ends up not working, change our LED "tune to" sign to read "What else did you expect after this kind of a storm? Wanna help?"
Tim Fischer Posted December 2, 2007 Author Posted December 2, 2007 medman2000 wrote: change our LED "tune to" sign to read "What else did you expect after this kind of a storm? Wanna help?"Yeah, I figured not too many people would be surprised to not find us lit last night. Even though it would have been really pretty...There wasn't a lot of traffic even on the semi-busy "collector" road we are off of last night, so I don't think too many people were out and about...-Tim
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