ribbon stays on - e682

[alchrisr01]

I came home tonight and found leg 11 of my ribbon tree on all white. I tried to power cycle to see if that would work and no dice. I connected to the controller via the config page and ran through a couple test patterns with no changes. I checked the connections and found nothing obviously wrong, it was working fine last night. I have not swapped the ribbon as yet because visitors were waiting for the show to start so I just unplugged the ribbon for the night. I plan to troubleshoot more in the morning. My setup is basically 3 ribbons per cluster (50 pixels per/ ws2811) using connectors 1-3 on each cluster. Each cluster is setup as a dmx universe. Cluster 4 -1 dmx address is 1-150; 4-2 (bad) is 151-300; 4-3 is 301-450. My first step will be to swap another ribbon to 4-2 to see if the problem remains, if not then I will replace the ribbon (that stinks!). If the issue is still there my guess is a controller issue. Any suggestions on a fix if that is the case? If I understand the setup correctly, it would appear that I will need to re-adresss the controller cluster. Can I simply move the address string on 4-2 to the now empy 4-4? I gotta feeling this is not going to an easy fix..... Help is appreciated.

thanks,

chris

ps. The facebook link in my sig has a few videos shot by a visitor last year that are pretty good.

[k6ccc]

A string (or a portion of it) that is all white is usually an indication of a pixel failure.  Might be the first one that is white and might be the pixel prior to the first white one.  This is a somewhat a common failure mode for pixels.

[alchrisr01]

Would the ribbon be full on even with no show running? I have plenty of experiance with triac failures but this is new territory for me. I told my wife tonight that we seem to have had more failures this year than most.

thanks,

chris

[jerry72]

I have had 3 do that to me this year, turns out they were bad solder joints where i soldered an wire extension on to the Pixel String. The small heatshrinks i had were actually getting brittle and wreaked havoc. 

Would the ribbon be full on even with no show running? I have plenty of experiance with triac failures but this is new territory for me. I told my wife tonight that we seem to have had more failures this year than most.

thanks,
chris

Yes, see my other post. All 3 of mine were not do to the controller at all. Just swap connections to another output. If it stays white, and i assume you are using a wire extension, check the wiring at the connection.

[alchrisr01]

Thanks for the responses guys. These ribbons came from Ray Wu with the Sandevices extentions already attached, but that does not mean they didn't come loose. I will check everything in the morning. If the ribbon is bad I will just run the rest of the week down one leg on the tree. It is just too much work for a few more days. I can replace it after teardown next weekend.

[alchrisr01]

I got out this morning to start troubleshooting.  I started with the known bad ribbon connector and worked my way back from the controller looking for connection issues.When i unscrewed the "waterproof" pigtail it was full of water and had a bit of corrosion as well.  I cleaned it up and put in some dielectric grease and all is well in pixel tree land! I only have three connectors exposed to the elements, so for good measure i checked them (dry) and put in some dielectric as well.  Since most of us have dealt with considerable weather issues this year I also checked everything else.  Unfortunately I found my Rainbow flood enclosure had failed had quite a bit of water in it.  I have dried it out and am going to test the power supply when I find a fuse.  Hopefully it is not toast as i don't have a spare.

Hope all of your weather issues have been easy to deal with.

 

Chris

[jerry72]

I got out this morning to start troubleshooting.  I started with the known bad ribbon connector and worked my way back from the controller looking for connection issues.When i unscrewed the "waterproof" pigtail it was full of water and had a bit of corrosion as well.  I cleaned it up and put in some dielectric grease and all is well in pixel tree land! I only have three connectors exposed to the elements, so for good measure i checked them (dry) and put in some dielectric as well.  Since most of us have dealt with considerable weather issues this year I also checked everything else.  Unfortunately I found my Rainbow flood enclosure had failed had quite a bit of water in it.  I have dried it out and am going to test the power supply when I find a fuse.  Hopefully it is not toast as i don't have a spare.

Hope all of your weather issues have been easy to deal with.

 

Chris

I live on the Oregon coast, when i do my setup, every single plug gets a dose of dielectric grease. I have had only had 2 GFCI's trip., neither was from water.Seal yer floods with some good silicon. Did yer pixel string work after that?

[k6ccc]

I got out this morning to start troubleshooting.  I started with the known bad ribbon connector and worked my way back from the controller looking for connection issues.When i unscrewed the "waterproof" pigtail it was full of water and had a bit of corrosion as well.  I cleaned it up and put in some dielectric grease and all is well in pixel tree land! I only have three connectors exposed to the elements, so for good measure i checked them (dry) and put in some dielectric as well.  Since most of us have dealt with considerable weather issues this year I also checked everything else.  Unfortunately I found my Rainbow flood enclosure had failed had quite a bit of water in it.  I have dried it out and am going to test the power supply when I find a fuse.  Hopefully it is not toast as i don't have a spare.

Hope all of your weather issues have been easy to deal with.

 

Chris

 

Glad you were able to resolve the problem!  Water can be a major problem when it gets where it's not supposed to.  My 360 channel pixel star had obviously not gotten well enough waterproofed this year and started having issue with the first slight rain.  Got worse with the second little rain, and worse yet with the third.  Took it down on Christmas Eve day and spent a couple house testing and repairing it, and put it back up.  This time I sealed the crap out of it, and so far it's working - but no rain...

[alchrisr01]

Yes the pixel tree does work,thanks. I also got lucky and the dried out power supply worked as well. I pulled a fuse from one of those Harbor Freight cheapy multimeters and put it in the power supply and it is up and running. I put some extra effort into making sure the boxes I use for enclosures stay dry too. I use those red boxes that the bigbox stores sell for storing light strings and cut semi circle flaps for cords to pass through. The box that failed had a flap pushed in instead of out and lots of water ran in, actually I think the rain was so heavy that water and dirt splashed in as well. I used some foil hvac tape to close them up better. I use these boxes so I can actually have most of my plugs inside and the wiring all looks neater. I have some mini tree plugs run through cheapy sandwich boxes to keep them dry and off the ground. One of those was full too. Did you know that a plug in water, even with the controller off, will light you up? While checking everything this morning I missed two triacs bad on two other controllers. I just unplugged them for now. Those stings are not noticiable to anybody but me. We have never had these issues before. I really feel for you folks that have moisture issues all the time.