Stuff Happens

[dgrant]

Most of us are running our shows now but keep a close watch on things! Last night, neighbor young man texted me saying my show was messed up bad and that the audio had the sound of a usb connecting and disconnecting about once per second. I had no clue. It started up just fine a few hours before but it was raining too. Rain was not the cause, rather a failure of a wall-wart type power transformer to my KVM switch. Its a complicated setup as I use four monitors from two Pc's and the kvm switch handles that, lol, till it has now power! The strange part was that its still putting out 12volts as it should but apparently not enough current to run the switch. Lesson learned: Keep eyes and ears open.

[TheDucks]

I never toss WORKING wall worts.  Cases like this is why.

In most cases a Higher AMP capacity will do just fine. Voltage and Polarity are very important.

Interesting that the KVM needed external power. I used to use 4 port VGA/PS2 style. Those drew power from the VGA port (when the PC was on and auto-selected the first PC to power up)

(BTW I suspect the wort is putting out a lot of hash. A DVM won't always show that.  💡 Put a .1 uF is series wit the meter lead and the meter on AC.  (the capacitor blocks the DC )

[Speedster]

Good advice.  I'm paranoid so I usually go out once or twice a night to watch my display for a few minutes just to make sure I can hear the music and that all the lights are lighting up properly.  One of my spiral trees died shortly after I finished setting up and was doing a final test 2 weekends ago.  Luckily I have spares of most lights/items so it was a quick & easy replacement.

Since I use an FM transmitter, I'm also able to make sure the show is running by having a boombox turned on during the entire duration of the show (4:30 pm - 10:00 pm).  If I hear the songs cut out, then I know something went wrong.  That's how I knew I was getting GFCI trips last year and a few yrs ago.

[dgrant]

1 hour ago, TheDucks said:

I never toss WORKING wall worts.  Cases like this is why.

In most cases a Higher AMP capacity will do just fine. Voltage and Polarity are very important.

Interesting that the KVM needed external power. I used to use 4 port VGA/PS2 style. Those drew power from the VGA port (when the PC was on and auto-selected the first PC to power up)

(BTW I suspect the wort is putting out a lot of hash. A DVM won't always show that.  💡 Put a .1 uF is series wit the meter lead and the meter on AC.  (the capacitor blocks the DC )

Yeah, possibly you are correct. It is the OEM wall wort for the KVM. Its a Startech  SV231QDVIUA 2-Port Quad Monitor Dual-Link DVI USB KVM Switch. I tossed this one out for obvious reasons but yes, I had several spares just for the same reason as you!