channel quit

[ken collins]

have been running my show the last 3 nights with no problems, then during the middle of one song channel 14 quit on ckt board nr 1. I've been running 160 channels, all kit built boards, on xp. used this board for the last 3 years and never ran into this problem.. Anybody have any ideas??

[Fred]

Ken, maybe this will help (I'm assuming channels 9-13 and 15-16 on board 1 are working fine):

1.) Try another set of lights on the suspect channel, just to be sure it's the channel and not the lights.

2.) Make sure the power cord leads for channel 14 are firmly plugged into the lugs on the board.

3.) Reflow the solder connections on the triac for channel 14.

If none of that helps, your channel 14 triac may have failed. If so, the LOR guys can sell you another one. It's pretty easy to replace.

[ken collins]

Thanks Fred,

I tried all that, was just hope'n we could pull a rabbit out of the hat. My controllers are all mounted in custom gingerbread houses, and a pain to get apart. I've got a couple xtra boards I can swap around. Thanks for the ideas though, Ken

[Tim Fischer]

What's connected to this channel? Just want to make sure it's not overloaded or you'll fry another triac...

Triacs typical fail on, not off, though...

If you have a multimeter and a little knowledge of electronics, you can do some sanity checks (e.g. is the power cord ok, is the control signal making it all the way to the opto, etc...)

-Tim

[ken collins]

Hi Tim did check with a multi miter and get almost no voltage to the channel. just 4 strings of led lights pluged into this channel on a mega tree. Controller worked fine last year, checked for spiders and such that might have worked into it during storage. Cord checked out o.k., and lights work when pluged into a different power source. Just happened all of a sudden and wanted to make sure I wasn't going to do any more damage. I can work around it, but thought if it was something simple or something I overlooked......

Thanks for getting back to me

Ken