Issue with Pixie 16 D V-4

[MarkHolloway]

I have an issue with this., I have 10 of these, and all the rest are working fine. This one, however, is giving me fits. If I do not turn on any of the 102 pixel strands on, it will sit there just fine. .

If I test any lights, somewhere less than 10 minutes the board goes dark and needs a power cycle to come back on. The little read status light even goes dark.

I thought maybe the board or the power supply may have a problem, so I swapped it out with a spare, but I still have the same issue.

I thought maybe I had and issue with the strands, but I then tested 3 brand new strands on the ground with the same result. 

I checked the input voltage, and I have a little over 12 volts with nothing connected, and it drops to a little over 9 when I connect and turn any strands on. I checked this against a working Pixie and the behavior is the same.

Are there any additional things I could look at? I ordered a brand new pre-assembled Pixie from the website yesterday and paid for overnight, but I do not yet have a tracking number. Looking for any advice I might be able to work through in the meantime.  

Edited November 20 by MarkHolloway

[k6ccc]

45 minutes ago, MarkHolloway said:

I checked the input voltage, and I have a little over 12 volts with nothing connected, and it drops to a little over 9 when I connect and turn any strands on. I checked this against a working Pixie and the behavior is the same.

Likely un-related to this problem, but if you are seeing that much voltage drop when you turn on any light string, you have some wiring problems.  What is the wire gauge between the power supply and the Pixie, and how long is that wire?  You should not be seeing that much voltage drop.

 

[TheDucks]

9V is too low and the 12->9 swing is really excessive.   I suspect something in your power supply or connections has become loose.

But first, check bank 1 as it is also the LOGIC power for DISCOLORED (by heat) or loose input connections. That input runs the board (the red light).

Pixies and their strings do not like dirty DC (I found out while reconfiguring and testing a Pixie 4 board I just removed  when I upsized to a P8). I grabbed a 12V 1,2A Netgear wall wort (sufficient for the test) that I use for testing Dumb strings on the bench.  All the configuration ran fine, but my 10 node test string had really weird colors when idle.  A different power cured that.

 

[TheDucks]

Jim ninja'd me. Was the old unit also Pre-built by LOR?

[MarkHolloway]

Yes, old unit was preassembled but LOR.

There is no discoloration in and of the components. All of it actually appears to be very clean, with no burnt smells. 

Is also add that the behavior is no different with a single strand with the network controller disconnected and using the test button on the board. 

Again, I tested the voltages against other units I have 9 others) that are working fine. There's no difference between the one that is not working. I believe the PSU may be hitting a current limit that may be showing that it's weak. 

[MarkHolloway]

A bit of an update.

I received a new Pixie controller, and it works.. sort of. It lights up the 16 strands, and does what I tell it too for the most part, but does not light up all the way to the end of the strand. The strand consists of 3 strings of pixels, 34 pixels each for a total of 102 pixels in the strand. It only lights the pixels up to a certain length, which is roughly at Pixel 60. All 16 strands stop at the exact same pixel. If I unplug the strand and move it to a neighboring Pixie controller, they light up all the way. If I take the strand I disconnected from the neighboring pixie for a test, it shows the aforementioned behavior. I am pretty confident that I've missed something in swapping out the controller, or there is a configuration issue that i can't seem to find. I've created a ticket with LOR support and requested that it be paid, but there appears to be a 3 day possible wait. Tossing this out to the community in case this is an easily recognizable rookie mistake that can be remedied here.

 

Thanks for the input!