Dave Roche Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 After 3 weeks for operation, A controller box just stopped working. I check GFI no problem. I saw the fuse's were black so I replaced. Hardware utility showed the unit , I tested by turning on the bank of lights and they came on for a brief second then off. power going to the box is good. there is no visible problem with the board as I can see, all wires look good and nothing burnt any Ideas??????. I'm able to run the show with out the box operational. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aemnky Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 What is the LED doing? Is it on solid or flashing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Roche Posted December 22, 2009 Author Share Posted December 22, 2009 LED will be on solid, until one of the display trees get power, (or the sequence triggers a channel) and than the controller shuts down, light goes off and no power to the box. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Simmons Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 How cold is it out there? What happens after the controller shuts down? Does it reset itself? What do you do to get it working again? Is the controller on the end of a long daisy chain? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-klb- Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 Have you measured your loads since this happened? It sounds like maybe something has changed, (intentional or not) and you have the controller overloaded, blowing the fuses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Roche Posted December 22, 2009 Author Share Posted December 22, 2009 Yes its cold 33* or so, It is at the end of the daisy chain, I have 11 other boxs that are not having problems, when it shuts down everything is dark LED does not come back no, I have to unplug replace fuse's turn back on and Pop it goes again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Don Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 Had something similar happen in 2005. Suddenly I had a board that would blow a fuse when channel 16 came on, despite no changes to the load. Seems that water got into the base of the floodlight that was attached, caused a spike, etc., and damaged the triac.You might find that just one triac is damaged, and that is what's causing the trip. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-klb- Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 One way to isolate if it is the controller or lights at fault, label and unplug all the loads. Then replace the fuses, and run for a while. I'm betting that without the loads, it does not blow the fuses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Roche Posted December 22, 2009 Author Share Posted December 22, 2009 I don't know how I'm running maybe 6 amps per side. It's been running great for three weeks???? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-klb- Posted December 22, 2009 Share Posted December 22, 2009 I had one case where things had been working fine for a week or so, then one day it starts blowing the fuses. After blowing a few fuses, I measured the strings with an ohm meter, and determined that while most of the strings were reading a few ohms, one of them was reading a few tenths of an ohm. I left that one unplugged, and ran the show for rest of the month. When we got the string of C7's off the roof, everything looked fine, but it still read a few tenths of an ohm..Unscrewing one bulb at a time, I finally found one bulb that was the culprit. Even looking at it, I could see no flaw, but with the ohm meter, it read no different than touching the leads to each other... Odd failures happen... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave Roche Posted December 22, 2009 Author Share Posted December 22, 2009 O.K. I found the problem, I had 3 strings of 100 ct mini blow that I had put back to back, I just went out and they were burnt at the plug. everything appears to the running fine now Thanks to all of you I never would of found the problem if you didn't get me looking in the right direction Thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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