Lester Stone Posted February 27, 2010 Posted February 27, 2010 I happened to get my feet wet in a big way! purchased 72 channels right out of the gate. I will have many questions and know from reading the posts help is one question away. Thanks for the sale. I was clicking right awayps. my wife said I was talking about just 16 channels to start with..hehehehehe:D
Donny M. Carter Posted February 27, 2010 Posted February 27, 2010 cool. thats a great number of channels to start with in my opinion. i'm glad you made it through the sale!
larry oneill Posted February 27, 2010 Posted February 27, 2010 same here wife thought 16 but i got 48 channels with her cc card
Guest wbottomley Posted February 27, 2010 Posted February 27, 2010 larry oneill wrote:same here wife thought 16 but i got 48 channels with her cc card Oh boy! Someone will be in trouble within the next month.
larry oneill Posted February 27, 2010 Posted February 27, 2010 no trouble got an in with the postman when the bill comes he makes sure i get it first
Lester Stone Posted February 27, 2010 Author Posted February 27, 2010 used my cc card but I will be close to the florist too!But she did say LED lights from now on. where is a good site to buy LED lights
Paul Wood Posted February 27, 2010 Posted February 27, 2010 I wasn't as brave as you guys, I went for 32. The wife let me have 16 to start but I thought she said yes...twice!I think I see a trend of not listening to the wives.
wallleyes Posted February 27, 2010 Posted February 27, 2010 Lester Stone wrote: where is a good site to buy LED lightshttp://www.ledholidaylighting.com/The presale is still on.Get um while you can.
larry oneill Posted February 27, 2010 Posted February 27, 2010 its not that were not listening its that shes not speaking lor :cool:
rgardner518 Posted February 27, 2010 Posted February 27, 2010 Lester Stone wrote: I happened to get my feet wet in a big way! purchased 72 channels right out of the gate. I will have many questions and know from reading the posts help is one question away. Thanks for the sale. I was clicking right awayps. my wife said I was talking about just 16 channels to start with..hehehehehe:DI believe you counted wrong. 72 divided by 16 is 4.5. I dont think lor sells 1/2 ones. lol.You probably meant 4 which is 64, or 5 which is 80. Just helping you count!As for the sale! I got screwed! I was home waiting and got side tracked. next thing I know it was 10:15 and the one controller I wanted was sold out alrighty! DAM! I was stuck buying the one that has to be soldered together! I heard from others it was may be hard to do! Lets hope not!
TJ Hvasta Posted February 27, 2010 Posted February 27, 2010 ny_yankee_25 wrote: ..As for the sale! I got screwed! I was home waiting and got side tracked. next thing I know it was 10:15 and the one controller I wanted was sold out alrighty! DAM! I was stuck buying the one that has to be soldered together! I heard from others it was may be hard to do! Lets hope not!It is NOT difficult, or hard, or a pain, or anything.. I've been soldering for since I was 10.. (thats 40yrs now) If you want to learn, go to http://www.arrl.org/FandES/field/club/clubsearch.phtml, look for a ham radio club in your area, contact them, ask for help learning to solder.. you will find someone more than willing to teach you how.Alternative.. YouTube has videos teaching -everything- you can think of.. there are videos to teach you how to solder.Look at it this way... LOR gaurentees these to work.. if you goomb it up soldering, send it to them, they'll fix it and send it back.. Think abt this also.. learn to solder, you can fix other things around the house..TJ, NS2E (long-time ham radio operator)
Lester Stone Posted February 28, 2010 Author Posted February 28, 2010 :)you were right.. 5 controllers is 80 channels..excitement got to me. I was not surprised that things sold out so fast. I had been patiently waiting for 10 pm eastern to come, I was a kid in a candy store..
George Simmons Posted February 28, 2010 Posted February 28, 2010 72 is easily doable if you buy 4 16-channel boards and 1 8-channel board.
Guest wbottomley Posted February 28, 2010 Posted February 28, 2010 ny_yankee_25 wrote:As for the sale! I got screwed! I was home waiting and got side tracked. next thing I know it was 10:15 and the one controller I wanted was sold out alrighty! DAM! I was stuck buying the one that has to be soldered together! I heard from others it was may be hard to do! Lets hope not!The February sale is basically... you snooze, you lose.
Thomas M. Fazekas Posted February 28, 2010 Posted February 28, 2010 I bought one of these kits about a month ago and soldered it together over a period of 3 evenings. I too have soldered for most of my life, was a Bench Repair Technician for Unisys for over 10 years, but hadn't done any delicate soldering in a long time. I also have a nice Solder/Desolder station I bought many years ago that I use. I consider myself to be very proficient when it comes to soldering. However, I made some very basic mistakes like putting in the wrong resistor, or putting in a chip backwards. If not for my desolder gun this would have been a pain in the arse to correct. Radio Shack sells desolder wick, bulbs etc, but I have found them to very cumbersome to use. A good Solder/Desolder Station can cost upwards of $500.00. Removing a componet can damage solder traces if your not careful.I would not recommend a beginner, or a person who has limited or no solder experience, to attempt to solder one of these kits together on their own. That's just my opinion. If you can find somebody that does.... fine, but do not try to solder one of these on your own. You are only going to regret it. The time and money to ship the unit back to LOR is not worth it. Wait and get one fully assembled.In short the difference in price between one fully assembled and one you have to solder is small, maybe $10.00 - $20.00. If you can't get somebody to help you then I recommend you cancel your order. I almost bought the completely assembled unit because the price difference was so small. Hope that helps.
Lester Stone Posted February 28, 2010 Author Posted February 28, 2010 :)A quick question. what is the oldest windows operating system will run the LOR software. I have a old PC with either Windows 98 or XP, will that operate it?ps. My wife said she would work for lights! she is a professional house cleaner:D
Guest wbottomley Posted February 28, 2010 Posted February 28, 2010 Lester Stone wrote::)A quick question. what is the oldest windows operating system will run the LOR software. I have a old PC with either Windows 98 or XP, will that operate it? ps. My wife said she would work for lights! she is a professional house cleaner:DWin 98SE or higher.
Thomas M. Fazekas Posted February 28, 2010 Posted February 28, 2010 I have it running on Windows XP Professional and it runs fine. Don't think I would run it on Windows 98/SE though, too many driver issues. XP is a very staple OS platform to run it on and your don't have all the driver issues like Windows 98. I found out they run the LOR controllers using A Dell Inspiron 8000 Laptop 700 Mhz Pentium III with the older USB ports version 1.0/1.1 and not USB 2.0, but that's with 32 channels. Hope that helps.
Lester Stone Posted February 28, 2010 Author Posted February 28, 2010 My wife called out the credit card number! she is an addict now too.. bought 40 strands of led lights this morning and a dozen roses too.. lights and roses go toether now:cool:
TJ Hvasta Posted March 1, 2010 Posted March 1, 2010 Thomas.. you've been soldering a long time, and a Bench Tech, and you really goofed your board? A good magnifying glass or bench arm, resistor color-code chart and good light source is whats req'd to avoid common mistakes. I knocked out 2 kits in one evening.. a little over 2 hrs per kit, not including mounting in the box and I wasn't rushing.. Used a Radio Shack 25w pencil, no desoldering braid or bulb either. I'm certainly not better than anyone else, 'just used the right tools. Nothing on the board is delicate either..If you're buying multiple kits like the OP said, the money saved not purchasing all assembled controllers easily lets you bump the channel count.. $99 vs $129 for controllers only, or $179 vs $249 for plug n' play.. Buy one fully assembled controller, then the rest of your controllers you want, buy kits and use the first as a model/pattern to check the others with.. You can teach anyone to solder well in ten minutes.. fifteen, tops..I'd volunteer to solder boards for those unsure of it, but I'm usually gone 4 days outta the week..
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