active hub fuses

[sirloinofbeef001]

I have been testing my show for weeks now and all of a sudden last night I have four blown fuses. Its ran good this whole time. Is this common? Btw, the four channels are my arches which have 35 lights. Four separate ssc.

[jnealand]

testing my show for weeks now

For weeks now?  What planet are you on.  I have not even created anything new yet.  LOL

The only time I blew fuses was when I was first wiring up my lights and in a hurry made mistakes.  So no this is not normal.

[tbone321]

You need to check both the connections and the current draw on those strings.  Did anything move them during your tests, especially just before the one that blew the fuses.  If you are pulling right on the edge of 4 amps most of the time, it can actually fatigue the fuses - especially with the widely varying current draw - and cause them to fail. 

[taybrynn]

I think I've only had this happen when I had a short in my flex strip.  I believe my root cause was wires touching at the end of the strip or something.  Every port (on the hub) I plugged that into blew the fuse.  Now I always stagger cut the wire ends and dip them in liquid electrical tape. 

[Steve Gase]

I've been having a fuse problems lately as I try to cull from old strings -- the IP66 problems are haunting me.


When I remember to do this, I've been able to avoid the fuse issues by using a bench power supply with shortage protection.  I use a SSCv1 with test firmware, and connect the 12v+ and Ground to the SSC (Data is not needed).  Bad strings will cause the built-in protection to "click" in... and once I splice out the bad pixel and verify I can move the string to a programmed SSC and my pixelnet setup.


Still, I have about 5 fuses to replace...  but all have been explainable by bad strings.

[sirloinofbeef001]

I've used the same set up which exists of
 11 x 75 nodes for my tree
 4 x 35 nodes for the arches.
 the active hub is stationary with the power supply. I checked ( with my magnified lenses ) for wire contacts from the ssc and its just not there. I'm not over any thresholds for power draw. The cat 5 cables are under 15' and the ssc is 2' from the first light.

[tbone321]

How much current are they pulling?

[sirloinofbeef001]

I haven't checked nor do I have any idea how to.

[tbone321]

You would need either an Amp meter or a multimeter that measures current.  The better ones do and are capable of measuring around 10A.  To measure the current you need to cut the power lead and connect the positive lead of the multimeter to the hub side and the negative to the device being powered.  This causes the power being used to flow thru the meter and it can measure it.  If you are using the 3 pin waterproof connectors and andhave an extra set, you can use those for your tap.