Flex strips failing

[Mickpat]

I ordered some spray too and will be applying that this weekend. 

[rdebolt]

Interesting!!

I sprayed the heck out of my connections with corrosionx. Sprayed till a pool formed in the connector. Fingers crossed!

Ditto. I did the same and my fingers are crosses as well.

[tallan]

Hello,

Well I just had one fail as well but I will take the blame for this one as the dongle end was pointed skyward and we had a little rain.

Anyway I was planing on cutting off the ends and splicing the cat 5 together for a temp fix. however I am not real sure if I go color to color (green to green) or if I put the twist in as if I were adding another male tip. IE wiring 568-B. If I do need the twist what colors would match up? Orange&white -> brown?

I've gotten good with the making the male ends but never wired a female end so not sure what those colors end up to be.

Thanks!

Ted

[tallan]

Well,

it was same color to same color just in case someone needed to know.

Ted

[Mickpat]

I did some troubleshooting today and some really odd results.

First, I cleaned off the Noalax and used corrosion on all of the cat5 connectors.  All of the connectors looked okay with some minor corrosion/discoloration. 

I started swapping cat5 connectors and controllers to try and determine what was and wasn't working.  I wasn't making much progress so I decided to start from scratch.  I disconnected everything from the hub and took out a know good test SSC I have with some known working SS.  I connected to each of the hubs ports.  All were working fine.  Good news.  Then I took a new known working Cat5 and tested each of the flex strip SSC.  I tested each one at a time.  1 - 6 worked fine. 

Then I connected number 7.  Nothing.  Then 8, nothing.  Then 9, nothing.  Odd so back to 1, nothing.  Got back off the roof and went to the SSC Hub.  No power.  PC power supply off too.  Swapped out ssc hub and went back on the roof.  1 - 6, worked and then connected 7.  Nothing.  Back to 6 and nothing.  A little panic sets in because now I have lost my hub and backup hub. 

Went back down, and the hub is off and power supply stopped.  Disconnected everything.  Swapped back hub and the original hub powered on!  Yea.   Tested all ports with known good SS.  All worked.  Went back on the roof and tested flex 8 - 11.  All worked.  Good news.  Tested backup hub and that works too. 

So, here is what I found.  With flex strip 7 connected, the hub gets hot near one of the small chips ST485BN along the top.  This could account for why 4 strips were not working before.  I think the small chip drives 4 of the ports.  And my thinking is flex strip 7 is caused the problem. 

The good news is the hub appears to be working and all the other strips appear okay.  Some flakiness, but I am still using SSC V1 which could account for what I am seeing.

I haven't started to troubleshoot 7 yet, but nothing visibly wrong.  I am not going to spend much time troubleshooting until next year.  I don't want to risk damaging a hub.   

My one thought is the PC power supply may have less power than needed.  I am running 11 flex strips which should be about 44amps and my power supply is 50amps.  Maybe not enough.     

Has anyone else seen the hub cause the power supply to power down or the small chips (ST485BN) along the top to get hot or fail?

[Mickpat]

The following is a link to SSC #7.  Clearly it failed.

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[gatorengineer]

Mickpat, do you have a picture of the other side?

[zwiller]

Glad to read you got somewhere with it.  Looking at your pic the soldering looks awfully close between the pads for wires 5+ and 6-.  Also some dark gunk underneath the area too.   

[Mickpat]

Here is the front side:  You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

Could be soldering related.

I got everything back up and running today.  Used a spare SSC and new water 4 pin connector pigtails.  Also used CorrosiionX on the cat5 connectors.  Its raining now so hope all goes well.