Before I had my SSCs assembled, I was using a black box LT-DMX-1809 DMX Decoder. That box worked well with my testing of a coroflake with square pixels during assembly but with a quick test of smart string pixels I was having terrible results. no string worked well no matter how small I made it.
moving to the SSC I started seeing initial success, and I was impressed that it was much better results than the black box.
of course it soon started degrading to the point none of the 128s were working beyond a few hours.
BUT the good news !!! is that I shortened my strings to 85 each, spread them out, and none of them are having problems so far. only trying 5 strings so far, but after 6 hours it shows hope of working.
why 85? ...4096 channels for an active hub, divided by 16 strings, divided by 3 channels of color, is 85 pixels. If I had the power situation arranged to handle it, 85 allows me to get the highest density for a hub. (Power for pixels and SSCs is 42 amps - 12v.)
I don't know if the initial success for 5 strings will carry forward to my other 35 strings, but I'll stay hopeful. My next problem is to figure out how to build another 20 SSCs to use with all of the remainders (cut-offs) from the 128-pixel strings -- now 85.