Danger Will Robinson Danger.......

[z327]

Don't take for granted that the cat5 input connectors for the smart strings are water tight. I thought since my PVC was hanging with them pointed to the ground all would be good even in the rain. The wire going into the PVC and out as well as the PVC caps were all RTV'd. Ran the show in the rain and one of the CAT5 connectors must have gotten some water in it. TWO SSC's quit and then the HUB quit completely for PixelNet. DMX out continued on.

One of the CAT5 connectors on the CAT5 cable was black and two leads inside the connector burned to disintegration.

Everything including the connectors is RTV'd now, but I may try and avoid running in the rain. Went to a second HUB and the show goes on tonight. Still need to trouble shoot the original HUB and replace the CAT5 input on one SSC. But that will have to wait. I'm burnt out again from all the Pixelnet fun.....

 

[lboucher]

Yeah, I had this fun experience to.

Althought i just threw mine on the ground without thinking.
(Actually I may have sprayed the socket with Corrosion X, not sure)

Then one started shorting and blowing fuses. Took me about 4 fuses to figure that out. (Ugg should have know better, but it was late and I had been working hard all day.)

Mine are now saturated in Corrosion X and very well wrapped in electrical tape.
(Actually, at the end of that long night, i had cut the bad socket off, and spliced in a new one (my only spare) just to look down and realize i forgot to put the freakin endcap on the PVC. ERRRRRRR......  I proceeded to just wrap the entire end in very heavy duty duct tape, covered with electrical tape, and a couple dabs of liquid electrical tape.)

Good enough for this year.
My RGB Tree has now made it thru 2 nights of decent rain and its still working fine.
Hoping all my issues are gone now.

That said, a small design suggestion would be to add a power indicator LED after the fuse, for each output.
Also, since these fuses don't always seem to blow fast enough, and they are soldiered to the board...
What if.
2 of the small standard 3 amp fuses that come in incan strings were used.

I know, I have hundreds of them lying around with nothing to do with them.

Just a couple thoughts.

[MrChristmas2000]

Had some strings go out last night, we have had rain here for a couple of days. The Pigtails are definitely not waterproof. It blew several fuses in my Megatree hub.

The good thing is I have 2 hubs and the second hub was only using 6 cables so I robbed Peter to Pay Paul. I didn't have any spare fuses.

I totally agree the fuses need to be mounted in a manner which makes them easy to replace. I've now got to order me a supply of fuses quick.

I used some of that food press and seal wrap one year to wrap some modulles to make them water proof. I think I'll try that on these connections because it solved my other watertightness problem. And it's easy to remove at the end of the season.

[keitha43]

I've got mine in some cheap walmart plastic containers. I cut little v's into each side so that the connector is elevated inside each container. They are so cheap the plastic spilit beneath most v cuts and I figure that is not so bad as it gives any water a way out. So it is more like a umbrella. Luckily I haven't had those issues yet. I had enough problems with nodes going bad. every day I seem to have 1 more that has either red, blue, or green stop working in it that was fine the night before. And that was after the original 50-60 I had to replace from my 1st 2 rainstorms. I did have burned ethernet connectors with the supposedly watertight ethernet connectors made of black plastic that screw together for my rainbow floods during Halloween so I ordered pigtails to use during Christmas for those.

[MrChristmas2000]

One suggestion on making holes in plastic containers it so get an old pencil soldering iron that has a screw in tip and replace it with a small bolt and you can bolt a copper pipe end cap, say a 1/2in and you can melt a hole or even make a u shaped entrance hole along the top edge.

I have not had any major problems with the pixel modules or rectangles, just one rectangle went bad, and I see one pixel that is way up in the tree but not noticable. Knock on Wood.

I am using the wrap for mine and will report the results after the next rain.

Tom

[johno123]

I know it's more expensive and not very pretty, but we could also think about using the SSR cases and have a soldered CAT5 connector on the next board.  By doing that, we can keep the CAT5 dry inside the box, use cases we have a ton left over with, and keep things a little more waterproof....

[Corey872]

I eliminated my cat5 pigtail all together...just ran the cable right through the PVC pipe...then hot glued on the inside and silicone'd on the outside.  18 years in R&D and running test equipment/sensors in all types of weather has taught me one thing...water is insidious in the places it can do and damage it can do! (Especially with freeze/thaw cycles) Cat5's aren't even close to waterproof, unless you have some special (read high dollar) connectors for the ends.

The best (read cheapest with the best chance of reliability, but by no means bulletproof) I can suggest is run the cable right through the PVC.  Hot glue it and make sure the glue has sealed tight to the cable.  Hot glue shrinks a bit as it cools which helps the seal.  Silicone the outside for additional weatherproofing.  (water will eventually creep between the silicone and cable cover, but you can hopefully slow it down for several years.  Leave enough wire so you can pull the SSC clear out of the tube if needed.  PVC glue one cap on and try to have this cap 'down' - as it will be the most waterproof.  Put a bit of vaseline on the seal of the other cap and wring it down tight - this will help seal it, but leave this cap 'up' so it will shed water like an umbrella because that seam still has a chance to leak.  Then run all your cat 5 back and hopefully through the bottom of your control box.  Now those connectors are in a dry box and your SSC is sealed 'pretty good' so hopefully you'll have success!.

[JoeFromOzarks]

On the SSC's, I'm replacing all the RJ45 pigtails with the four-wire waterproof connectors Ray sells.   Two for data (+) and (-) plus one wire for hot (+12v) and one for not (-).   The three wire connectors to the nodes, the four wire to the hub.   Easy-smeasy!

joe

[bwhite505]

On the SSC's, I'm replacing all the RJ45 pigtails with the four-wire waterproof connectors Ray sells.   Two for data (+) and (-) plus one wire for hot (+12v) and one for not (-).   The three wire connectors to the nodes, the four wire to the hub.   Easy-smeasy!

joe

What a great idea.  I have a ton of 4 wire connectors left over.  Any issues with them wired that way.  May even help with voltage drop?

[JoeFromOzarks]

We built a test cable of each of two.  (grin)   One is a four-wire run of 50 feet that has a RJ45 adapter on the hub end, and the 4-pin connector on the other connecting to the SSC.   The four-wire cable is Carol Cable 22awg stranded of which I have about 3000+ft laying around.   The other test is a cobbled together adapter on the end of a 50ft Ethernet cable changing the RJ45F to the four-wire connector.   The 22awg cable has a little less voltage drop (0.12v - zero point 1-2 volts) verses the Ethernet cable, otherwise I can see no operational difference. 

One of the SSC RJ45 pigtails with an Ethernet cable attached I cannot separate even though it was wrapped in several layers of plastic wrap.  It’s not the tab either.   We’ve pulled, tugged, jerked, yanked and whacked the little doomer to no avail, it just won’t separate.  Corresponding wires read between 9 ohms and 23 ohms straight through and the two data lines read about 700k between ‘em!!!!  Not good.

It’s important that I add we’re under the influence of fog from a local cold water lake.  We can have fog on mornings that would otherwise be warm, bright and summer-ish!  It’s the Ozarks.  (grin)

joe