These are the words I spoke to my wife this morning... but lets start at the beginning.
As you may or may not know, a pretty good storm just passed through Indiana. It dumped some freezing rain, sleet, and about 6" of the white stuff on my area. Well, it just happened that I was starting my show the night the storm hit (Thursday night). Now I had set my show to run from 6pm to 10pm on week nights and 6pm to 11pm on Friday and Saturday. I was working a night shift this week, and I was frustrated that I wouldn't be able to see the show until the weekend, so I set it up so that it would be on when I got home from work at about 2AM. I figured I'd run it from 1:30am to 3am (with the sound turned down low on the outdoor speakers) so that I'd be able to see what it looked like at night (I go to work at 3pm). Well, wouldn't you know I had to work overtime that night, and didn't arrive home until 3:03am... drat.. Well, such is life, so I set it to do the same thing again last night. I come home to see the show running, but notice that one of the controllers (an LOR "build-it-yourself" 16PC controller) is not turning on the icecicle lights.
*much grumbling here* I did notice that one string of lights were flickering erratically and that all the rest were completely out. Being 2:30am I just figured I'd check it out in the morning.
Flash forward to this morning. I get up, fix my coffee, sit down at the computer to check DLA to see if anything neat and nifty got posted last night. At about 10am I decide its time to go out and check out the controller. Bundle up (its about 18* F), walk out side to the controller, where I find its laying on the ground... OPEN!
There it sits, laying open like a book, filled with about 6 inches of fluffy white goodness. (did I mention it snowed? with freezing rain? and sleet?) There is a small area that isn't covered right around the transformer, but everything else is packed.
Wednesday, I had been having a few problems with connections, so I had been visiting the different controllers (two active hubs, two Lynx Expresses, and two LOR 16PCs) trying to figure out where the issue was. Well, apparently, in my haste to troubleshoot the issue, I had left the LOR box open and never returned.
I walked inside with the frozen controller and uttered those disturbing words you see in the title. (anyone in disagreement here?) I figured the controller was toast and would make a nice doorstop at this point, but being an adventureous individual, I decided to see if it could be saved. We use a wood burning furnace for heat, and if you've ever used one, you know that it really drys out the air in the house so I put the controller, standing on end so the water would run out, over one of our heating vents to see if it could be salvaged.
Jump forward again, a couple of hours. The controller has dried out... no water anywhere, and just a very small amount of corrosion (that milky white dusty film) on the board. Saying a prayer to the lighting gods I plugged the controller in. Upon opening my eyes (I had closed them to protect them from the shower of sparks I was SURE were going to come streaming out controller), there, on the board, between the transformer and the PIC, sat the status LED blinking happily.
"Surely not!" I exclaimed... "Yes, and don't call me Shirley" it muttered in reply. Wishing to push my luck a little further, I plugged in a CAT5 cable attached to the LOR 485B and powered up the LOR hardware utility.
***NO DEVICE FOUND***
ARRRGH! "I KNEW it was too good to be true" I cried... but as those pesky referees say in pro football... "upon further review"... I noticed that the utility was trying to connect to the wrong comm port. Timidly, I moved the mouse to select the proper comm port. I very very carefully reduced the network scan range to reduce the time it takes to scan for the controller... Then, after sacrificing several (non-working) candy canes to the lighting gods, I pressed the scan button....
**** LOR16PC 02 FOUND ON COMM 13 ****
The status LED went solid red (as it was supposed to do). "I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!!!" "Oh ye have little faith" it chirped in reply. I quickly attached several strings of incans and ran the controller through its paces.. The lights faded up and down in response to the commands... they twinkled merrily when I pressed the twinkle button... the shimmered shimmeringly when I pressed the shimmer button!!! The controller was SAVED! (sorry.. there's no emoticon for jumping and yelling and screaming in joy)
So, now you understand the title of this little tale... and the value of SLOWING DOWN as you are setting up and trouble shooting your display.. and say what you will about LOR's controllers... too commercial... too high priced... whatever... but those things are ROCK SOLID.
Jamie
