Bummed and Ticked Off all at once....

[deanathpc]

Rant mode on.....

About an hour before my show was to start (last time for the season) I decided to do a quick test to make sure the GFCI's hadn't kicked again and to make sure the etherdongle was doing it's part...  Wouldn't you know it half the show was dark...  GFCI's kicked....  numerous times...  Tracked it down to an Express...  bypassed the GFCI's just to see what was going on and a Triac failed for starters.  So swapped out the controller only to find out after 14 of the 16 channels were re-wired that I had another Express failed.  3 Triacs shot..  Tested this board too and it was fine or so I thought.  After an hour in the rain trying to get it all working again my temper kicked and I threw in the towel.  Took over half the display down tonight as a result.  High winds tomorrow (65+ mph) so I started early.

The kicker is I never got to video tape my show.  17 songs sequenced and no proof.  Time just ran out.  I had time tonight to do it and wouldn't you know it...  Murphy's Law followed me right to the end with my display this year..  Not good for my first year.  Depressing in fact.  I was looking forward to watching it one last time too...  This rain has killed my display though.  And for NY this is strange.  Has me worried enough that first light tomorrow I'm taking the rest of the display down before more rain and high winds arrive.

On a lighter note Happy New Year to all!

Rant mode off...

Dean

[DanHouston]

Bummer about the bad luck....Maybe just an extreme nudging to get things down before the weather really moves in?

Happy New Year!

[sirloinofbeef001]

thats a real bummer. Sorry for the bad news.

[Jeffl]

I feel for you.  Rain has been a pain here too.  I thought I seen a post where RJ talked about rain adding to triac failures.  I had one this year.  First one in five years.  We have no snow here either.  First time since 1943 -1944.  I'm anxious to get my display down as well as it will take a years worth of wear off the items not sitting in the yard till late march.

[deanathpc]

Yeah extreme nudging...  The rest will come down tomorrow morning.  I'll put it all in the basement that way I can keep it somewhat setup to play around with next years display and test some sequencing.

[tng5737]

Rain tok out my SS strings - three different times.  Seemed like I'd just replace the malfunctioning strings and then it would rain again and take them out, and I don't even run my show when it rains!   So I know how you feel!   I took my display down two days ago taking advantage of the 50+ weather we had.   This year was a real bummer!
Let us hope that we all have a better 2012 - Happy New Year to all!

[sirloinofbeef001]

Rain tok out my SS strings - three different times.  Seemed like I'd just replace the malfunctioning strings and then it would rain again and take them out, and I don't even run my show when it rains! 

Isnt there a way to seal them?

[Jeffl]

I viewed a video on Youtube yesterday and he showed them with epoxy that looked sealed very well.  I did read a lot about the first batch not being sealed very well.

[sirloinofbeef001]

With some of the problems with moisture that I've read, im gonna do something to keep out the moisture.

[tng5737]

I used Plasti-Dip (thinned) to seal them but moisture still got into them!   Next year I will mount them inside T-12 tube guards.

[chrisatpsu]

i plastidip'd mine (like rj's video, and then anything that looked funny, i added silicone to   hopefully, i'm still good

[sirloinofbeef001]

silicone,duct tape.. whats the difference..

[shaunkad]

I plan on fusing the out puts of my LEs this year to protect the triacs.

[RJ]

I plan on fusing the out puts of my LEs this year to protect the triacs.

Good luck getting any help from it. The triac gets damaged faster than a fuse will blow. The junction of a triac is much smaller than the conductor of a fuse.

It has been tried and while you could put a undersized fast blow fuse on the channel you start popping fuses easily then and it becomes the bane of the GFCI all over again.

The better way to solve it is to make sure you cords are not down getting water in them or laying on things that can get wet and conduct. Make sure they are all good as I had one triac die in 5 years of doing this and it was a short in the cord from the controller(cheap $.99 extension cord with a short in the molded plug end).

Unless you just had a bad triac which I think there is the possiblity of from time to time. you likely had to have something pull a large amount of current to damage the triac.
There is reasons all the controllers do not have fuses on the outputs (not just mine) They will add to your issues at worst and do nothing at least. It is hard to protect a triac with a fuse with out reducing the current rating so low it is useless. Triacs get damage in very fast time periods compared to the blowing of a fuse which is our scale is slow to say the least.

The issue is when a handful of people post on a forum of 3000 and say I lost triac(s) the thought is there is a problem.

Get all the members to post and see what the ratio of triac issues is and we can tell if there is a problem (you can't do it because most members do not post or at least unless they have an issue). How many people will come in and post "Hey just wanted everyone to know I did not loose any triacs this year?

 I also felt I heard more about triac issues this year than ever before but then I looked and I have many many times the number of controllers this year than ever before in use. Each express is 16 triacs, each ssr4 is 4 triacs, each freestyle could be 128 triacs.

The count gets up there. We have to get mouser to put an order to the triac factory a couple of times a year to fill our need for coops so there are a lot out there.

I watched for a while the renard guys believed last year they had a bad batch of triacs, I am not sure if they ever found out this was true or not (they use different triacs then we do) but I also wondered the same thing I am here in this post. How many did not have any issues? 

I am not saying that the users that had the issues did anything wrong to make it happen this is not my point, just that I can promise extra attention to protecting the outputs form shorts or leaks to ground will ensure less issues with triacs on controllers and that is any controllers be it Lynx, Lor or other.

Sorry for those that had triacs fail, I wish your shows had went off without a hitch for you.

RJ

[meman]

Dean, sorry to hear of your struggles this year. I think most of us are such perfectionists, that we get really wrapped up in what we had "planned" vs. what we were actually able to accomplish this year. In short, we are all sharing your pain to a point for various reasons..don't be too hard on yourself for not hitting 110% perfection the first year out of the gate. From the looks of your posts, you have done an amazing job so far!

RJ, thanks for responding about the futility of fusing the outputs. I think many of us have wondered about how we can better protect the triacs. I'm on my second year using the express. Had 96 triacs in use last year during two months of solid thunderstorms and only had one failure, which I shamefully shared with the forum. I was in a hurry trying to create a wiring harness for my arches using SPT1 & vampire plugs. Attached a male end to the express, which was powered up, stretched the wire to the endpoint and CUT IT. That is how triacs die in an instant...and I'm sure a single drop of water will do the same thing, so I do everything I can to keep things from getting flooded.   

I use weatherproof cases and keep them up off the ground. I use indoor 3 outlet cord ends on my expresses and out in the yard, but they are NOT the cheap plastic ends from $store/walmart that fill with water...pay the extra 25 cents for hard rubber. I'm conscious of their placement (no low spots that fill with water) and try to keep the safety flaps in unused outlets so they don't fill with water...I suppose you could even use some type of silicone grease on them (and vampire plugs). Not a lot of preventative measures you can take with the strings themselves aside from giving them a once over with a leaf blower before the show if you suspect a lot of standing water.