some strings act like they are in program mode

[duane.mosley]

so I got the zues and mega tree running last night and for the most part it was ok. one string would stay on between songstonight I fired the show up and one channel was flashing white like it was in program mode. power cycled a couple of times and it didn't fix it, there was actually a couple of more that started doing the same thing. I powered the zues off. it was running my sequences last night just fine minus the one channel that kept flashing between songs.

[duane.mosley]

any ideas? I want to trouble shoot this when I get home from work

[tbone321]

What is the temp outside and how is the board mounted?

[duane.mosley]

temp was in the 40's and 50's this weekend. the board is mounted on two pieces of pvc sitting in a battery box. here is a link to the picture I shared with another member.

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[twooly]

Any chance you can hook the string up to a ssc?  Wandering if the string itself has issues and may not be the Zeus, just want to rule out one thing at a time.

[duane.mosley]

Any chance you can hook the string up to a ssc?  Wandering if the string itself has issues and may not be the Zeus, just want to rule out one thing at a time.
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I can try that when I get home. It's not just one string and it was on both zues boards. They tested fine on the bench.

[twooly]

What is the length of wire from the board to the first node.  Betting that's probably your problem if you have a longer length.

[duane.mosley]

What is the length of wire from the board to the first node.  Betting that's probably your problem if you have a longer length.

I didn't do an exact measurement but no more than 4'

[twooly]

Try just a 2' and see how it goes.

[RJ]

Four feet should be no problem. Sometimes a bad node on a string will cause strange effects like this randomly.

RJ

[zwiller]

The issues I experienced with excessive distance testing for the SSCv4 beta looked nothing like programming start channels.  It was more a rainbow look and loss of response/pixel freezing.  Seemed quite obvious what it was. 

You burn them in? 

I would try swapping strings and see if another set of lights acts the same way on the zeus string giving issues and also see if light string that was acting up does so on another zeus string. 

[duane.mosley]

ok, I really don't understand how everything was working Saturday night just fine, but last night have trouble. I didn't power down over night either. zues were powered, as was the rest of my controllers.  come home today and did some trouble shooting, swapping pics with known working pics, swapping light strings, same issue with string 7 on zues 1, it will respond to the sequence i am running but flash white in between each pass of a spiral effect and stay lit. 14 wasn't working at all but reflashed the pic and it worked.   

 zues 2  had the rainbow effect that sam is referring to. when I would power up the zues all the channels would come on with the rainbow effect and not respond to a sequence or xlights. I know my setup is right because i was going threw different effects Saturday when I first got it going and was showing the wife what it could do and why I spent so much time building the tree(well worth it!) I would say the leads to first node are more like 5 feet. some pics on zues 2 would not respond today. . I am pulling them both back in the garage and I am going to do all the pics again and start over. will post back with the results.

[zwiller]

What kind and how many nodes you running per string?  Wonder if you have the new high current led and are having issues relating to that.  I am not entirely convinced that running too many will just blow a fuse. 

[duane.mosley]

What kind and how many nodes you running per string?  Wonder if you have the new high current led and are having issues relating to that.  I am not entirely convinced that running too many will just blow a fuse.

i just ordered the regular pixels that are on the wiki. 1809 i believe without looking. 50 nodes per string. 32 strings, 16 strings per zues,  2400 channels per zues, 620watt  power supplies running each board which puts me just under 50% usage of the power supply and well under the node count for the pic chips on the zues. the channels that weren't responding worked after flashing the pic. the one channel that keeps flashing does it with a different pic and different string. it is not a pic issue unless the socket itself has issues. i will be going back to the garage at 10 so i will know more in a little bit.

[tbone321]

Remember that power and signal are two separate things here.  If the current draw was so great that all of the nodes are under voltage, then it should have blown the fuse.  The most likely situation would be that the nodes would work up to the point that the voltage drop is to great and then the nodes from that point would have issues.  The signal strength is unaffected by the number of nodes in the string.