I know that replacing pixels is all part of the fun of the hobby, but just curious if anyone else has seen an extraordinary number of failures over the last few days in Australia? We have had some hot days, but my 20 strand mega tree has nearly half the strings not working due to failed pixels. I have been using the clickits to fix them up, but I reaction I have replaced nearly 100 pixels. Has anyone else seen an increase?
Pixel failures heat related?
- Thread starter dannyp
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I and many others last year had failures of a similar magnitude. Starts off with 2-3, turns into 30-40 a night. I ended up giving up after exhausting my supply of several hundred scotchloks.
Apart from sympathising with your situation, all I can really say is that if it's a bad batch - it won't get any better, they will need to be replaced.
Can you run your show without the megatree? I ended up running a reduced show in the end, people still enjoyed it. I did buy some emergency replacement 12V pixels for some of the smaller 100px props that are still fine this year.
These UY2 scotchlok knockoffs were good and fast next day delivery when I was ordering them last year - https://amzn.asia/d/0BpUYtU
Apart from sympathising with your situation, all I can really say is that if it's a bad batch - it won't get any better, they will need to be replaced.
Can you run your show without the megatree? I ended up running a reduced show in the end, people still enjoyed it. I did buy some emergency replacement 12V pixels for some of the smaller 100px props that are still fine this year.
These UY2 scotchlok knockoffs were good and fast next day delivery when I was ordering them last year - https://amzn.asia/d/0BpUYtU
- Thread starter
- #4
The thing is that I bench tested all of the strips for at least 3 hours mid year so didn’t expect so many failures now. That’s why it put it down to the heat. Anyway I found that the light it up leds couldn’t fit in the Scotchlok as the wire was too thick. The clickits are much better.
i will just run the mega tree with whatever lights up and try and fix on the weekend.
i will just run the mega tree with whatever lights up and try and fix on the weekend.
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12v4life
Yep .. I have a bad batch from 2021, some time about 4-5 months ago I bench tested them all for 12 hours, about 3k pixels, and thought I had found all the bad strings and disposed of them, this season I've already replaced 4 strings that I thought were good and just ended up taking down the high density props I have that were using them. I still have about 2500 of those pixels in the shed I've not used yet as I've only got a small display this year, but now pondering whether i need to fire them up in the middle of the day during the heat to test them again as I'm certain it's the heat that has caused them to fail quickly
My attempts to identify the bad ones out of a bad batch have generally ended in tears... hate to say it but it's better to just not use them. Might depend on the way they are failing, but in the cases I have the failures never let up so you can't just get rid of the bad ones because they continue to go bad.
I hear you, I did the same. Solder on the power injection, test for some 12 hours total, test while pushing them in and the first few days up were fine. I think there were two dead strings and one dead pixel in total before putting them up. I even posted that I felt I got off lightly. Then it began.
No doubt those clickits are much easier than the scotchloks, but I've got to say - having ordered several boxes of the UY2 (blue) ones from 4cabling (https://www.4cabling.com.au/uy2-wire-cable-tap-connectors-100-pack.html), the shipping was starting to hurt in both time and cost. The Amazon (orange) ones to my surprise were the same size and free next day delivery so I ended up ordering lots of single boxes until I eventually gave up. For some reason they throw in a wire cutter and 4 telephone wire sized ones in all the boxes I've received. >.<
By the end of it, I would have gone through all 1,000 of these suckers - that's not a lot of replacements when you consider 6 per pixel, but still quite a bit cheaper and readily available to put in (clickits weren't even available in Australia this time last year).
All my Light It Up LEDs and Rextin pixels fit the UY2 connectors easily, some of the thicker plastic wiring like chopped AC cords don't (but the 3 wire cable from Light It Up LEDs did).
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My megatree failed this year after 3 years of running with only minor pixel replacements.
All strands (24 by 75) tested before they went up with only the usual 1 or 2 faulty pixels. Stood the tree up and had six pixels fail, followed by another 8 and so on.
Started replacing strings, either 50 or 25, they would test OK and once put on the tree they would work and then fail before I could get all the tree going.
After 10 hours and a lot of swearing, I bit the bullet and ordered 2000 pixels (thanks @AAH for shipping them promptly) replaced the lot and all except for 1 faulty string it has been going gang busters ever since.
Well until Cyclone Jasper decided to arrive on the scene so it is all coming down today, at least 'her indoors' has experience in pulling the tree down as I decided to get out of the work by getting Covid. Ho Ho Ho.
All strands (24 by 75) tested before they went up with only the usual 1 or 2 faulty pixels. Stood the tree up and had six pixels fail, followed by another 8 and so on.
Started replacing strings, either 50 or 25, they would test OK and once put on the tree they would work and then fail before I could get all the tree going.
After 10 hours and a lot of swearing, I bit the bullet and ordered 2000 pixels (thanks @AAH for shipping them promptly) replaced the lot and all except for 1 faulty string it has been going gang busters ever since.
Well until Cyclone Jasper decided to arrive on the scene so it is all coming down today, at least 'her indoors' has experience in pulling the tree down as I decided to get out of the work by getting Covid. Ho Ho Ho.
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12v4life
Yep .. I've just been throwing entire 100 count strings in the bin, as soon as one pixel dies I just bin the whole string .. unfortunately ... due to my excellent organisational skills I've got some older strings mixed up with the strings from the bad batch so I'm not sure whats' what.
- Thread starter
- #11
Does anyone have an opinion on whether it’s the actual circuitary embedded within the bullet that failed or the wires becoming loose somehow? I notice on a few that if I move the pixel around and fiddle with it that the string starts again. I’m just wondering if the square nodes might be better to use as the wire comes out the side and is less bulky so when the strip moves around in the wind it is less likely to move the wires and hopefully not fail.
- Thread starter
- #12
I was using the yellow ones and didn’t realise that the Blue ones took a different size wire.
There are cases where the problem is with the soldering, as you point out sometimes squeezing the pixel will fix it (temporarily). But, far more often it has been something else, not a result of tugging on the wires. They're firmly embedded in coro, no stress on them, and they still fail in large numbers. Some say poor epoxy allows in dampness over time (and they have photos showing cracked pixels), some cases the components are not soldered to the board firmly, etc., and I think some of these chips burned out too.
I've replaced a handful of square modules... excluding the bad batches of bullets, I get the sense that their failure rate is a little higher, but there is no underlying reason why that would be the case... it's just the same circuit on a different board shape, so it must have been my luck... anyway I'd get the shape of pixel that made the most sense for the project and hope it's not a bad batch.
Starting to see some failures as well. Got my batch in 2021 and first year with them installed into conduit along the roof line. Worked fine for around 5 hours then have started to fail. So far 3 of the 4 new props I made with that batch have failed now. Seems to be both power and data passing, or the ground reference circuit. Expensive hobby to just bin them.
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Croydon Lights
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