A good story

[perigalacticon]

So I'm putting together a "mega tree" type matrix of 360 leds on plastic strips. I had to replace a few pixels as some wires snapped and such as I was assembling them, and they were re-used from other props and were in use ~5 years or more. So, I started noticing some flickering (these are 12v pixels) towards the end of the strand (I had power at both ends, I know I need more injections) and then it seems to stop at one of the pixels I spliced in, so I assumed the spliced in pixel went bad for some reason. I don't know why, but they are from a different set. And if I bypassed the data wire then they all worked ok again. But this started happening to ALL of the pixels I had spliced in. They all seemed to be going 'dead', in that every pixel beyond them was flickering. So, I replaced a lot of bulbs, maybe 5 or 6 or more. But I also started noticing they would sometimes miraculously recover and things would start to work again... I thought I was going to have an unreliable product. I spend a day or so working on this. THEN. I decided to check the battery voltage. I was running them from a 12V (35AH) battery as that's what powers them outside. 7.5V on the battery. 8O ! Never checked it. I was so sure it was fine and fully charged. I put in like 5 splices or more and threw out good bulbs and wasted a day or more "fixing" this... oh man, never again! But boy am I happy now that it runs perfectly non-stop (SO FAR KNOCK ON WOOD). Good luck everyone!! BTW I realized the bulbs I spliced in were regulated and the set was mostly resistive type leds, I don't know why but that's why I think the bulbs beyond them began to flicker at low voltage making me think the spliced in bulbs were going bad for some reason.