Minor White flickering issue

burner

Full time elf
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Nov 2, 2011
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Tonight while performing a test run, I saw a flickering issue on 2 universes when the lights went all white.
I have the following setup:
1 * ECG-P12R
About 50-55m of RGB strip (12v), spread over 4 channels (colour coded with heat shrink and electrical tape as White, Blue, Red and Black)
80 or so RGB modules (12v)
About 300 pixel string lights (5v) (2 universes on the 5v power side)
The P12R is wired with 5v power to power it up and for Universe 7-12. I have 2 * 12v power supplies connected too for Universe 1-6. The 1st PSU is cabled to the P12R and I have a few direct runs along the runs connected to the PSU's (injected power). To connect the 2nd PSU, I pulled the red out of the P12R from the Blue and White string and connected them to the 2nd PSU +, then connected the black from the first PSU to the 2nd (common ground).
Last night I tested everything connected except the stuff connected to the 5v universes (basically they are converted sillouettes). This arvo, all I did different was to connect the sillouettes to the 5v universes.
This flickering is happening on the 12v blue and white strings.

Is this related at all? I haven't put the multimeter on the PSU's yet, so not sure if it's a load issue, however it seemes to run fine when everything was initially connected with just the 1 12v PSU, but it was getting warm when running 10 minutes of show.
BTW, the P12R is running the latest firmware.
 

burner

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Forgot to mention, I have not tested the lights again tonight without the sillouettes plugged in, as I only have a 10 minute window at 8pm while my wife is getting the kids ready for bed :(
 

burner

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I've done some more testing, and can't seem to pinpoint the issue. So far I have removed everything that's 5v, which didn't help. I've now also split the 12v items onto 3 seperate PSU's, but don't think that has made any difference.

Can anyone confirm that I have wired the 3 PSU's the correct way?

My initial setup with 1 PSU was 12v into J1SYS to poower channels 1-6, then a couple of seperate runs of + & - injected into the PSU directly. To add each extra PSU, I ran a - wire to PSU 1, then grabbed the + wire of a selected channel out of the terminal and joined it to the + on the PSU. I also moved the injected wires for those selected channels to their respective PSU. See drawing.
 

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fasteddy

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I would run a ground as well to the controller as your diagram only shows a +V going to the controller. If this is the case then I would definetly add that ground as well.

How is it connected for power to the controller
 

crispy

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Jun 12, 2012
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Fraser Lake
I have noticed this too. It only happens on the universe with the longest home run, and only when it is set to white above 70% output.
 

burner

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ɟɐsʇǝppʎ said:
I would run a ground as well to the controller as your diagram only shows a +V going to the controller. If this is the case then I would definetly add that ground as well.

How is it connected for power to the controller
I forgot to add that in, but there is a ground wire going from PSU1 to the controller already. I've just updated the picture, and also added the 5v PSU into it, which supplies the power to the J1sys. Would it make a difference to run the ground wire from the 12v to the 5v PSU?
 

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burner

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:D :D :D :D :D :D
I think I solved my problem, dunno about the solution, but at least it works.

Here's what I did:
I added another dead pixel to the 4-5m string that leads from my controller to the first pixel on that universe and that solved that issue (note, this issue wasn't present during full scale in study testing and for the first 6 or so test runs after being mounted).

The 2nd flashing issue already had a dead pixel in a 4-5m length, so I didn't want to add another. My first thought was to push light to this dead pixel where it was flickering in the sequence and see if the issue shows up on that, so I untaped it and watched eagerly. To my surprise, the dead pixel and the 3 or 4 problem pixels after that worked perfectly. Thinking it was just a fluke, I repeated the process of adding white light to the dead pixel and then removing it. Everytime I removed it, the flickering came back. Next, I tried to apply 3% intensity to the dead pixel across the entire sequence, but the flickering came back, I then tried 25%, then 55% and same issue. When I pushed it up to 100%, it went away again. At this stage, I've left 100% across the whole song, but I'm planning on doing a recording tonight and over the weekend and may just apply the white to the flickering sections of the sequence to stop any heat issues on the covered dead pixel.

Told you it was a weird solution. Last week I was all ready to just let these pixels flicker, as it's only for a couple of seconds during the sequences, but today I persisted with some testing.

BTW, this particular string has 3 dead pixels all up, and it's the last dead pixel (around number 255) that the issue happened.
 
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