I purchased 6 strings of 50 technicolor pixels in October. I used them to create 6 arches which played perfectly the saturday I put them up, but sunday we had over 2" of rain. Monday I fire them up to test them and every string had something wrong with them. I ended up replacing 1 - 2 bad pixels in each string by sacrificing one of the strings for parts.
Just a sample of what 2 strings were doing when they were suppose to be off:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByrbO4A3OJhJSTladnE5YkVzU0U&authuser=0
Seems like nothing has changed for many users with the repeated issues from last year, doesnt seem like the Gen 2 made any significant improvements which is a big dissapointment
I had 10 sets of the black ones last year and all 10 sets failed. Ray didn't ship the replacements until the end of Oct, but I got all green this time. I've had them up on the house and running for a couple weeks so far and they were running from the time I took them out of the box until I put them up and haven't had a problem but we also haven't had any rain or large fluctuations in temperature. It is however raining as I type this so we'll see how things fare. My issues last year were primarily with the voltage regulators and those issues seem to be fixed.
I had bought some last year, but held off. Decided to use them around my driveway this year. Some had clear wire, and some were black wire ones. Ran great for a week then the clear string side started going crazy. Seemed to start at at a certain point, so I would replace a couple right at that point. Then it'd be down the string. Fix those, then it was back before the first splice. Don't know where the noise is getting in. Gave up last night and unplugged them all.
I have 6 strings on the new Technicolor pixles on my roof in a star outline. 2 strings get affected by moisture, and cause the rest of the trailing pixles to blink like crazy, 2 strings have a pixel with 1 colour missing. I used a further 2 strings of these technicolor pixles on my Merry-Go-Round, and have had no problems at all with these 2.
I was a big part of the thread linked above at DIYC and there are quite a few pictures (some posted by me) of the tear down process on pixels. I live in the state of Florida in the southeastern U.S. and my replacements (green) were fine during the Halloween season and mid-way through November... then we had this one weekend where the humidity got up to around 100% and the temperature was 30-ish all weekend (I know that is nothing compared to some of y'alls temperatures down under, but for most of this country that is warm)... I ended up with condensation in my C9 bulb covers. My bulbs were pointed straight up as that is the way I like them on my roof... and all that condensation dripped onto the interface between the base (the green part) and the LED bulb... my tear downs on failed units showed a ton of corrosion on the top side of the circuit board where the LED is mounted... which basically seals the deal <no pun intended> that there is a horrible seal between the green base and the LED bulb. I shared my pictures with Ray and told him that he really needs to get a THICK conformal coating on these boards.... OR go with a different way of fabricating the base and tying it into the LED...