I've left things pretty darn late this year. A good bit of stuff needed rebuild, or at least re-pixeling. The led strips along the gutter were looking pretty sad at the end of last year, with an annoying number of pixels not working on one channel or another. I've been pretty sour on strip for a while now, (basically I'm too shoddy at soldering to do much with it once it starts playing up), so I bought 600 12mm bullet leds to redo the gutter, drilling 25mm PVC conduit to take them. 300 pretty much did all along the front gutter.
I put up the northern end the other day, and pretty pleased to see it worked nicely. Now I have a Pixlite LR, and I have a control box at the north and south ends of the house, and one in the middle, so big elements, like the gutters are actually controlled in part from all three of those boxes. That northern end, I have strip around three windows, then the feed goes to the nearly 100 bullets on the gutter, with the appropriate power injection. Next day, I put up the middle section. Every damn pixel went white as soon as the control box was powered on. I knew the pixels were good, because this year, I actually bought a pixel tester, and they worked fine with it. I put every damn spare remote board I have in one by one, with the same result. I rebuilt the main control box today, primarily as a means of cleaning and checking every darn connection, with no change. I was jiggering around with the Advatek assistant, in one of the "Advanced" tabs, I saw a setting for "slow" and "fast", with it currently on "slow". I changed that to "fast", and suddenly the white pixel did what they were supposed to! I quickly set up the middle and southern gutter sections, and glory be! They worked!
Problem solved? Not on your Nellie! The previously working widows and northern gutter now flash enough to cause a fit! Even more confusing, the first window actually works, but about 4 pixels into the second window, the flashing starts, and carries on down the line to the end.
For those of you with good memories, you may recall last year I had about 15 rolls of strip that had sat on the shelf for 4 years, and (nearly) all just went white .......
Well ....... pickle me grandmother!
I put up the northern end the other day, and pretty pleased to see it worked nicely. Now I have a Pixlite LR, and I have a control box at the north and south ends of the house, and one in the middle, so big elements, like the gutters are actually controlled in part from all three of those boxes. That northern end, I have strip around three windows, then the feed goes to the nearly 100 bullets on the gutter, with the appropriate power injection. Next day, I put up the middle section. Every damn pixel went white as soon as the control box was powered on. I knew the pixels were good, because this year, I actually bought a pixel tester, and they worked fine with it. I put every damn spare remote board I have in one by one, with the same result. I rebuilt the main control box today, primarily as a means of cleaning and checking every darn connection, with no change. I was jiggering around with the Advatek assistant, in one of the "Advanced" tabs, I saw a setting for "slow" and "fast", with it currently on "slow". I changed that to "fast", and suddenly the white pixel did what they were supposed to! I quickly set up the middle and southern gutter sections, and glory be! They worked!
Problem solved? Not on your Nellie! The previously working widows and northern gutter now flash enough to cause a fit! Even more confusing, the first window actually works, but about 4 pixels into the second window, the flashing starts, and carries on down the line to the end.
For those of you with good memories, you may recall last year I had about 15 rolls of strip that had sat on the shelf for 4 years, and (nearly) all just went white .......
Well ....... pickle me grandmother!