Wonky Colours on PIxel Strings

[cdnbob]

I have 4 strings of technicolor pixels (50 pixels/string) from Ray Wu on a P12S controller. These are split into two strings in series on each of 2 P12S outputs. The second string on each output has been shortened a few pixels so there's less than 100 pixels per output. This is the 3rd year I've had them up, and they've been working fine.

This evening all the pixels on one of the outputs are showing unexpected colours. It's raining today, so I suspect that has a bearing on this problem. When running a red-white-green alternating effect I am now seeing yellow and 2 shades of blue. It looks like red is missing, and right from the first pixel on the two strings connected in series. But the P12S test pattern looks fine - red, green and blue are fine.

I have +V injection at the start of each string so I don't think that voltage drop is a problem. I run 24V to the start of the string and use a buck converter to reduce it to +5 at the start of each string.

The sequences are run through an FPP. The FPP and P12S are in the garage protected from the weather. The strings are under the eves, hanging with bulbs pointing down, and all connectors are protected from rain and are dry, but the strings themselves can get wet from water dripping down the fascia. And today it is raining quite a bit so the bulbs are showing water dripping off them.

So I'm wondering if there's a problem with water at the first pixel. But the colour changes are confusing me. It looks like red is missing, but I don't see how that would happen in the data stream. Bit errors in the first pixel as it shifts data downstream?

Any one have similar experiences?

I appreciate any input.

 

[cdnbob]

And now the test pattern is also looking funny. At times I get the red-green-blue but then at other times I see pink, different shades of blue, and other odd colours.

 

[Kitman]

I had a similar problem with my display, everything looked fine in all of my settings. The first 3 strings were all behaving fine, plugged into separate connectors on my sandevice controller, but the last string plugged into the 4th connector on my controller was just showing the wrong colours.


Turns out I doubled up the channel number in the controller settings, I had the end universe and channel for string 3 set to universe 11 channel 60 and the start of string 4 set to Universe 11 channel 60 not channel 61, so it was throwing all of the colours out by 1 channel.


I know you said that they have been fine for the last 3 years but perhaps you went in to check the settings on the P12s and accidentally changed a setting?? Just a thought, sometimes it's small simple things.

 

[cdnbob]

Thanks for the suggestion, but that's not it. They were fine for the week up to Wednesday, running a simple pre-season sequence that I use to confirm that all is well set up. I made no changes to the configurations, so something else is amiss here.

Now that it's daylight and drier outside, I'll do some testing and see if it's in the strings or the feed to them.