Sean Meighan
General => Lights => Topic started by: Ryan_Ohio on October 18, 2017, 07:19:22 PM
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I use 30/10 waterproof strips for outlines of the house (roof, windows, garage doors). My show ran perfect for an amazing 4 days last year, then hell of a storm and water got into my controller box and fried the controller. I evidently made the mistake of leaving the lights on the house year round. I read somewhere that hot glue could be used to mount things to the house so that's what I did and I didn't want to take the shit down after doing that.
I just checked everything today and out of 10 models and 586 pixels, I lost 151 pixels!!! Many of the failures is just 1 out of the 3 colors doesn't work on that pixel. This is far past unacceptable as far as I'm concerned and I'm sure too late to go back to the vendor. I have zero issues with bullets. I'm thinking about buying all bullets to replace and put in pvc and mount that to the brick...
Anyone else have any issues using strips?
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No issues in 4 years but I don't leave them on the house all year.
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so you really want to hear my story? I like strips but every year just after Thanksgiving it rains heavy here. No matter what I do they get water inside of them. so before the cold sets in I'm outside cutting and splicing in new sections every night. 2 mega trees, house and window outlines, snowflakes on and on. End of last season took it all down packed it up and gave it away. The person who I gave them to knew what issues I had but free is free. I replaces all with just over 10,000 bullets. The last few weeks I installed the house and window outlines. Only one bad bullet so far. Oh wait everything is now built and tested. 1 out of 10,000 nice. the only strips I have now are in my moose and Ferris wheel. I tested the Ferris wheel the other night and I had a spoke and 8 lights not working. Cut out the bad bulb still bad, cut out 2 and still.(w2813) Yep dumb a$$ it was a controller setting. works great now. With in the first year I found a few cracks in the covers and Ray replaced for free.
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so you really want to hear my story? I like strips but every year just after Thanksgiving it rains heavy here. No matter what I do they get water inside of them. so before the cold sets in I'm outside cutting and splicing in new sections every night. 2 mega trees, house and window outlines, snowflakes on and on. End of last season took it all down packed it up and gave it away. The person who I gave them to knew what issues I had but free is free. I replaces all with just over 10,000 bullets. The last few weeks I installed the house and window outlines. Only one bad bullet so far. Oh wait everything is now built and tested. 1 out of 10,000 nice. the only strips I have now are in my moose and Ferris wheel. I tested the Ferris wheel the other night and I had a spoke and 8 lights not working. Cut out the bad bulb still bad, cut out 2 and still.(w2813) Yep dumb a$$ it was a controller setting. works great now. With in the first year I found a few cracks in the covers and Ray replaced for free.
Thanks for the story. Makes me feel like I'm not the only one at least. Same issues here with water. I went to liquid electrical tape for connections to try and seal things off this year hoping for a better outcome.
All my bullets are from Ray as well. Zero issues fortunately...so far
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No issues in 4 years but I don't leave them on the house all year.
Gil - I know you don't buy from HC so I can cross them off, mind if I ask where you get yours from?
I went out and bought a bunch of pvc. Building window outlines to attach lights too now so I can take them down each season. The hot glue was a bad idea.
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I tried to get my bullets out of Ray but Card issues with Aliexpress. They wanted my first born male child. Whole story there. I used Pixel Sequencing. About the same price. At this time he has nothing in stock not sure what's going on there.
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Baby bear try going straight to Ray and bypass Aliexpress all together, send him an email with what you want then he’ll send you a quote then just pay him directly. It’s usually cheaper to do it that also..
his email is, sunlei_lighting@126.com
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I used the 30/10 from Ray for 3 years without a single failure, but I did do all the connections and waterproofing my self. Last year I switched them all to the 12V 30/30 (the kind with the little buck converters every meter on the back) and the only "failures" I had are where I didn't do the the connection/waterproofing myself and relied on Ray's job there. That was the mistake. I have had several that failed due to his poor waterproofing. I took them apart afterword and discovered that on the incoming end where there it the 3 wire going in along with the extra 2 wire power, he injects silicone around the wires, but doesn't get enough/any between the two so water can get in between the wires. I've now cut them off and replaced with my own. When I inject silicone into the tube, I inject enough that the first one or two pixels end up completely covered in silicone. Probably overkill, but like I said, I haven't had an issue with the ends I've done.
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No issues in 4 years but I don't leave them on the house all year.
Gil - I know you don't buy from HC so I can cross them off, mind if I ask where you get yours from?
I went out and bought a bunch of pvc. Building window outlines to attach lights too now so I can take them down each season. The hot glue was a bad idea.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I bought mine from Ray but I don't think it matters where you buy them. For one I hang mine vertically so the end where the wires come in faces down. Second I'm in Arizona so after it rains things dry fast. I have more of an issue where I've accidentally cut the sleeving when removing zip ties. Sometimes I have a pixel that will stay green for a day and then drys out and works again. Out of 12 strips I've only seen 1 bad pixel and that's not enough for me to cut it up. I'd rather just replace an entire strip than try to cut it up.
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There are multiple forums with many stories from folks who like strips but have switched to all nodes after having many, many problems with strip failures. I am one of them. I still have my failed strips in my basement for the day when I have lots of hours available to play with them although that has not happened since I removed them from the show 3 years ago. LOL.