Two strip lights having a mind of their own

[shnick2102]

I'm trying to figure out a problem I'm having with two strip lights on a house outline not doing what they should be doing. This is my 2nd year running the same equipment.  I did nothing different and did not even upgrade to the new version of Xlights.  I have 7 strips of 50 pixels each running off of 2 smart long range receiver's from Holiday Coro. One receiver I'm using 4 outputs and the other I'm only using 3.  All this is being run off the HinxPix pro controller where I have my mega tree.  At first I thought it was the strips lights because I did not take them down off the house.  Once I replaced them I got the exact same problem.  Now all other strips lights and Mega tree are functioning correctly.  What could be the problem with these two strips??

[popcorndog]

Not certain this will help you, but I experienced a similar issue in my display last year.  Part way through the season, two of my snowflakes began to exhibit strange pixel artifacts and color flashes.  Turned out, a bunny partially chewed thru my cat 6 cable but did not sever it completely.  I was shocked that the lights were functioning at all.  I would also check for any moisture in your connections, maybe a bad gasket or something.

[Gilrock]

Swap with a known good output.  Check the fuses.

[shnick2102]

Thank you guys.  I will look at both options.  Only problem now is my power supply just took a dump so I'm waiting to install that and get my show up and running.  thanks again

[szaske]

This is unfortunately my experience with LEDs as well.  It seems some Pixels just have poor quality. Every year I get a few strips that just "go bad".  Here in Seattle I've narrowed it down in a few cases:

1. Water in my connections. I try to use dielectric grease on all my connections. I'm using the weatherproof Ray Wu connectors.
2. Cold weather. When it gets below 20 degrees I've noticed more of my LED's start to go bad.

The other thing to consider is could it be a XLights problem. My first troubleshooting test would be to use the controllers test mode and see if the lights show Red, Green Blue correctly and run using a Chase test to see if they get corrupted after playing the chase for 5 minutes. Bad pixels will show themselves using the controller test mode.  If the LEDs function correctly in test mode then I'd suspect the problem is something with XLights. I'm still pretty new with XLights. This year I moved to a new house but left my controllers and lights the same and for some reason I've been tracking down lots of weird "Lights not doing the right things" problems.  If you use groups and subgroups like I do you can find weirdness appearing in your sequences when some items overlap in your layout. I have found the Controller "Visualize" tool to be helpful in troubleshooting. That and just looking into the sequence at the node level.