Losing Green!

[Robert F Jarvis]

We are a smaller theatre and have several very inexpensive Ridgeyard 4in1 LED Moving Heads. We've run them for about 4 years witout any real problems. Then suddenly in the past month three have lost all their Green function! The Red and Blue LEDs are working. I wonder if anyone else has seen this? As mentoined, at less then $200 apiece we can easily replace them but it seems kind of odd three should act up so near to each other. I should add that all the others on stage are working fine.

 

[jtweigandt]

Sounds like consistent but bad mfg Consistent failure mode.

 

[techieman33]

I'm just guessing here. The LEDs are probably all wired in series. So if one LED fails, or wire or trace breaks then it will take the whole channel out with it. It being green that fails could be because they're pushing that color harder than the other colors to try and balance them out. Or it could just be a coincidence. Your not going to get anywhere without opening the fixture up. Start by checking all the connections and looking for any burn marks. If everything looks good then it probably is a dead LED, but could be a broken wire or bad solder joint. To confirm grab your multi-meter and start checking for continuity along the wiring path for the green LEDs power, and between both sides of each LED. When you find the spot that you don't have continuity then you've probably found your problem. If it is an LED then you can try to find a replacement, or sacrifice one of your fixtures to be a parts unit and take one of the LEDs off of it's board. Good luck.

 

[Crisp image]

I'm just guessing here. The LEDs are probably all wired in series. So if one LED fails, or wire or trace breaks then it will take the whole channel out with it. It being green that fails could be because they're pushing that color harder than the other colors to try and balance them out. Or it could just be a coincidence. Your not going to get anywhere without opening the fixture up. Start by checking all the connections and looking for any burn marks. If everything looks good then it probably is a dead LED, but could be a broken wire or bad solder joint. To confirm grab your multi-meter and start checking for continuity along the wiring path for the green LEDs power, and between both sides of each LED. When you find the spot that you don't have continuity then you've probably found your problem. If it is an LED then you can try to find a replacement, or sacrifice one of your fixtures to be a parts unit and take one of the LEDs off of it's board. Good luck.

I have some fixtures that had bad LED's and dry solder joints and even a failed resister in the array. There were 5 LED's in series with a resister. I even found some of the traces were broken on one of them. Lucky for me I didn't pay for the fixtures so the few dollars I spent on parts and my time learning and repairing was worth it. Factor in your labour to repair and the likelyhood you will be doing it again and it might be worth replacing them.
Regards
Geoff

 

[Robert F Jarvis]

Right, all noted. I am going to certainly take one apart and see what I can for future ref. Now here's the tough part: We sent away for four more to replace these and although at first looking very much the same device in fact the "new" ones looked very, very old with small displays, not touch screen operated. Yucks! Still, as these things are about $180 now I guess we cant complain though I would like to find somehting a bit more upmarket from a more reliable supplier.

 

[TimMc]

Right, all noted. I am going to certainly take one apart and see what I can for future ref. Now here's the tough part: We sent away for four more to replace these and although at first looking very much the same device in fact the "new" ones looked very, very old with small displays, not touch screen operated. Yucks! Still, as these things are about $180 now I guess we cant complain though I would like to find somehting a bit more upmarket from a more reliable supplier.

Been there on the SKU re-order. The shop I managed until recently had gone down the path of "mostly, kind of direct from China with a USA office contact" source. Nothing odd about the transaction and the boss was happy. FWD a few months later when more were ordered. Upon receipt we put up a new fixture and an old fixture and... the amber diodes weren't even close. Did we learn our lesson? Kind of... it was to order 25% more than we needed, to have spares and extras because there was no guarantee the next container from China would have identical products for the SKU.

My personal take away was this: "buy once, cry once" and "the wrong piece of gear at the 'right price' is still the wrong piece of gear." The right piece of gear is usually "Brands You've Heard Of®" that have support staff, proximate warehousing of goods, and engineering QC at the factories, ensuring the products consistently meet the brand specifications. The wrong piece of gear means buying cheap or off-brand products more than once, effectively spending 2 to 3x before ultimately buying the right gear. My boss being cheap ended up costing himself more.

In the volunteer and community theater worlds, sometimes anything that works is a step up from what exists, and there is going to be more incremental spending because that's how the money comes in.

 

[techieman33]

Right, all noted. I am going to certainly take one apart and see what I can for future ref. Now here's the tough part: We sent away for four more to replace these and although at first looking very much the same device in fact the "new" ones looked very, very old with small displays, not touch screen operated. Yucks! Still, as these things are about $180 now I guess we cant complain though I would like to find somehting a bit more upmarket from a more reliable supplier.

Yep, that's pretty standard for generic Chinese fixtures. All the "companies" buy the same bodies since that's the expensive part to tool up for and produce. And then they throw in whatever they can get the best price on when they order parts for their next batch. So what you get one month could be an made with parts from entirely different manufacturers the next month. LEDs that don't match, different firmware with a different dmx profile, less or more light output, etc. You never really know what your going to get. And I think it's especially bad on sites like Amazon. They sell a slightly higher grade of fixture at first to build up good reviews. And then start sending cheaper units banking on those early reviews generating more sales for them. As u/TimMc said all you can do is buy plenty of extra units for spares and then cannibalize broken fixtures to keep others working, or throw the whole batch out and swap them with something new.

 

[Robert F Jarvis]

Amen to all. I am now looking for more up market units that are as versatile. But its proving hard to find anyhting anywhere near the cost of these liitle boogers though! The notes about the good, followed by cheaper unots particularly struck home. Any one using reliable MHs that dont cost in $5000 and above ?

 

[aeh20s]

Chauvet Professional has gotten to a point where they are reliable and cost between $1,500 to $3,000 range (Google quoting here).