STROBES going out on me!

F

funstick

New member
Is anyone else having issues with strobe not working that were bought from DIY LED express? Mine are going out on me this year and they are new. Used in 3 shows and are now going out on me.

Any issues with yours?

R/

Mike
 
Hey fun stick,

Me to. I bought 25 U strobes during the January 2015 pre sale and installed them last week.

12 have failed so far :-(

I opened one up, and a component was roasted. I haven't had time to troubleshoot, but intend to find the bad component to see about repairing them.

Have you opened any?

Have you found a different vendor or strobe to use?

Mn
 
I did open one up and the board is a little burnt or the strobe itself is crusted over. If you come across a component that went bad please let me know so I may try to repair it. So far I haven't received any refunds but I am working with the vendor. They do acknowledge that this was a bad year for strobes and they are exploring other manufactures.
 
Okay, similar experience.

Bought 25, displayed 20 and 11 have failed within 5days of putting them on.

They are only lit for 10seconds once every 2 minutes and didnt run them in the rain.
 
Oh great... I bought 30 of them and I had enough from last year so I wasn't going to run these but rather keep them for spares. I am thinking perhaps I need to burn them in .... so to speak and return the bad ones.. .

Edit: I sent an email also asking what they are going to do about the problem. Lets see how they step up. I am not really that interested in paying shipping back for parts that I paid shipping to me for that are defective. Perhaps they will do the wise thing and just replace them all and let us toss the bad ones in the e-waste. I would not put known bad product in my display.

With all that said.. since I have not opened mine, I can't say for sure I even got bad product.. but I am pre-emptively concerned from all the failures you guys are having.
 
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I had a 25% failure rate. I'm not sure what the issue is but mine were sparking from on top the board. I had the first failures replaced. Even some of those had issues so I took some liquid black tape and dabbed around the area where it was sparking. This saved a number of them that were still semi working. I haven't been out in the yard to see how the rest are working. See the attached pic.
 

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I had about 30% fail at this point. The company did refund my money on some. They are looking for new vendors as they acknowledge this is an issue.
 
ho ley crap i order 100 of them and they are still in their box never used ....is that mean i need to go and install them all to test ,,,that is crap big time ,,, if they knew about it they should had send email or put announcement to let us know of the situation/problem ..
cheer
 
barbotte said:
ho ley crap i order 100 of them and they are still in their box never used ....is that mean i need to go and install them all to test ,,,that is crap big time ,,, if they knew about it they should had send email or put announcement to let us know of the situation/problem ..
cheer
Click to expand...

Mine all worked 100% (25 of them) out of the box. Deployed 24 of them and then they failed. So unless you're going to soak them you're not going to find those which will fail.
 
Todd answered my email and said I could send mine back. I haven't opened my up and didn't plan on it until 2017... I told him I would rather keep them if they are not the ones that everyone is having trouble with..or unless he would warranty them in 2017 when I used them. Not sure what his answer is yet. He also didn't offer to pay shipping for the return of the possibly defective product... I paid $17 to get em and it would be about $23 to send them back on my account.. that would be $40 for a defective product that I never used.. I would have an issue with that..

With that said.. I still don't know if I have the same ones you guys are having issue with.. Mine are the ones that we bought on a presale for $3 each I think.
 
yea i dont think i will send them back either ..i am from canada so its a fortune to ship back ... but it would be nice to know witch batch are bad ,,the pre sale one or the after pre sale ...but i think they all come from the same supplier,, so they all bad ... but i could be wrong ...cheer
 
jeffl said:
I had a 25% failure rate. I'm not sure what the issue is but mine were sparking from on top the board. I had the first failures replaced. Even some of those had issues so I took some liquid black tape and dabbed around the area where it was sparking. This saved a number of them that were still semi working. I haven't been out in the yard to see how the rest are working. See the attached pic.
Click to expand...

Possibly a little moisture causing it to arc over on the board.

This is the stuff we use to use to help control arcing on high voltage flyback transformers:

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=MG+Chemicals+4226&_sop=15

-Craig
 
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Some of my strobes failed this year also, the ones that are arcing to ground u just put some super glue over the copper chases and that fixed those. The ones I can't figure out is when they light in the base.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
 
When you test them let them run for a minute. A short few seconds isn't always enough to do it.
 
Todd just replied to me, and I say great support offering refund on the failed units.

I've bought $100s of stuff from them so in the end they honored their side of this fiasco.


They've offered a refund in the failed units, so I hope they get the same from their suppliers since they're putting themselves on the block for this;


/BM (Fran)
 
jeffl said:
I had a 25% failure rate. I'm not sure what the issue is but mine were sparking from on top the board. I had the first failures replaced. Even some of those had issues so I took some liquid black tape and dabbed around the area where it was sparking. This saved a number of them that were still semi working. I haven't been out in the yard to see how the rest are working. See the attached pic.
Click to expand...
I had the same sparking on the initial batch and Todd (DIYLEDExpress) was great and replaced them. If I get any more like this I figured I'd try to fix it like you did (liquid tape or hot glue). But...how did you get it open? The lens appears to be threaded, but I couldn't budge it. Seems glued on solid. Is there a trick? Does it just unscrew if I use enough force? I was sure I would break it so I stopped trying.
 
Do they need any repair under the board? If I'm going to take the effort to open them up, makes sense to cover all the bases. Reddy, what is that dope on ebay like? Watery, syrupy? Dries hard, sticky, doesn't dry? Do you just brush it on?
 
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