Shorting Bizzzzzzzzzzzzt

It's been really rainy here yesterday and today. The only problem we have is a single GFCI that keeps tripping, even though that's the dryest outlet/wires/controller in the entire yard!

Nope, Target el-cheapos I believe. At least they are the mini/micros from a local chain. Some are from Lowes though. It's strill really odd that it's primarily the two controllers. Not quire sure what's going in with them.

That's a big risk you are taking.    GFCI's exist for a reason, and if they trip that's also for a reason.  Bypassing them because they trip is, IMHO, asking for trouble.  Is it more important for the show to run, or to prevent your boards from accidentally being fried?  Unless the news crew was filming, I know what I'd choose.  Good luck mate; I hope it works out for you!  

I'll be the first to admit I am not an expert (or even an amateur) with regards to electricity.  I just know that I tend to blow electrical things up when I mess with them and that my water lights show kept tripping the GFCI's.  Water would seep through the electrical tape covering the extension cord connections that would end up partially submerged.  My power strips never went off though.  Even if you know what you are doing, I still think it's a good idea to err on the side of caution. 

I posted this over on D-Light's site, but since we are on the subject, I too got hit by that same storm... 

Wow, what a night it's been.

It rained here today, quite a bit in fact. The local mountains got 3 feet of snow out of the storm. Down here all we got was soaking wet, and that's where it all began...

I got home and checked my lights. All was well except one firefly strand was dead. Turns out the power supply got wet and won't work. I guess my safe dry spot for it was anything but. I only figured this out when it shocked me. Funny thing was that my GFCI didn't trip. Thankfully, 12VDC is a lot less than 110VAC! (Been there, done that!)

So I added my inclement weather spiel to the sequence list in a few spots that apologizes for lights not working and kept on truckin'. I went out a bit later to see that one of my ACx16's was blinking, as was the status LED on the wiLink remote. I power cycled, no change. Not wanting to interrupt the show, I ran a CAT5 cable from that box to another ACx16. All was well again until...

I saw one channel on my mega tree sticking on. Hopefully the triac didn't die on me; I'm no good at fixing that kind of stuff. I went outside only to discover that two more fireflies were also now dark as was the problem ACx16 and my DCx16. Ignoring the stuck channel, I quickly figured out that a tripped GFCI was to blame for the other issues. I reset it, and it stayed on, so I left it at that. Turn out I got about 5 minutes worth before it tripped again. Reset, same thing. Finally, I killed the scheduler, had the HW Utility turn on power to everything that could see it, and played my technical difficulties soundtrack while I quickly built a new show with inclement weather spiels after each song, then started it all back up again.

To isolate what was causing the GFCI to trip, I ran an extension cord to a different GFCI outlet and powered just the ACx16 and the DCx16 with it, and I left the fireflies on the outlet that kept tripping. So far neither have tripped, but it's only been half an hour.

The bad news is that the forecast is rain, rain, and more rain for the next few days. At this rate the only thing I'll be playing by that time is my "show canceled" sequence.

Oh well. I guess you can only do so much. Hopefully things will get better sooner than later!