Duane Hicks
The town is on the right path to fixing the issue of the blinking LED lights along the riverfront walkway.
Travis Rob, the town’s facility/special project co-ordinator, said he was contacted by the manufacturer yesterday afternoon and told the problem has been pinpointed.
He hopes the lights will be fixed as soon as the town gets new parts from the manufacturer.
Rob noted the manufacturer of the lights on the riverfront is the same one that made the lights on Scott Street.
But between building the lights which were installed on Scott Street, and building those along the riverfront, the manufacturer had changed the “driver module,” which is “the brains” of the light and responsible for turning it on and off.
“For some reason, nobody knows why, these new driver modules don’t work with the light bulbs that are in the light fixtures,” Rob said.
“We don’t know why the interaction doesn’t work—all we know is the result is they strobe, like we saw,” he added.
“So the manufacturer was able to nail down that this was the exact cause.”
Rob said the manufacturer also is trying to figure out how widespread of an issue they’re going to have, given the town is not their only customer.
“Kind of an interesting turn of events,” he remarked.
“Same manufacturer gave us the Scott Street lights and the riverfront lights, and between when they manufactured the Scott Street light and when they manufactured the riverfront lights, the switch happened.
“If we would have been a month earlier, we may not have had the problem,” he reasoned.
“I guess a month later, too.”
Now that the town knows what the problem is, Rob said they’re well on their way to fixing it.
“It’s just a matter of getting the parts here and then, of course, getting the time to make the repairs, make the change,” he explained.
As first reported by the Times two weeks ago, the Fort Frances Power Corp. began to switch out the lights in the lamp posts along the riverfront in late September.
But the switchover was halted when the public, in particular condo owners, soon reported some of the new lights had started to blink on and off after dark.
Several of the lights have been disabled until they can been fixed.
