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FADES


EARLE W. TALLEY

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I can't say weather it is a software or hardware problem, but I did this type of testing on both for 30 years while working for DOD and have seen cases where hardware would react completely different when a small software change was made, and vice versa. As you have said " You know someone that did a 10 second fade test and only had to add a load to a couple of channels" I don't consider this one test to be a true test under the conditions that we put the controllers and lights though. we use so many different brands and sizes that tests can only be run under actual conditions, this is why I will run my test in Jan before I take the system down. I am not only doing it for my piece of mind , but as I said I will let you and all on the forums know what I found and if I am wrong I will say that too.
Now , are you saying to take one controller and put a set of c7s on one channel to see how the channel will react or how the whole controller will react? I can do either one with no problem, I have done it with one channel and that worked fine, did not check the whole controller.

Earle

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This is my first year and I'm having the same problem as Earle. I've posted my issues in this thread:


http://forums.lightorama.com/view_topic.php?id=30937&forum_id=80&jump_to=290706

but it seems better placed here.

Also, I should mention that looked at a video last week before I upgraded my software and the fades look fine. Could I possibly need to do a firmware upgrade as well?

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Have you guys been experiencing this with all led or does it depend on the brand? I was looking at switching over to LED next year and getting into using LOR for the first time. But all this talk of issues with LEDs i'm starting to rethink the idea of Led lights. The led I was looking at was 100 LED LIGHT SET M6 STYLE from creative displays http://www.creativedisplays.com/product/632/100-LED-LIGHT-SET-M6-STYLE-PURE-WHITE/ few of my channels might only have 100 lights on them (1 strand)and wondering if the "load" issue you have been talking about will cause these not to fade correctly. Thanks for your input.

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The LEDs from CDI are great lights and will fade without any problems, but it's not only LEDs that people are having the issue, it's both incan. and LEDs and not a certain brand. I have GE that works, some from MITS that work and some that don't, some old Home Depot that work if you use a c7 incan. on them, I did not need it last year. Some half wave that work and some that don't. This is not on only one controller it is across 4-5 of my 9 that I have. When you see posts where one or two channels are staying on or acting weird and others that are having fading problems on both new and old controllers I think it may be more than someone saying "put a phantom load on it and it will work" that does fix some but others it don't.
We out here have a PROBLEM.

Earle

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I just came up with an important question. What should be the min. distance between controllers? I have mine mounted back to back with u-bolts on a steel post, will this cause the kind of interference that would effect the lights?

Earle

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I've added 33K snubbers to just the LED channels and that seemed to help a bit. I now get a fade from 100 to about 25. After that, just goes right to black. I can live with that for now, but it would be nice to have a smooth fade.

Also, I realized tonight that I have two strings of LEDs on my porch edge that fade perfectly. The trees are either 60 or 120 bulbs and the porch strings much longer. I'm wondering in this case if it's brand or number.

The LED's on the trees are Phillips that I bought at Target.

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EARLE W. TALLEY wrote:

I just came up with an important question. What should be the min. distance between controllers? I have mine mounted back to back with u-bolts on a steel post, will this cause the kind of interference that would effect the lights?

Earle

There should not be any issues with mounting them too close together.
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Yes, taping out a C7 is a problem, but in part for the same reason that a C7 is such an effective load. Incandescent bulbs radiate most of their heat away in the form of IR light, rather than local thermal energy to be dissipated. Two C7 bulbs are a lot easier to deal with than a single 20W resistor that is dissipating 10W. When you tape over a C7, you now have most of that heat going into a fairly limited area of black tape, instead of all of the area around.

The reason I was asking about the ability to extend them somewhere out of sight, was that one could possibly locate somewhere (maybe in the back yard?) where one could continue with the C7 bulbs in a way that is not visible to the display viewers, without taping them over.

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EARLE W. TALLEY wrote:

The LEDs from CDI are great lights and will fade without any problems, but it's not only LEDs that people are having the issue, it's both incan. and LEDs and not a certain brand. I have GE that works, some from MITS that work and some that don't, some old Home Depot that work if you use a c7 incan. on them, I did not need it last year. Some half wave that work and some that don't. This is not on only one controller it is across 4-5 of my 9 that I have. When you see posts where one or two channels are staying on or acting weird and others that are having fading problems on both new and old controllers I think it may be more than someone saying "put a phantom load on it and it will work" that does fix some but others it don't.
We out here have a PROBLEM.

Earle


Lets be careful here. This reads as if you believe there is only one problem. But problem isolation is an important part of testing as well.

I am aware of a few different issues affecting people. A few of them include:

Some people are experiencing half shorted triacs, which are an unfortunate component failure, that will require repair or replacement parts. This will affect either LED, or incandescent. These manifest as channels that never turn completely off, and basically scale from that minimum level to 100% over the 0-100% LOR dimming curve.

Some people are experiencing channels either not responding to commands, or responding as if they received commands not expected to be sent to them. This also is affecting both types of lights.

Failure to fade through the full range, or flickering while fading is an issue that I have not yet seen reported against anything but LED lights. The closest I have seen to this for incandescent turned out to be a sequencing issue where they had the same channels in both a musical sequence, and a background sequence concurrently, so the result was due to user error.

But one thing we have to be careful of is that we can't expect all LED lights to dim correctly. Go to a store that has a bunch of household LED lights to be used in standard residential fixtures. If you read the labels, 80-90% of them are specifically labeled that they are not dimmable. There will be versions that are, for a premium in price.

The same thing applies to holiday lighting strands, some are dimmable, some sort of are, and some just flat out are not. Basically any string that has a capacitor in the circuit is extremely unlikely to be able to be faded correctly.

An interesting isolation test would be to take a $5 residential dial dimmer, an outlet box, and an extension cord. Wire it up as an in line dimmer switch, and see how some of these strings behave. If they don't behave well on that residential dimmer, wouldn't it seem likely we have a string designed in such a way that that they just won't dim well?
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-klb- wrote:

Yes, taping out a C7 is a problem, but in part for the same reason that a C7 is such an effective load.  Incandescent bulbs radiate most of their heat away in the form of IR light, rather than local thermal energy to be dissipated.  Two C7 bulbs are a lot easier to deal with than a single 20W resistor that is dissipating 10W.  When you tape over a C7, you now have most of that heat going into a fairly limited area of black tape, instead of all of the area around.

The reason I was asking about the ability to extend them somewhere out of sight, was that one could possibly locate somewhere (maybe in the back yard?) where one could continue with the C7 bulbs in a way that is not visible to the display viewers, without taping them over. 


Just an FYI and suggestion for you would be to take some coffee cans or gallon cans and spray them black. Then you can stick several C7 bulbs under them right out close to where you need the load and they will be under cover and unseen.
I use the can trick for tucking plugged together cord ends as well since it will keep them up off the ground as well as covered from rain and snow.
You can even decorate the cans to look like little presents or decorations if need be.
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beeiilll wrote:

-klb- wrote:
Yes, taping out a C7 is a problem, but in part for the same reason that a C7 is such an effective load.  Incandescent bulbs radiate most of their heat away in the form of IR light, rather than local thermal energy to be dissipated.  Two C7 bulbs are a lot easier to deal with than a single 20W resistor that is dissipating 10W.  When you tape over a C7, you now have most of that heat going into a fairly limited area of black tape, instead of all of the area around.

The reason I was asking about the ability to extend them somewhere out of sight, was that one could possibly locate somewhere (maybe in the back yard?) where one could continue with the C7 bulbs in a way that is not visible to the display viewers, without taping them over. 


Just an FYI and suggestion for you would be to take some coffee cans or gallon cans and spray them black. Then you can stick several C7 bulbs under them right out close to where you need the load and they will be under cover and unseen.
I use the can trick for tucking plugged together cord ends as well since it will keep them up off the ground as well as covered from rain and snow.
You can even decorate the cans to look like little presents or decorations if need be.


Nice idea Bill :D
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Hey All,

I know I am a newbie on the LOR forums but I have a request (yeah, I know it is a bit late but...)

This issue with "snubbers" and "phantom loads" is pretty much all over the place. Some things work for one and not for others.. However.... One thing that might be helpful for discussion is if we all could use the same terminology.

The term "snubber" is usually something that refers to a device that will snub out a dV/dT issue caused by an inductive field collapse or other such spikes. Per Wikipedia: "A snubber is a device used to suppress ("snub") voltage transients in electrical systems" This really is not the fit for our capacitive LED minimum load issues regarding LOR controllers.

Putting a resistive load on a string to help dissipate a capacitive charge would be actually be more of a "phantom load" and not a "snubber" in the world of power controls. The phrase "phantom load" doesn't actually apply either in terms of common vernacular, but it is a good close fit for discussions here. It would be nice if we could all agree to use this term as our common ground for discussion.

I know this sounds nit picky and I apologize for it, but when I read these posts I find myself looking funny at the post for a second or so.. until my brain kicks in and remembers that many people on this forum interchange the two at will. (There is a big difference in the world of industrial power controls)

Of course no one has to follow this terminology standard, but for us that want to help solve technical issue, it might be helpful. Just a thought!

Merry Christmas
Craig

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I can see your point. I'm a newbie too. I got the concept though, which for me is always tough :)

Has anyone considered building something with a variable resistor?

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  • 4 weeks later...

As I have said that on the 4th & 5th of Jan I would be testing to see if the fading problem was software or hardware. I found the problem and as I said would report the findings here. This is something to keep in mind, when the cat5 cable is run into the controller and to the fitting make sure that it is bent in the down position. IF it is bent up when the door is closed it does not make good contact, thus the results are ???????? I have done this both ways and sometimes it worked and sometimes not.
So in summary this was a clear case of OPERATOR ERROR !!!
Thank everyone for their help in trying to solve the problem for me.

Earle

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Plasmadrive - I agree with you and made the same suggestions some time back. I just call them Dummy loads or Ghost lights.

Others - Some people in the past have successfully used a Glade room deodorizer plugged into the string, either in the front or the back of the string. This had enough load to accomplish better dimming. A secondary benefit was the pine scent it radiated.

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The snubbers and c7s were all removed for this test. The fades were good when the cat5 cable made good contact. The lights that had poor fades during the test were half wave and still needed a snubber no matter what was done, these lights are slowly being replaced with better light strings.
Earle

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