Faint glow from LED lights when off

[dgrant]

My issue came back but it was raining last night too so I suspect that the problem might be needing to reverse the plug. I'll do that this morning and see what happens.

[Tony Shepherd]

Are you using an external common ground for all your lights? Not the power input side.

Not sure what you mean by this can you please explain? Thanks

[Max-Paul]

I'm have the same type of issue I'm using 250 led on a mini tree and the first 10 led are staying on on a few channels and the rest of the channels are fine .10 channels are exactly the same type and count of led

I'm use 3 prong cords to the controler and three prong out to lights . Light are only two prong

Weird that the first 10 led are staying on and not the whole string.

Just cause you have a 3 prong plug does not mean everything is wonderfully right. Do you have an outlet tester? This is a plug with 3 little neon lights. Two lights come on to show you have proper polarity between neutral and hot. Second light confirms you have a ground and it is on the right part of the outlet. Others lights mean you have a problem. Also did you attach that 3 prong cord to the controller. Did you put the black lead on the tab near the fuse or the proper screw terminal. Also I cant say I have ever heard of this before. But just in the past week or two, someone said that they found the problem was in an extension cord. The hot and neutral was swapped from one end to the other end.  Do you have  a volt metere? If so, quick test is to put one probe into the dirt and other probe to the fuse holder or in the case of one of the commercial grade controllers, to the screw terminal marked hot. If you read 110VAC - 120VAC your good to go. If no voltage, but if you move the probe from the fuse holder over to where all of the white wires or neutral terminals and you read voltage. Then something has been swapped and this is the reason you are seeing a faint glow.. Swap the hot and neutral at the problem point.

[Max-Paul]

I am thinking like you Dennis, but not on the primary side. I have seen one side of the secondary being tied to earth ground. Frankly I would not do that in this application. But if one leg of the secondary is earth grounded. Then the faint glow from the reversed leads becomes an issue. Tony unless someone can give me a good reason. I would not have one leg of the secondary earth grounded. No advantage to do so, and this is one more path for a shock hazard.

[dgrant]

The string I had this problem on was a professional type but had removed the special plug in favor of a vampire plug. This morning I reversed the wires in the plug and the dim lights went out. I tested the circuit and it functions normally.

[atver]

Glad to learn you resolved the problem.

[Max-Paul]

Whoa time out dgrant, did I read that right? you swapped the wires from the lights to the plug on the end of the lights?  I was not talking about the plug on the lights. But the plug on the controller, socket that controller plugs into or even the extension cord. cause someone lately noted that his problem was the extension cord had swapped hot and neutral wires.

 

But hey if swapping the wires on the string of lights to its plug worked for you. All the better.. Congrats and finding and fixing the problem

[dgrant]

Yes, these were professional grade LED strings which had a small round power connector which I didn't realize till I received them suddenly needing to order additional connections to make them work. So rather than do that, I cut off the existing round connector and put on a male vampire. The original were non-polarized plugs from the pictures online so I did try to wire them all the same regardless. This particular string didn't like it for whatever reason. I did a formal ohms test on the extension cord, which was normal.

[Max-Paul]

Hum, interesting, but glad it worked out for you.

 

Just general info that might help in the future. For power reversal problems can be cause by:

1. Someone wired the socket/receptacle wrong.

2. use of a non- polarized plug, to include the use of a 3 to 2 adapter.

3. Just recently someone said that they bought an extension cord that the wires where swapped within said cord.

4. a power cord is wired to the controller and the hot (black wire) was terminated on the neutral terminal and visa verse for the neutral wire (White wire).

5 or using lamp cord to daisy chain power to several controllers (100% LED display only). And loose track of which wire is hot and which is neutral.

[dgrant]

I'm normally pretty careful to insure polarity is followed through on each and all connections that I do with vampires. This one string though was done the same as the others but track of thought is that it was manufactured differently as far as the wiring goes. Its something we all need to be careful of. Just because its new, doesn't mean it was done correctly.

[dan martens]

I check out all my polarity and all seems good but I tripped a gfi that was on that controler and when I reset it and all is good

Could water cause a couple of bulbs led stay dimly lit

[woodinvillejohn]

Finally tracked down the problem with my lights staying dimmly on.  It was a factory made extension cord with the molded ends.  The wires inside were reversed.  Got rid of the bad cord and everything started working normally.  It's imortant to check polarity on all cords even the factory made ones.  I suspect this was contributing to my GFCI pops.

[aegault]

We've got the glow issue as well. I suspect it's something to do with dampness as the strings are on the ground and it's been damp the last few days and ONLY the ones on the ground are having the issue. I've got 4 sets of 50 (2 on each side of my walk) that glow like 10% that were all purchased at the same time. I've got another set (unknown vintage) that is also on the ground and glowing. The 4 are powered by SPT1/Vampire plugs, the other set is with a regular/purchased extension cord.

Tonight (it's been dry all day) I noticed that 1/2 the lights on the same strand were glowing but not the other. As I'm getting ready to >gasp, sob< disassemble the show I'm not going to really chase after it this year.

[rick gurnee]

Thanks for the help!  I had the same problem on several strings of LEDs on one controller.  Before I read this thread, I swapped out the controller, swapped the cat5 cables and nothing changed.  Like other people, it was worse during wet weather.  Most people didn't even see they were on unless I pointed it out, but I wanted to fix this.  I knew it couldn't be a polarity issue becuase I wired the breaker box myself!  After reading these posts I went outside with my polarity tester and tested both plugs from the controller.  The first tested fine but the second had the polarity reversed!  It turns out I had a three way plug on the end of an extension cord and on the male end the ground connecter had fallen out.  This allowed me to plug it in backwards!  So not only did I have polarity reversed, I had no ground.  Put in a new 3 way plug and will see tonight if the lights are off.

 

Interesting, I had another controller plugged into the same plug with non-LED lights and that did not have an issue.

[Max-Paul]

Thanks for the help!  I had the same problem on several strings of LEDs on one controller.  Before I read this thread, I swapped out the controller, swapped the cat5 cables and nothing changed.  Like other people, it was worse during wet weather.  Most people didn't even see they were on unless I pointed it out, but I wanted to fix this.  I knew it couldn't be a polarity issue becuase I wired the breaker box myself!  After reading these posts I went outside with my polarity tester and tested both plugs from the controller.  The first tested fine but the second had the polarity reversed!  It turns out I had a three way plug on the end of an extension cord and on the male end the ground connecter had fallen out.  This allowed me to plug it in backwards!  So not only did I have polarity reversed, I had no ground.  Put in a new 3 way plug and will see tonight if the lights are off.

 

Interesting, I had another controller plugged into the same plug with non-LED lights and that did not have an issue.

OH it has a issue. But you cant see this with ican lamps. Only LED. LED require much less current thus they light up much easier. As a Amateur Radio and former C.B.er I can tell you that as the old Land Line phones started using more electronics the more interference was caused by my radios. LED are a form of electronics. Deep do-do but lets just say that devices with high impedance are easy to mess up.

[Alan C]

Hi Tony, I am assuming that you are using the portable tool "yellow" industrial transformers? The secondary windings on these are centre-point earthed, so effectively both the wires in the plugs are lives (or "hots" as our American friends refer to it), each one being 55V to earth with 110V between the two lives. It is highly likely that you are having problems with leakage to earth - you don't need much current to make LEDs glow. The leakage could be either through a connection, or damaged insulation on a cable that is either on the ground, or wrapped round a wire frame.

 

Regards,

 

Alan.