Lights still on after show ends for night

[Chiefwilson]

First year doing this and tonight after the show ended I was outside and noticed that the led lights I used to wrap my little trees were still on. Very very dim but nonetheless they were still on. I unplugged one from the extension cord and it went off. Plug back in, cane back on same level of dim. So I go and turn the power off to the control box (16 channel) only one on network. Lights are still on very dim. Where are the lights getting power from? Is this bleed through power from the cat 5? And is this something to worry about? 

 

Thabk you for your help. 

[lanopie]

Sounds like you have a bad triac.  Not sure about the fact that you turned the power off to the controller, by doing this everything should be off.  If this is your first year the controller should be on warranty.  You should open a ticket with the help desk.  If you're good with soldering they can send you some triacs.  I have one triac that leaks a bit of power when no signal is sent to that channel but it still works with the show.

Hope this helps!

Pierre

 

[PhilMassey]

Try a snubber.

http://www.planetchristmas.com/index.php?/forums/topic/36988-easiest-terminatorssnubbers-to-make/

People sometimes use Glade plugins, or you might try a short string of incandescent bulbs on the end as a test.

The idea is to create a small load which LED's sometimes don't, to make sure the triac shuts off..

I have also seen a couple of sets of LED's fail in this manner, so check another set just in case.

Could be a Triac failing also.

[basis21b]

Just to add another option. 

Sometimes LEDs don't like to play nice with the hot and neutral sides of AC  Typically the plugs on them are not polarized so unplug the lights, rotate the plug 180 degrees and plug them back in.  See if that helps.

[Chiefwilson]

I did plug a set of incadecent mini lights into one of the leds but they still had a low dim. I have 10 mini trees wrapped in leds and all of them were dimly lit. Channels 6-15 will a bad triac affect all those channels simultaneously? The other channels that are also leds but they are c7 and c9 bulbs are fine. Just thought it was weird. Even when I unplugged both power cords from power. So there was no power coming in from a 120 volt ac power source. The only thing still connected was the data cable. But thank you. I will call lor on Monday and see if they have any insight on this. 

[Richard Hamilton]

On ‎12‎/‎8‎/‎2017 at 7:46 AM, basis21b said:

Just to add another option. 

Sometimes LEDs don't like to play nice with the hot and neutral sides of AC  Typically the plugs on them are not polarized so unplug the lights, rotate the plug 180 degrees and plug them back in.  See if that helps.

Uh really?  From an electronic engineering perspective, this doesn't make any sense.  I've never seen that.  Perhaps you have seen it.

[Richard Hamilton]

On ‎12‎/‎7‎/‎2017 at 9:51 PM, Chiefwilson said:

First year doing this and tonight after the show ended I was outside and noticed that the led lights I used to wrap my little trees were still on. Very very dim but nonetheless they were still on. I unplugged one from the extension cord and it went off. Plug back in, cane back on same level of dim. So I go and turn the power off to the control box (16 channel) only one on network. Lights are still on very dim. Where are the lights getting power from? Is this bleed through power from the cat 5? And is this something to worry about? 

 

Thabk you for your help. 

Yup, probably a triac, BUT just to make sure you are not sending a signal to the controller, temporarily unplug the cat 5 cables going to that controller.  I have seen cases where users think their lights should be off, but they had a channel set to a constant dim level.

[rcktpwrd]

You can create a short shut down sequence with everything set to off to be sure there is nothing left with some sort of on command... Also try checking the box that says turn used lights off at the end of each sequence in the show editor.