Charles Belcher Posted September 8, 2009 Share Posted September 8, 2009 Bill,I am staying tuned.Let me know. If it still doesn't work, Fed-Ex it to me. I will turn my dissecting technicians on it and they will make it work or kill it. Charles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BILL VANDERSLICE Posted September 8, 2009 Author Share Posted September 8, 2009 Charles Belcher wrote: Bill,I am staying tuned.Let me know. If it still doesn't work, Fed-Ex it to me. I will turn my dissecting technicians on it and they will make it work or kill it. CharlesThanks Charles for the offer. I will wait until I get replacement unit and see if it works. I'm hoping they will exchange this unit if it is bad which I'm sure it is. Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 BILL VANDERSLICE wrote: I agree 100% with your analysis. I tried to do with attached schematic but couldn't handle the cross over voltage that existed on ac input side. Do you see any way to do this?In this configuration (120-volt LED strings with a common lead), the only practical solution is 1/2 wave.The only way to run the rope full-wave using a triac-based controller (like the LOR AC controllers) is to cut into the rope and separate the common lead into separate R, G, and B strings.I'm guessing the DMX rope controller from China is a 120-volt DC controller with an internal rectifier/capacitor DC supply? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BILL VANDERSLICE Posted September 28, 2009 Author Share Posted September 28, 2009 BILL VANDERSLICE wrote: Charles Belcher wrote: Bill,I am staying tuned.Let me know. If it still doesn't work, Fed-Ex it to me. I will turn my dissecting technicians on it and they will make it work or kill it. CharlesThanks Charles for the offer. I will wait until I get replacement unit and see if it works. I'm hoping they will exchange this unit if it is bad which I'm sure it is. BillCharlesFinally received my complete order from China and the were very fair as they sent extra decoder and didn't ask for bad unit to be returned. The good news is my 11 new decoders were able to be set up with LOR and iDMX1000 and work very well from LOR sequences. The only problem was setting ID's as LOR didn't want to reconize the reed switch settings on the decoders. I kept trying until I would find an ID that LOR would reconize and use it. I have units set with ID's of 10, 21 ,22 and 32. They all work so I am happy guy. Now to change my display but at least I know it is going to work.Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles Belcher Posted September 29, 2009 Share Posted September 29, 2009 Bill,Was defective equipment the problem all through your tests?Charles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BILL VANDERSLICE Posted September 29, 2009 Author Share Posted September 29, 2009 CharlesI had 2 controllers I was testing, one worked, one did not. One had logic board and 36 different settings for different color combinations with position 36 for DMX encoding. This controller worked OK. The 2nd was a decoder with reed switches for setting ID. This is the unit that would not do anything. When I received the 11 new encoders, they all worked great after getting ID's set which was a challange. I tried the old decoder after setting up all the new ones and it still would do nothing. I now have a decoder that would make a good boat anchor for a very small boat.Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rafter Bar R Posted October 14, 2009 Share Posted October 14, 2009 I'm guessing the DMX rope controller from China is a 120-volt DC controller with an internal rectifier/capacitor DC supply?Yes they do and are configured for common positive LED rope lights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BILL VANDERSLICE Posted October 15, 2009 Author Share Posted October 15, 2009 Yes I agree that this decoder has two parts, one the power supply as you point out, the other side is a decoder to handle DMX. So far I have only run these decoders under test set up but I was able to assign IDs to all 11 units and they work very well with LOR control. I will be setting these up next week so we'll see how well they operate once they are daisy chained with my LOR.Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BILL VANDERSLICE Posted November 3, 2009 Author Share Posted November 3, 2009 Thought I should give some type of final report on the ATG decoders and rope lights. I have all the 680' of LED rope lights up and running with 8 decoders controlling the lights from LOR. I had bit of problem setting the ID's but once I worked it out it went well. It ran great for 4 days and then quit as I could not turn off lights. With Dan's help at LOR he suggested checking polarity switch on iDMX1000. Sure enough it was in wrong position as I must have bumped it in moving the iDMX1000 to its final location. I also lost my monitor and this took place after installing nice new 20" monitor. I am most happy with these lights as they are bright and very vivid. Be happy to post some pictures if anyone is interested. Another minor problem came about after my downtime. When I refresh on my HWU, I can only find the DMX (16 units) and the last LOR unit 7 in my daisychain. All 7 LOR units work normally when controlled by sequences and all 7 controllers have solid red lights. Why are they not being reconized by HWU as they are all operational by sequences? Sure makes it tough to install lights when you can't test them on HWU. These all worked fine until I had the DMX problem and has not worked since and I have tried everything. Interesting that if I remove iDMX from the network by connecting my cat 5 cable direct to computer and bypassing the iDMX1000, the HWU still finds 1 DMX and my last LOR unit 7. Any ideas would be appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charles Belcher Posted November 3, 2009 Share Posted November 3, 2009 BILL VANDERSLICE wrote: Thought I should give some type of final report on the ATG decoders and rope lights. I have all the 680' of LED rope lights up and running with 8 decoders controlling the lights from LOR. I had bit of problem setting the ID's but once I worked it out it went well. It ran great for 4 days and then quit as I could not turn off lights. With Dan's help at LOR he suggested checking polarity switch on iDMX1000. Sure enough it was in wrong position as I must have bumped it in moving the iDMX1000 to its final location. I also lost my monitor and this took place after installing nice new 20" monitor. I am most happy with these lights as they are bright and very vivid. Be happy to post some pictures if anyone is interested. Another minor problem came about after my downtime. When I refresh on my HWU, I can only find the DMX (16 units) and the last LOR unit 7 in my daisychain. All 7 LOR units work normally when controlled by sequences and all 7 controllers have solid red lights. Why are they not being reconized by HWU as they are all operational by sequences? Sure makes it tough to install lights when you can't test them on HWU. These all worked fine until I had the DMX problem and has not worked since and I have tried everything. Interesting that if I remove iDMX from the network by connecting my cat 5 cable direct to computer and bypassing the iDMX1000, the HWU still finds 1 DMX and my last LOR unit 7. Any ideas would be appreciated.Bill,I go through that "HWU not finding controllers" thing every year. The controllers always work with the LOR sequence/show/scheduler so I have stopped worrying about the HWU. Dan pretty much told me the same thing.I am glad to hear you got it up and running.Charles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BILL VANDERSLICE Posted November 3, 2009 Author Share Posted November 3, 2009 CharlesThanks for the reply and yes I have had this recognition problem in the past but usually get it to operate normal by trial and test or smash and bash. Not happening this time but I will keep trying. Was hoping there was a better way of doing this and I asked Dan about it today but he gave me no answer. I guess there is no good answer. How do do you test out your lights at set up without HWU? I need to turn on certain channels to test out my lights at set up. I guess I could set up sequence to turn on certain channels for testing and will do this if I can't get HWU to do what it is supposed to do.Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BILL VANDERSLICE Posted November 5, 2009 Author Share Posted November 5, 2009 Well it didn't take my smash and bash to solve my problem of HWU not finding my controllers on refresh. All I did was turn off power to each controller and after turning power back on, the HWU quickly located all 7 controllers and I am good to go and test as I set up my lights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts