Strobe Lights

[Scott T]

I bought 25 xenon strobes from Christmas Light Show. I thought I remember people have problems with the LOR controller when using a lot of xenon strobes.

So I started building a relay box with it own power lines that would trigger off a LOR channel. Simply put, the LOR would energize the relay that would feed another power draw from my electrical box. I'm using a pretty beefy transformer and HD 3 pole contactor (had these at work). Tested them so that they would not cause a problem too. Then I plug the strobes in and to my surprise, I had no problem with the strobes directly in to the LOR box.

SOOOOooooo, I am crazy and dreamed this problem up. I searched the forum and now can't find any post about this phantom problem I dreamed up.

Do you all run xenon strobe directly off a LOR channel without problems?


Scott

PS: Like I don't have enough work to start solving non-existing problems.

Attached files

[-klb-]

I've run 3 channels of 10 each strobes, on each of 5 controllers, and not noticed any issues last year.

But, the strobe lights are definitely not linear loads, and could cause both interference with the zero crossing detection, and some EMF to interfere with the RS-485 buss.

And, I do remember at least one case reported here. So, on the firehouse, we have one controller dedicated to strobes, and in the park, where that is not practical, they are on a controller shared with the general lights, and I have not seen any issues.

[Victory402]

I use a relay on mine.

[JBullard]

I've been using strobes for years (usually 25 per channel, 75 per display) directly controlled by LOR channels, and have never had any issues.

Just my experience and opinion from use in my display.

[JeffF]

Last year we had ~110 strobes on two channels without any problems. One channel was xenon and LED strobes mixed while the other was all LED strobes(so I could "correct" them into firing randomly).

We're up to ~150 strobes for this year and we'll probably spread them out over three channels.

We did have a problem with random channels turning on and off two years ago but that was traced back to a comm. cable I bundled with power cables.

[JonB256]

My only problem has been them not going OFF immediately. I don't think that there is much I can do, though, since they have beefy capacitors inside and they will "strobe" until that voltage drops low. The more strobes I put on a channel seemed to make it last longer, so I normally limited a channel to 10 or 15 strobes. (and I used 2 channels on one controller, 2 on another)

I hadn't considered relays, though.