James Shelby Posted February 12, 2011 Share Posted February 12, 2011 Well now that I have 30 set's built I guess I should ask the most important question, will this work??? I've insulated all the exposed leads as the finished product. Attached files Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Shelby Posted February 12, 2011 Author Share Posted February 12, 2011 Finished product. Attached files Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rgardner518 Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 James Shelby wrote: Finished product.Personally, I think you just voided your warranty by doing that! You should have made a snubber! Its quick and easy, and replaceable! Plus it will not void the warranty! Because the first this LOR will probably say is, whatever problem you may have, try to undo that first, to see if that fixes it!See here!http://forums.planetchristmas.com/index.php?/topic/36988-easiest-terminatorssnubbers-to-make/You just made it permitted, and to me, makes it hard to undo, or repair/replace. Let me ask you something.How are you going to replace a resistors, when and "if" one goes? the way mention above works perfectly for me. And if one where to go out. I just "unplug" it and plug in a new one in seconds. This way I can take the damaged one back inside the warm house to unsoldier, and redo. Your way, you would have to remove the WHOLE controller from the yard unplugging 16 wires, and bring inside to repair. this also means no show until your done.This is just friendly advise, what I did. I have had "some" resistors go bad. But it "SO" easy to fix. Which is always my, First Priority!Easy Repair-abilityQuick Set-upQuick Take-down Attached files Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Constantino Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 James Shelby wrote: Personally, I think you just voided your warranty by doing that! I don't think so. But that would be up to Dan to determine that.There is no difference in doing that or adding a snubber. In both cases you are just adding a resistance load across the hot and neutral of each channel.I think the new gen controllers have resistors built into them already along with firmware up grade so people don't have to do there own mod's.Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JBullard Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 Looks good James, and no you haven't voided any warrantys.Guess I lucky, my LEDs from CDI have never needed snubbers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-klb- Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 ny_yankee_25 wrote: Personally, I think you just voided your warranty by doing that! You should have made a snubber! Its quick and easy, and replaceable! Plus it will not void the warranty! If this voids the warranty, then I would think that hooking up your load wires to the terminals would also void your warranty....At the scale that James is dealing with things, I would not be surprised if he builds a few spare of these, so that if one of them fails out, he can just loosen 9 screw terminals, and swap it out. But since these are most likely to fail open, he could just plug in some other phantom load on that channel.I suppose if they are the 1602, doing this probably violates the UL listing, but guess what, using LED or phantom load plugged into the controller also violates the UL listing, as they are only tested, and UL listed for incandescent load.I will also say that at this scale, things that can be done during the year, to avoid set up work in the season are well worth the effort. Plus, this way, he does not have to worry about ensuring that every LED channel has one plugged in. Especially if he is using volunteer help, that is a huge benefit. I consider myself lucky when our core volunteers only have to rework or fix 10% of what the cadre has done. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JBullard Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 I agree KLB.James does have a very large and wonderful display Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-klb- Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 JBullard wrote: Guess I lucky, my LEDs from CDI have never needed snubbersActually, you either don't have enough strings plugged into the same channel, or you are not noticing degradation in dimming curve that is happening.We had 3 strings per channel of equivalent LED on each of 80 channels this year. I wish I had the time to go thorough and test some phantom load on these channels, because the further though the season I watched this, the more I became convinced that we at least were seeing issues with the dimming curve, and that some phantom load may help.But James is doing things on a scale where 3 strings is not even a start. And the more strings you have on a channel the greater the odds that you need to add some phantom load. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-klb- Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 Steve Constantino wrote: There is no difference in doing that or adding a snubber. In both cases you are just adding a resistance load across the hot and neutral of each channel.I think the new gen controllers have resistors built into them already along with firmware up grade so people don't have to do there own mod's.SteveActually, at some point, people are going to have to start being careful about the distinction between snubbers, and phantom load. Because based on statements made by LOR, the gen2 controllers are likely to be configurable with either snubbers, or phantom load. And that per LOR, using snubbers on LED channels actually makes the issues worse, while phantom load helps.The snubber option is for people using inductive loads on the channels. Primarly transformers for low voltage lighting, but I would imagine that it may help with small synchronous motors as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Constantino Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 -klb- wrote: Actually, at some point, people are going to have to start being careful about the distinction between snubbers, and phantom load. 10-4!I should of been more clear in my statement. Most people don't know the difference.Steve Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JBullard Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 -klb- wrote: JBullard wrote: Guess I lucky, my LEDs from CDI have never needed snubbersActually, you either don't have enough strings plugged into the same channel, or you are not noticing degradation in dimming curve that is happening.Nope, normally only one string per channel, two at most.No long light runs needing multiple strings connected together. Just the way I designed my layout.Do use a lot of channels though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Shelby Posted February 13, 2011 Author Share Posted February 13, 2011 When I'm running as many channels over the area I cover snubbers have become a huge waste of time. The young work force I have throw away 50% of my snubbers each year, I try to unplug as many as I can but I can't get them all. I'm only adding these to 30 controllers this year and if it works I'll work on another 30 next year. This year it took 3 months to assemble the display and 4 weeks of that was plugging everything in and get it up and running. This year is our 30th year and 5 of us will be working on the display ALL year. Like you said as many subassemblies I can build now the better off I will be come this August. I was thinking it would work and next week I'll put one to the test. thanks to everyone Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Cotton Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 James, I was actually consiering your snubber configuration back before Halloween, but just never got around to ordering the resistors. I now have ordered 100 of them on eBay for about $3.00 (shipping included). I already have black "liquid tape" that I was planning on using to cover them for protection. As for pernament as mentioned above, this is no more so than the wiring is. Just unscrew the connectors and remove the resistor network as you would do with the wires. No warranty issues seen here.I think this is a better idea than plug-in snubbers everywhere and cheaper as no plugs are required. But I did save a link to the "easy snubbers" mentioned above some time back. However, putting the "load" at the end of a long run of lights might have distinct advantages much as required with DMX control by terminating the last device.I am building a 100% LED, sorta-mega tree for a friend to put on a slight hill on his farm property where it can be seen from the road for about 1/2 mile in both directions. It will be a standalone controller with 16 channels (RGBWx4) of lights running all patterns I can think of. It should be easy to test with and without the resistors in place at the terminals or at the end of the runs. It's a very dark place, so dimming should be really easy to observe. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
-klb- Posted February 13, 2011 Share Posted February 13, 2011 Position is important in a terminator, because you are impedance matching the end of a transmission line to its characteristic impedance, so that you don't get signal reflections off the end..That is not what we are trying to do with the phantom load here. We are trying to ensure that when all the vinyl insulation, and copper wiring is acting as a large capacitor to continue powering the LEDs, or to mess up the zero crossing detector on the controller, we instead give that charge a place to drain. So position should not be important for this application. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dennis Cherry Posted February 14, 2011 Share Posted February 14, 2011 All my controllers in 2010 had the snubbers installed in the controllers. Did not have one problem with misfired channels.Did have problems with communication speeds using the mini director. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rmturner54 Posted February 14, 2011 Share Posted February 14, 2011 JBullard wrote: Looks good James, and no you haven't voided any warrantys.Guess I lucky, my LEDs from CDI have never needed snubbersSame here....LED's from CDI, no snubbers. My advice is test your strings throughly and only use them if necessary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ace_master Posted February 14, 2011 Share Posted February 14, 2011 Looks great.Here's my similar job on the 16PC controller... not quite as simple because everything is spaced out across the board:http://lightorama.mywowbb.com/view_topic.php?id=24905&forum_id=76&jump_to=226897#p226897JBullard wrote: Looks good James, and no you haven't voided any warrantys.Guess I lucky, my LEDs from CDI have never needed snubbersMy lights are from CDI, but because I was running as much as 200ft of extensions to lights on the edge of the property, I was experiencing flickering fades... So I went with the above method... fixed all my flickering and fading issues right away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Shelby Posted February 15, 2011 Author Share Posted February 15, 2011 I'm running the same strings as CDI from what I hear. I have found more than 8 strands end to end and 16awg wire over 40 feet need snubbing but that is my set up others might be different. How did you get the lead under the lug, I have 13 of those controllers and plan to get 10 more this summer. I was thinking of using the spade lug that went from one female to two males putting the power cord on one side and the resistor on the other side. I use 60 of my CTB16's as my workhorse's and I plan to modify 30 this year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Young Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Jim, you have found what others have.The need for an added load (snubbers/lamp loads) really becomes more of an issue when you have multiple sets of LEDs connected to one output channel (end to end, or parallel).With single strings, whether half or full wave, you often don' need an added load, depending of course on the manufacturer...That's why the new LOR boards will be featuring on board resistors. (Correct me if I am wrong on that one Dan)Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James Shelby Posted February 18, 2011 Author Share Posted February 18, 2011 Here is what it looks like when I'm done. Attached files Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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