zachkurth Posted November 2, 2011 Share Posted November 2, 2011 Hey everyone, i am a newbie here, so bear with me if you will.I am curious as to what the maximum amount of 100 ct. strings of Incandescent lights can be put on 1 channel or on all 16.Also, i know the northeast got hit hard with snow, so for those of you up there, i wish you luck on getting your displays up somehow!Thanks, and i look forward to convincing some of you fellow forum members to stop by my house come late december!Thanks,Zach Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Santas Helper Posted November 2, 2011 Share Posted November 2, 2011 Welcome aboard Zach,This is a busy time of year for everyone here on the forum but there are some great folks with great ideas. They will chime in with their comments as they have time.As to your question, that's a good one. It's been a while since I had just incans and pretty much LED. My thought is to get a clamp meter that measures watts/amps and plug in strings of incans/minis while measuring and see how far you can go. Those meters are fairly cheap but are worth their weight in gold. Test what the limit is and THEN plug them into a LOR controller. Better safe than sorry in this line of work. And as for those diehards up NE? They always figure out a way to get-r-done But none the less, good luck to you guys...Tom Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zachkurth Posted November 2, 2011 Author Share Posted November 2, 2011 Thanks Tom,My parents said just buy incans because they are cheap.If I can get a clamp meter tomorrow, I will get my hands dirty before I dive into a puddle of mud.Do you recall how many incans you got on one channel without breaking anything? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alank58 Posted November 2, 2011 Share Posted November 2, 2011 Hi,You have to do a little math but the 100 mini lights pulls .34 amps so 300 minis would pull 1 amp. The C-5 bulbs are 5 watts and the C-9 bulbs are 7 watts. There is 120 watts per amp. 24 C-5s pull 1 amp and 17 C-9s pull 1 amp. Depending on the LOR controller you have will let you know how many amps you can have per controller or per channel. Hope this helps.Alan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zachkurth Posted November 2, 2011 Author Share Posted November 2, 2011 Alan,That is a great amount of help right there! Thanks a ton! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 This tool will help you immensely with your planning.http://www.quartzhillchristmas.com/12.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zachkurth Posted November 3, 2011 Author Share Posted November 3, 2011 Many thanks to you as well DonFL! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TJ Hvasta Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 Zach, run into Target, or WalMart, Lowes or HomeDepot and pick up a Kill-O-Watt meter.. You can order it from Amazon if you dont have any of those stores nearby.. plug your string of lights into it, plug the KOW into the wall and it'll give you an accurate current load for that string.. if you have several strings daisy-chained, it'll show you the current for all of them.. really works!http://www.degreedays.net/kill-a-watt-meterhttp://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cenote Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 TJ Hvasta wrote: Zach, run into Target, or WalMart, Lowes or HomeDepot and pick up a Kill-O-Watt meter.. You can order it from Amazon if you dont have any of those stores nearby.. plug your string of lights into it, plug the KOW into the wall and it'll give you an accurate current load for that string.. if you have several strings daisy-chained, it'll show you the current for all of them.. really works!http://www.degreedays.net/kill-a-watt-meterhttp://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBUBest Advice! +1There like the bible around here Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LORisAwesome Posted November 4, 2011 Share Posted November 4, 2011 Just thought I'd mention the limits of the LOR controllers....You can connect up to 8 amps to each channel, but, the limit for channels 1-8 is 15 amps, and channels 9-16 is also 15 amps -- for 30amps max per controller.If you connect 8 amps to each channel and turn them all on, you will pull 64 amps on 8 channels. This far exceeds the limit of the controller.Jerry Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steven Posted November 4, 2011 Share Posted November 4, 2011 In almost all cases, it's better to buy more controllers and use less strings on each channel.However, if you really need to run massive amounts of current on each channel, you can buy a DIO32 card, with a DIO8ACF high-current AC board, and run 10 amps per channel, with up to 60 amps total for all 8 channels.This will cost much more than another 16-channel PC controller. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imawlkr2 Posted November 4, 2011 Share Posted November 4, 2011 cenote wrote: TJ Hvasta wrote: Zach, run into Target, or WalMart, Lowes or HomeDepot and pick up a Kill-O-Watt meter.. You can order it from Amazon if you dont have any of those stores nearby.. plug your string of lights into it, plug the KOW into the wall and it'll give you an accurate current load for that string.. if you have several strings daisy-chained, it'll show you the current for all of them.. really works!http://www.degreedays.net/kill-a-watt-meterhttp://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBUBest Advice! +1There like the bible around here I bought one last year (my first year) and it is very handy. Found out all my lights on at once only pulled about 18amps total. I use a mix of LED and incans. This is the one I got at Lowes:http://www.lowes.com/pd_239794-48019-THP103_0__?productId=3128297&Ntt=watt+meter&pl=1¤tURL=%2Fpl__0__s%3FNtt%3Dwatt%2Bmeter&facetInfo= Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thevikester Posted November 4, 2011 Share Posted November 4, 2011 Steven wrote: In almost all cases, it's better to buy more controllers and use less strings on each channel.However, if you really need to run massive amounts of current on each channel, you can buy a DIO32 card, with a DIO8ACF high-current AC board, and run 10 amps per channel, with up to 60 amps total for all 8 channels.This will cost much more than another 16-channel PC controller.Steve, damn it! On a Friday, you start throwing out DIO stuff, and I can't comprehend the electrical caluculation that is providing, nor the cost, stop it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zachkurth Posted November 7, 2011 Author Share Posted November 7, 2011 Thanks everyone for all of your help, I went ahead and got 4,000 incans, but i just read on the online store they will have extremely limited controllers later this week. I really need to get one. DOES ANYONE HAVE AN 8 OR 16 FOR SALE? Ebay is all bids Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Santas Helper Posted November 7, 2011 Share Posted November 7, 2011 zachkurth wrote: Thanks everyone for all of your help, I went ahead and got 4,000 incans, but i just read on the online store they will have extremely limited controllers later this week. I really need to get one. DOES ANYONE HAVE AN 8 OR 16 FOR SALE? Ebay is all bidsI have an 8 channel I can send ya. I might have a 16 channel one to spare and will look to see.PM me if interested. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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