Any idea how to rewire Gemmy LightShow RGB Trees?

[Guest guest]

Okay, I had asked about the Gemmy 4' LightShow Trees I have previously, but didn't have much info on them, well I took them apart and this is the info I know about them now:



Power Supply: 24VAC brick

Contol IC (x3): UTC UBA4 / ULN2803L

4 Wire colors on 6 Connectors that go to the RGB LEDs, connectors are labled LED-01 through LED-06

oR - (Red wire)

oG - (Yellow wire)

oB - (Blue wire)

o+ (White wire)

The wires that go out to the two trees are hardwired to the board and the area they are in are labled "LR-TREE" (Left and Right Tree): These wires terminate in a female 5 pin connector and mate with the male counterpart on the second tree.

Yellow wire - CE

White wire - CLOCK

Black wire - LR GROUND

Red wire - DC24V LR

Blue wire - 5V

So if anyone knows how to decipher the above information and what type controller I'd need, what I'd need to do to make it work with that controller and with LOR.

Hoping there may be a way to wire these into an LOR DC controller (which I don't have yet, but if these could be used with one, will purchase one!) I'd love to get better control and color of the RGB LED's on these trees. And since each has it's own 5 wire cable, hoping their may be an easy mod for these.

[DanglinModifiers]

So far, the Gemmy LightShow products have not been hacked by the DIY community (to my knowledge).

I'm not quite sure where the different wiring schemes are taking place. The 4-wire setup has some promise, as these are probably +5V, and switched grounds for each color. However if that's what's going to each bulb, that's going to be a lot of channels on the LOR DC even if it works.

The 6-wire scheme is less promising. I'm not sure where this comes into play.

Perhaps some pictures would clear things up?

[Guest guest]

Well the trees work in unison from the built in controller.

Which only has 4 wires going to it, I'd have to take it apart to get the colors, but the control board doesn't have much to it.

There are 4 buttons that control what the trees do, Song Loop, One Song, Effects and Light Colors.

The Light colors allow both trees to be set at one color scheme, there are 10 color schemes. Each tree is controlled by one of the LED connectors, they are 6 coonectors and, not sure how to explain this, but from the top of the tree down goes like this:

top branch - 4 bulbs (8) (LED 01 Connector)
next branch - 4 bulbs (8) (LED 02 Connector)
next branch - 6 bulbs (12)(LED 03 Connector)
next branch - 6 bulbs (12)(LED 04 Connector)
next branch - 7 bulbs (14)(LED 05 Connector)
next branch - 7 bulbs (14)(LED 06 Connector)

Number in parantheses is the total of RGB LEDs being controlled on both trees (34 RGB LEDS on each tree or 68 RGB LED's in total). Also the LED connectors I have not verified which controls what branch of RGB LED's, it may be reversed from what I'm showing as to which branch these connectors control.

So each connector of the RGB going to the trees controls one branch of each tree simultaneously. So I'm thinking it would require a total of 18 channels for both trees or two LOR DC Controllers if my thinking is correct on how they are wired as I would go directly to the 6 RGB connectors from the DC Board to control them. That is, if that's even possible. And cut the connector that goes to the other tree and rewire it to match the RGB connectors from the main tree to control both together. Or it'd take 3 LOR DC Controllers to control each tree independantly, again, if my thinking is correct on how to wire these to an LOR DC Controller board.

As they appear to be common anode from the connector indications. Which is what I thought the LOR DC Boards can control, just connect the LED's directly to the LOR DC control board or is there something else needed to make this work?

Just seems like this should be a fairly easy modification to make.

This is what they look like, no pics of the circuit boards yet. Will have to take them apart again to do that.




Attached files

[DanglinModifiers]

Ok, that makes a little more sense. Yes, I'm with you on your thinking that 18 channels would give you RGB control of each branch, per tree. Which could be duplicated to make the trees identical.

[Guest guest]

What I'm actually considering is making them 6 channels per tree (12 channels total) by tying all the branches (RGB Connectors) together and using one DC Controller to control each tree independantly. Would that be possible?

Just have to get me a LOR DC Controller to play around with them.

[Guest guest]

Here is the link to Photo's of the 2nd Gemmy LightShow RGB tree PCB.

https://skydrive.live.com/?sc=photos#cid=7D6D47DFA1C635AE&id=7D6D47DFA1C635AE%212037&sc=photos

The only difference between the above link where the photo's are of this PC Board are:

There is LESS circuitry as this one only controls the RGB lights on this tree and supplies power (24VDC and 5VDC).

The RGB+ connectors are not labeled as they are on the main board, but see above for wire color and what they connect to in a previous post.

The main board also connects the speaker for the canned music that plays and dances the RGB lights to the music.

The main board also connects the main 24VAC power brick for power to both boards, apparently fed through a 6 pin connector (male on Tree 2, female from Tree 1 and the main tree where the main PCB resides and converts it to 24VDC.

Both use the same chip ULC2803L, 3 IC's on each board, 6 total control IC's for the RGB LEDs.

Now my thinking is I can just unplug the RGB+ connectors (female) and find some male connectors that mate to them, find a PCB I can solder these connectors to, and then wire them directly to a CTB16D DC LOR Controller board to operate the trees independantly of each other utilizing 12 channels (6 channels per tree).

As the way the trees work now, they work simulatenously and each branch (6 independant branches per tree) work seperately from each other.

Which if I were to wire it in the same scheme that they work now, would require 3 CTB16D DC controllers, and a total of 36 channels (18 channels per tree, that is, if my arithmetic is correct).

[Nurples]

Orville wrote:

Here is the link to Photo's of the 2nd Gemmy LightShow RGB tree PCB.

https://skydrive.live.com/?sc=photos#cid=7D6D47DFA1C635AE&id=7D6D47DFA1C635AE%212037&sc=photos

The link throws this error on MSN:

This item might have been deleted, expired, or you might not have permission to access it. Contact the owner of this item for more information.

[Guest guest]

Nurples wrote:

Orville wrote:

Here is the link to Photo's of the 2nd Gemmy LightShow RGB tree PCB.

https://skydrive.live.com/?sc=photos#cid=7D6D47DFA1C635AE&id=7D6D47DFA1C635AE%212037&sc=photos

The link throws this error on MSN:

This item might have been deleted, expired, or you might not have permission to access it. Contact the owner of this item for more information.

Try this one. The folks at MSN changed the way to access folders and have made it a little trickier, so original urls no longer work, so now I have to request a specific url for anyone to access them anytime I wish to allow someone access. I don't like this new set up, before I could just make those folders publicly accessible.

Hopefully this one they generated will allow you to access those photo's.

https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=7d6d47dfa1c635ae&resid=7D6D47DFA1C635AE!2037&parid=root

[Nurples]

That one works.

[Guest guest]

Nurples wrote:

That one works.

Glad to know it works.

I sent MSN feedback that I loathe this new way of doing it, before it was a simple one click to make the folder accessible 24/7 to anyone, now it takes almost 6 or so steps to get to the area to create a working url to access them.

Whether or not these generated urls are permanent once posted or only for a few days I have no idea.

They must have incorporated this this afternoon (Friday 1/6) as it wasn't like that real early this morning when I had created a folder and still had the single click options!