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LED lights glowing on some channels


JeffBlan

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I've seen various posts on this topic but none helped me. I'm set for this year as I found a workaround but wanted to mention my findings so I could look into the issue after the season.

I noticed this problem last year but didn't worry about it too much since I only had a few strands of LED lights. I have added many more LED lights this year.

Once I setup all my lights, I noticed that a few of my LED lights seemed to be glowing. They never seem to go totally out. I tried the various suggestions found on this forum like adding a load on the line, resetting the controller, etc. but none of that seemed to work.

What I did notice is that I was only having this problem with one of my controllers (those that had LED lights in it anyway). The lights in question were plugged into slots 1-4. I noticed they seemed to glow if they were in any of the 1-8 slots. If I plugged them into the other side of the board (9-16), they did NOT glow.

So that leads me to believe I have an issue with the first half of the board. The board in question is a CTB16D that I put together last year (Green board). I'm using two power inputs into the board.

I'm okay for this year as I just switched around some of my channels and put non-LED lights on the 1-8 channels.

Anyone have some ideas on what to look for when I have a chance to try and fix the first 8 channels? I probably won't be able to try anything until after New Year's Day but wanted to get my thoughts down while they were fresh in my mind.

Thanks!

Jeff

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I'm curious if you have the same problem with standard incandescent bulbs? Have you tried plugging in a string of standard bulbs and looked at them in the dark to see if they do that same thing?

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I currently have regular old Mini-lights plugged into them and I don't see the "glow". Probably not enough current running through them to notice like you can with the LED.

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JeffBlan wrote:

I currently have regular old Mini-lights plugged into them and I don't see the "glow". Probably not enough current running through them to notice like you can with the LED.

Ok, then you probably are not having the same trouble I was having. My new unit had this problem and Dan told me to reset the unit and that solved my problem. On my unit, it did not matter what kind of lights were plugged in it.
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I'm having the same issue with the LED lights. A slight glow. It starts as soon as I power up the CTB16PC. I need to confirm, but I believe my LEDs are on both sides of the board 1-8 and 9-16. There is no glow with the minis, even if I switch out the leds and plug in minis on that channel. I'm going to try and reset to see if that helps.

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I'm having the same issue with 1 channel on 1 controller (ch 4). Interesting thing is, if I put a voltmeter into the plug, see +/-48v DC on that channel.

I noticed this during Halloween, I had one group of red LEDs that had a faint glow (6 strings of 70 ct. red C6s). When I put up the Christmas display, I had 1 string of lights (one 1 string on the channel) that lit up about 50%. When looking at it, only half the string was lit. If I turned the plug around, the other half would light up. That's when I pulled out the voltmeter. On the AC setting, I get either -0v or about 109v, depending on the orientation of the probes in the plug. On DC, I get +/-48v.

Interestingly, the channel still "works". When there is an ON command, the entire string lights up, and seems to fade pretty well, but when teh channel goes OFF, half the string comes on at about 50% intensity.

I'm using a Blue board I bought last year with v4.01 of the firmware. Just for kicks, I reapplied the firmware and am still seeing the same thing.

My display is all LEDs except for the spotlight lighting the sign. Fortunately it's only 1 channel, so I swapped the string and spot and all looks ok for the show, but I'd really like to find a solution for this.

Trace

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May want to try to add a resistive load to the line. Something as simple as a single c-7 or c-9.

My display is about 50% LED and I have no glowing when channels are commanded off. Note: not all LED strings are created equal. Some have been known to use capacitors to limit current and react much differently.

What type LED?

Chuck

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cmoore60 wrote:

May want to try to add a resistive load to the line. Something as simple as a single c-7 or c-9.

I tried this as it was mentioned in other posts on other threads but it did not work for me.

I figure it is not a problem with the type of LED lights since it works fine in channels 9-16. There must be something on the 1-8 side of the board that is causing my problem.
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fire_paramedic wrote:

Read this thread i beleive this would fix your problem.

http://lightorama.mywowbb.com/forum76/15391.html


Fire_.... thanks for posting this link. I was just about to do it and I saw you got ahead of me ;-) That was my thread.

Let me add that I was skeptical about the solution, but since it was coming from Dan, I figured it had to be a good fix. It took me all of about 3 minutes to remove the cover (with power unplugged of course), set the controller ID to default, power it up, then unplug and set it back to my previous channel. The unit has worked flawlessly every since that time. No more dim channels that would not fully turn off.

I assume it was a mistake for me to set the controller ID as soon as I received it from LOR. I probably should have plugged it in first, so it would do it's magic initialization thing (or whatever reason it needed that process). Plugging a new unit in to the AC first is probably something that people should do before changing the unit ID.
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To reset it do this-

[align=left]CTB16Kpcv1 boards: Power off, remove the jumper from second row of J0 pins, power on for a few seconds, power off, replace jumper.[/align]
[align=left]that will reset all its stored functions and fixes various other problems. make sure the jumper gets put back on or it will continously reset.[/align]

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That worked for me. Interestingly enough, I added a new song to my show, which I just sequenced in LOR II. I was alittle ahead of myself and forgot to copy two rows. They were addressed correctly, but there was nothing in them at all. The empty rows remain perfect (no dim glow)... But the other channels had the dim glow return. I'm hoping I just need to reset again.

Dan

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Have you checked if Live and Neutral have been swapped.

Here in Denmark there is no difference on the 230v plug pins and i noticed that if the plug was in one way, some og my LED strings would glow. If i turned the plug the other way, they where off.

Regards
/Kim

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