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Anyone here use 12v led rope in their display?


m3chris

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My research shows most of you buy from Christmas-leds.com 120v led rope.

I have no ac controllers so it would make sense to me to buy a cmb24d and have 24 channels for half the cost and also get 8 more channels.

The rope is expensive so before I buy wanted hear if there was a reason not to go this route. I do need dimmable and have heard the term full wave for rope light and not really sure what that means.

Chris

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I originally used some warm white 12V light rope in my landscape lighting. Worked fine and dimmed just fine. When I put in the first RGB strip, it made the warm white rope look really yellow. Ended up replacing it with more RGB strip.

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I use a lot of rope light in both my Halloween and Christmas display. I like working with it because it gives clean lines of light on my eaves. I purchase most my rope light on eBay and can get it pretty cheap. The rope light I purchased on eBay is dimmable.

 

Full wave simply means that when dimming the light you don't get an flicker. There are half wave and full wave lights, personally its hard to tell the difference for me between full wave and half wave.

 

What lights were you planning on using for your CMB24 card?

 

If you have no controllers now; I would recommend the LOR starter kit which gives you 16 AC channels. The CMB24 was designed for 8 channels of RGB (8x3 RGB=24) I know it can be used as 24 separate channels but have never personally done it as I use it only for Dumb RGB.

 

Keep in mind you will also need a Power supply and enclosure to run the DC card which is why I would recommend the LOR starter kit with the 16 channel AC controller, Just my opinions especially if your trying to get up and running for this Christmas, Its more plug n play than going with the CMB card

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Thanks for the feedback. I currently have two cmb24d all for rgb dumb strips. I'd like to add the singing faces. I was thinking I should do 12v so with one card I could do 24 channels which would be up to 3 faces.

If I did a 16 channel ac controller that would only be 2 faces a double the price.

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It can be done if you want to go that route, Each + terminal would have 3 wires to power 3 single color channels that would use channel terminals "1,2,3", "4,5,6", etc. Be sure not to overload the card with to many amps. I believe its a 30A card.

 

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I bought two 12v rolls of amber rope lights by mistake thinking they were 120v. needless to say I plugged one of the rolls into the house wall socket to test it before I started cutting it up and well lets say that end result was not what I expected. so I now have one 12v 150 foot roll and I have been looking for a use for it. I have been experimenting with a full 12 channel animated singing face with full animated features (more mouth positions for realisms)  and I think you just gave me an Idea in using the CMB24. I use one already for my 8 dumb strips. I was planning to by another 16 channel AC controller for one face and more 120v rope lights but sounds like I will only need one CMB24 and that's it. plus I could get 2 fully animated faces for the price of one. just wondering how bright the 12v incandescent rope lights would be verse 120v incans.

Edited by Box on Rails
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