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Costco Color Ribbon Convulsions


SuperMatt

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Costco sold RGB ribbons this fall.  Since a true CCR wasn't in the budget, I thought I'd buy a Costco few ribbons, set them to a solid color, and they'd add a unique look to my display.  Unfortunately, I can't get mine to play nice with my LOR setup.

 

Now, these ribbons are not exactly your "smart" CCR (cosmic color ribbons), but they aren't completely dumb, either. They came with a remote control to change the color and select an animation (solid, chasing, star burst, etc.)

 

Here's the problem: they don't immediately light up when LOR sends power to the channel.  They hesitate for 1 or 2 seconds and then light solid...*IF* your sequence has them stay lit for another 3-4 seconds. If you try to do a 1 second on/off pattern, sometimes random animations appear. Other times, you just get random sections flickering on and off in random colors.

 

Is there any way I can still salvage them for my display? It took four attempts to get them to stick to the house, and I dread trying to take them down and throw $80 worth of lights in the trash. (I know. I know. Judge me later. sigh)  The only thing I can think of is to have them display for entire VERSES of songs, and that just seems to defeat the purpose of lights attached to LOR devices...

 

Here's what it's doing:
http://youtu.be/vNrrt1dhr2c

 

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I think we need to know more about the strips.

1. what is the voltage output of the strips?

2 what controller type are you using to control the strips. 

 

I'm guessing they are 12 volt output to the strips with a power inverter to convert the 110 volt down to 12 volt. That is if they plug into an AC outlet. The lag would probably come from the inverter. I'm no expert on this. a little more info about the strips would help.

Edited by Box on Rails
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I am not familiar with the ones supplied by Costco, but they sound like many of those sold on ebay and through other sources with the individual controller (I have a couple such strips in my home theater).  If they are the same or similar, I don't know how you could control the individual colors through their controller, but imagine you might be able to more easily control the power if it was run with a LOR DC controller rather than an AC controller.  Running the 12 volt power directly through the DC controller, might reduce the delay.

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It's even easier than that. I don't want to control the individual colors. I just want them to turn on and off during a sequence, on time. No delay or spastic colors. Just one boring, solid color.

 

If these weren't already hot glued to the eaves, I'd swap them out for the dumb single-color ribbon I saw at Wal-mart the other night. Grrr

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I think we need to know more about the strips.

1. what is the voltage output of the strips?

2 what controller type are you using to control the strips. 

 

I'm guessing they are 12 volt output to the strips with a power inverter to convert the 110 volt down to 12 volt. That is if they plug into an AC outlet. The lag would probably come from the inverter. I'm no expert on this. a little more info about the strips would help.

 

1. If I'm reading the power supply correctly, it looks like the output is 12 volts 2 amps.

 

2. I just have them plugged into one standard LOR channel. I don't want them to do anything fancy. Just turn on and off. No animation, no color changes, or anything. 

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You'd be better off going to Holiday Coro and getting some dumb strips or strings and 3 channel controllers.  strips would run you about $24.00 strings about $17 and controllers about $15.00.  Power supply about $15.00 this way no adapting and you know what you are getting.

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If you cut the cord, you can't return it to Costco, will take things back no questions back if it's not user damaged.  BUT...the best way to get instant on and off would be to use a relay on the other side of the controller.  Thus the controller would be on, (No delay) and the relay would then give power to the strip when needed.  That's some tough figuring this late in the season if you are not familiar with soldering and electronics.  The guys you need to talk and work with are at www.diychristmas.org.  These are the guys that could hack your system in nothing flat. 

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yup as I suspected the power converter is your problem. the delay is account it has to power up to 120 volts then convert that to the 12 volts for the strips everytime the LOR controller send power to it. rainyoregonchristmas is correct in the fact that you need the power supply to stay on constantly and have a controller trigger the 12 volt power to the strip separately.  jerrymac is correct also. not really much you can do to make these work without cutting the ribbon from the included power supply and a power supplythis designed for what you want. LOR CMB24 or one from Holidaycoro like jerrymax mentioned. good luck to you. :)

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