LED Buzzing Problem with LOR

[Kicker3]

Sorry for the long post, but I am stumped and in urgent need of help and wanted to provide answers to questions that you may ask to help troubleshoot. I have exhausted all other options that I can think of, so I am putting this question out to the LOR and PC users.

This is my 2nd year with LOR and my first year with LED's. I replaced my roof C9 Incandescents with new C9 LEDs this year and now I am having problems. I have 4 LOR Units that I am using. All are the LOR1602 - 30 amp controllers. I am currently using 1.6.1 software.

PROBLEM 1:

The C9 LED's I am using are making a buzzing sound everytime they turn on no matter what, when I am using LOR. When I plug them in normally in a regular outlet, they don't seem to make the buzz. I mean this buzz is fairly loud. You can hear it from about 20-30 feet away from my roof and they are on a second story about 30 feet above the ground.

The buzz is also happening inside my home's electrical panel when the LOR is running. In addition to that, it's making all the battery backups on other devices in my house go off (like a temporary loss of power) whenever LOR seems to hit the notes in a sequence that are 100% on. These devices (batter backups) are not attached to anything related to LOR or even on the same circuit. They are on a separate circuit breaker box. My home has 2 150 Amp Circuit Breaker Boxes and the Xmas Circuits are spread out among the boxes and neither are using 80% or more of the allowed amount even with the rest of the house fully on.

PROBLEM 2:

In addition to problem 1 above, whenever the show runs a few times through, my LOR box that's powering my roof lights go off and shuts down. It doesn't trip a breaker and doesn't blow a fuse. It just crashes like a fuse was blown or breaker tripped. I tried swapping out LOR boxes with another unit and the same thing happens.

I have 3 sets of 500 roof lights. Each different colors that alternate (like Richard H of PC). Each string pulls only about 4.5 amps or so. I have them spread out across the lor, so the AMPS shouldn't be a problem and nothing else is plugged into that box. I did try it with other items plugged in and had the same issues.

SOLUTIONS TRIED

All the circuits were installed by a professional electrician, so no screwing around on my part. I had the electrician come out again today and he couldn't figure out the buzzing or what the problems were. Everything checked out good. He even went so far as to replace every single breaker that they installed this year and last with new ones to see if that helped. He was at a lost and has never seen the problem before and he was the lead electrician from the company I used.

I also replaced all the fuses in the box with new fuses and no change there. Like I said above, I even swapped out LOR boxes and no luck.

Any ideas would be greatly helpful. I tried the search function and couldn't find anything related.

Thanks in advance!

[Brad Stucky]

Kicker3 wrote:

Sorry for the long post, but I am stumped and in urgent need of help and wanted to provide answers to questions that you may ask to help troubleshoot. I have exhausted all other options that I can think of, so I am putting this question out to the LOR and PC users.

This is my 2nd year with LOR and my first year with LED's. I replaced my roof C9 Incandescents with new C9 LEDs this year and now I am having problems. I have 4 LOR Units that I am using. All are the LOR1602 - 30 amp controllers. I am currently using 1.6.1 software.

PROBLEM 1:

The C9 LED's I am using are making a buzzing sound everytime they turn on no matter what, when I am using LOR. When I plug them in normally in a regular outlet, they don't seem to make the buzz. I mean this buzz is fairly loud. You can hear it from about 20-30 feet away from my roof and they are on a second story about 30 feet above the ground.

The buzz is also happening inside my home's electrical panel when the LOR is running. In addition to that, it's making all the battery backups on other devices in my house go off (like a temporary loss of power) whenever LOR seems to hit the notes in a sequence that are 100% on. These devices (batter backups) are not attached to anything related to LOR or even on the same circuit. They are on a separate circuit breaker box. My home has 2 150 Amp Circuit Breaker Boxes and the Xmas Circuits are spread out among the boxes and neither are using 80% or more of the allowed amount even with the rest of the house fully on.

PROBLEM 2:

In addition to problem 1 above, whenever the show runs a few times through, my LOR box that's powering my roof lights go off and shuts down. It doesn't trip a breaker and doesn't blow a fuse. It just crashes like a fuse was blown or breaker tripped. I tried swapping out LOR boxes with another unit and the same thing happens.

I have 3 sets of 500 roof lights. Each different colors that alternate (like Richard H of PC). Each string pulls only about 4.5 amps or so. I have them spread out across the lor, so the AMPS shouldn't be a problem and nothing else is plugged into that box. I did try it with other items plugged in and had the same issues.

SOLUTIONS TRIED

All the circuits were installed by a professional electrician, so no screwing around on my part. I had the electrician come out again today and he couldn't figure out the buzzing or what the problems were. Everything checked out good. He even went so far as to replace every single breaker that they installed this year and last with new ones to see if that helped. He was at a lost and has never seen the problem before and he was the lead electrician from the company I used.

I also replaced all the fuses in the box with new fuses and no change there. Like I said above, I even swapped out LOR boxes and no luck.

Any ideas would be greatly helpful. I tried the search function and couldn't find anything related.

Thanks in advance!

Did you ever solve your problem? Sorry I didn't see this sooner but did you just replace the bulbs in your existing strings or did you get all new strings? I read some place that certain LED bulbs or strings of bulbs use capacitors instead of resistors to limit the current flow through the LED. I believe most strings of LED lights just use resistors which seems to work OK. I think the principal reason is that there are many LEDs in a string so it's easy to divide out the voltage among the LEDs. In a replacement LED C9 unit I imagine there are only a few LEDs in the package and the main 110 volts would have to be divided out with a small amount of the voltage across a few LEDs and the remaining voltage across the resistors. It would probably be much more efficient and generate less heat if a capacitor type limiter was used to limit the current. If you replace the incandescent bulbs with LED units then I would bet this is the case. These will present problems on solidstate controlled circuits like light switch dimmers or LOR control boxes that use triacs. I'm no expert on this but I think the electronic circuit would be fighting to maintain the proper voltage and current flow with that kind of load. It's just something I came across in another posting. I hope you were able to figure something out and get your lights lit for Christmas.

[Kicker3]

I don't know all the electronic stuff either. But, my supplier switched out the LED c9 with the regular kind and that resolved the problem.

I would love to use the new stuff, but this problem killed my first 2 weeks, so I am sticking with good old reliable incandescents