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Problem With LED's Not Turning Off.....


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Posted

I am just starting out and trying to purchase all LED lights. I am a former DJ and have a bunch of stuff I can integrate into my show.

I don't have any controllers yet but I do have a 4 channel DMX dimmer pack that auto chases going 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4...........What I'd like to do is wrap my fake brick chimney in red LED's and make some kind of 4 channel thing with white lights to make it look like smoke coming from the chimney using the dimmer pack.

I tried regular mini lights and they worked perfectly. I then tried using some led's and the channels never fully turned off. The lights would actually dim about halfway, but they never actually shut off. The led lights in question were all purchased from Walmart for what it's worth.

Will I have a similar problem with the LED's when using a real controller? I would hate to spend all the money on LED's and find out they dont' shut off completely. Is this just a problem with the LED's on my dimmer pack?

Posted

Not sure with dmx, but with the lor controllers you sometimes have to add an incandescent C7 into the circuit to increase the resistance on some strings of LEDs. You might try that and see if it solves the problem. Just plug a night light into the circuit and see what happens.

Posted

I'll give that a shot. I wasn't really going to use this DMX pack in the whole LOR setup, I was just planning on doing the chimney thing by itself with the dmx pack. I'll go test it out.

Posted

Some dimmer packs will leak a small amount of voltage to the light circuits to keep the lights "warm" so they will have a slightly quicker response time. That voltage sounds like it is enough to trigger the LED's.

Posted

Brian Mitchell wrote:

Some dimmer packs will leak a small amount of voltage to the light circuits to keep the lights "warm" so they will have a slightly quicker response time. That voltage sounds like it is enough to trigger the LED's.


Actually, not just faster response, but longer life as well, as the filament cycles through much less of the temperature induced expansion/contraction cycle.

The LED's that don't always shut completely off with LOR do go far further than half way off, They probably light at less than 10% brightness. And you shouldn't need even the full load of a C7/C9 to resolve the issue.
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