Strobe Light Noise

[Roger Leon Forbes]

By there nature strobe lights generate noise, this noise sometimes is transferred to LOR controllers and causes problems ranging from lights staying on to bad fades and more. I found that if I tied my C-9 strobe lights to a number 14 support wire (zip cord will work fine) not attached to any other lights and ground it to a 4 foot rebar drove into the ground it stopped all noise. My strobes hang on the inside of my mega tree and before adding the grounded support wire we where having problems with fades and lights staying on dureing the show, after the gournding no more problems.

[Roger Leon Forbes]

The grounding I am talking about has NOTHING to do with the power to the strobes. What I am trying to convey is the induction of noise into what ever you have the strobes tied to. If you lace or cable tie your C-9 strand to your mini lights or LED's the noise from the strobes can be inducted into the light strand causeing problems. What I did was take a peace of number 14 wire and striped my C-9 strand to it for support and tied it up in my mega tree. I then took one end of the number 14 wire and striped away the inslation and used a water hose clamp and tied it to a peace of 4 ft rebar drove into the ground there fore any noise indused into the number 14 wire went to ground and not into my lights. The number 14 wire is used just as a support and does not provide any power to the stobes or lights.

[Max-Paul]

Roger Leon Forbes wrote:

The grounding I am talking about has NOTHING to do with the power to the strobes. What I am trying to convey is the induction of noise into what ever you have the strobes tied to. If you lace or cable tie your C-9 strand to your mini lights or LED's the noise from the strobes can be inducted into the light strand causeing problems. What I did was take a piece of number 14 wire and secured my C-9 strand to it for support and tied it up in my mega tree. I then took one end of the number 14 wire and striped away the inslation and used a water hose clamp and tied it to a piece of 4 ft rebar drove into the ground there fore any noise indused into the number 14 wire went to ground and not into my lights. The number 14 wire is used just as a support and capassative coupling to ground. Thus it provides a path to bleed off the noise to ground. It does not provide any power to the stobes or lights. Nor is there any direct electrical connection made to the strobes.

Roger I would not say that I fixed it for you. But may have helped explain what you are doing. Sounds great and one day when my display has grown to the point that I can put in a mega tree with strobes. I will remember this post and do like you did. Thanks for the heads up.

[Roger Leon Forbes]

Thanks Jeff, that does help explain it better and hope it helps someone, again Thanks roger

[LENNY RUEL]

Well then I wonder if just fastening my string of strobes in my mega tree to the 4 guy wires did the same thing for me. I made a loop at the top end and hooked it to one of the 16 hooks at the top and wrap around the outside of the light strings working my way down. The strobes sockets are placed where I cross the guys with this and cable tied in place at the intersection so they stay put. I have turnbuckles between the anchors and guys, but between the four of them must have a decent connection someplace?

Lenny

[Steve Constantino]

I use strobes but have no noise problems. I do not run my strobes through a LOR controller for that very reason. A strobe is what we call in the entertainment industry as a "None dim Load". You need to run the strobes through a relay controller. It will get 120 volts, 60 hertz with out running through any type of TRIAC or SCR controller. Even if your LOR controller is set to 100% (255) it will work, but it's still not the right way to do it.

LOR now has a relay controller that would work grate for this job.

DIO32 with the DIO8RLY

http://store.lightorama.com/dio32cards.html

Steve

[Aproct]

This is very interesting.....I am wondering if this may have been also part on my problem on my "d" controllers....This year to I had ran two pieces of mason string from the header down to the pvc ring at the base of my mega tree forming a triangle. From there I stetched the strobes in a zig zag fashion back and forth on the these strings and plugged into a controller. That controller would be the one that would give me constant problems nightly......Hummmmmmmm...I wonder......in essence they were never"grounded"...