do you leave your controllers on?

[Donny M. Carter]

Does everyone leave there controllers on all night? Do yall kill the main power? I know they are not technically on, but i mean the light will flash all night. Is that ok?

[DaveK]

Most leave them on all the time. A RESET (our unexpected outage) is about the only 'off time' during the season.

[Max-Paul]

Simple answer is yes. But more detail might help you understand why.. Some of us believe that leaving the controller powered up will help with any moisture issue. I know that it is not a lot of heat, but the transformer and the two regulators will produce a small amount of heat. Hopefully it will be enough to help drive off any moisture that tries to condense on the circuit board. I also believe that the surge current that happens when you apply power to electronics that have a transformer and filter caps.

[rwertz]

I leave mine on. But there were a couple people that found lights on after the show ended last year. Most of the problems were related to the extremely wet season that a lot of us had.

[Brandon Kibler]

My controllers stay on as well.

[PipefitterDan]

I turn mine off, they are powered by the same system as my static display so it's easiest to turn it all off.

[Tim Dorr]

On from start of the season (Thanksgiving night) to the end (New Year's Eve) with no problem at all.

[basis21b]

They each come on as a part of my setup testing. Once the testing for a controller is complete it does not go off until the end of the season.

[TJ Hvasta]

My first year with LOR and I had them always powered up, just have the shows run during a set timeframe (6pm-9:30pm).. Never found them on after that time..

[Dad02]

Never had any issues leaving them on all season.

[marquisite]

I turn the controllers off. As the far majority of lights that I use are low voltage 24vdc leds, they pull little power.

This means that on these channels there is a good chance I'll have to add old lights to boost the load above the holding current for the triacs on the CTB16PC boards.

I've found that turning the boards off after the show is finished, and not turning them on until 30-60 minutes prior to the following nights show makes the triacs more forgiving to the low load.

If the boards are left on over night the current needs to be higher to avoid lights sticking on.

[Max-Paul]

marquisite wrote:

I turn the controllers off. As the far majority of lights that I use are low voltage 24vdc leds, they pull little power.

This means that on these channels there is a good chance I'll have to add old lights to boost the load above the holding current for the triacs on the CTB16PC boards.

I've found that turning the boards off after the show is finished, and not turning them on until 30-60 minutes prior to the following nights show makes the triacs more forgiving to the low load.

If the boards are left on over night the current needs to be higher to avoid lights sticking on.

I fail to understand your logic. But each to their own. Just if you are worried about the load not being enough to turn off the triac, so you power down the controller during non-show times. Then how do the LEDs turn off or fade while the show is going? Thus your logic fails me.

[marquisite]

Sorry that I confused you heh!

I'm in Australia power-wise it is a bit different with the mains voltage being 240v and many outdoor rated lights having to run on low-voltage adapters (240->24v ac/dc)

I don't fade any of the LED channels on the PC controllers as #1 the load would be too low, so they'd stick, and also I'm hesitant in feeding the 24v adapters with anything other than 240v (when ramping/dimming the input voltage to the adapers would have to be less than 240v). Basically it goes 240v power -> LOR board -> 24vdc adapter -> LEDs for each channel that powers led strings. I do fade the rope lights however as they can be 240v.

Picture from 2008 showing the adapters on power boards/bricks:


In future years (perhaps this year) I'm looking into the DC controllers so I can fade/ramp the leds safely and so I no longer have to add older broken light sets to led channels to keep the load high enough for the triacs to work properly.

The old incandescent (still 24v) light sets I add seem to fix the sticking issue so long as I turn off the controllers each night. If I don't the leds still stick even with the old light sets.

From experimenting it just appears as though the triacs are more forgiving if the controllers are turned off overnight - as if the holding current is lower.

[-klb-]

Many of my personal controllers have been powered up most of the last two years. With exceptions for power outages, and moving power cords around for better power balance...

As for low current, it does not cause channels to stick on. It causes channels to turn off early, which can cause odd behavior on fading and intensity settings. What causes sticking on are inductive loads, like transformers... Adding more resistive load will usually bring voltage and current back closer to being in phase, resulting in better behavior.

I currently have no theoretical support for why why yours appears to behave better if left off overnight, but I won't question your experiences with it, just provide my own to contrast. I do have two controllers, one with 12 50 count strings of LED, and one with 16 50 count LED strings, both of which were on all season, and had no issues at all. No "snubbers" either...

[Dave Batzdorf]

Same here, leave them on until the show season is over.

[emcee]

Me too... Turn 'em on at setup, turn 'em off at teardown. Mike

[George Simmons]

I've got some that get powered down each night and some that stay powered up all season. It doesn't seem to make any difference to any of them.