Bob Wingert Posted April 5, 2010 Posted April 5, 2010 Posted this over on PC, they had 1 suggestion that worked but its not ideal for me. I have 3 sets of Red LED Net lights that will NOT dim...Well, they'll dim if hooked up to a strand of incandescents. That's not an option though...So I found the thread over there about building a snubber. I ordered the parts involved and built to spec. Hook that up to the lights and still no DIM. Now I'm out $38 in parts building the snubs. I don't know enough about these lights to figure out why they won't work properly unless there hooked up to regular lights. I need these to work as there as they play a big part in the display.Any ideas on what else to try??
Dennis Cherry Posted April 5, 2010 Posted April 5, 2010 pokrplr wrote: Posted this over on PC, they had 1 suggestion that worked but its not ideal for me. I have 3 sets of Red LED Net lights that will NOT dim...Well, they'll dim if hooked up to a strand of incandescents. That's not an option though...So I found the thread over there about building a snubber. I ordered the parts involved and built to spec. Hook that up to the lights and still no DIM. Now I'm out $38 in parts building the snubs. I don't know enough about these lights to figure out why they won't work properly unless there hooked up to regular lights. I need these to work as there as they play a big part in the display.Any ideas on what else to try??what kind of snubber did you build?Resistive or inductive (C9)?Please explain.What controller did you use?
Bob Wingert Posted April 5, 2010 Author Posted April 5, 2010 Dennis Cherry wrote: pokrplr wrote: Posted this over on PC, they had 1 suggestion that worked but its not ideal for me. I have 3 sets of Red LED Net lights that will NOT dim...Well, they'll dim if hooked up to a strand of incandescents. That's not an option though...So I found the thread over there about building a snubber. I ordered the parts involved and built to spec. Hook that up to the lights and still no DIM. Now I'm out $38 in parts building the snubs. I don't know enough about these lights to figure out why they won't work properly unless there hooked up to regular lights. I need these to work as there as they play a big part in the display.Any ideas on what else to try??what kind of snubber did you build?Resistive or inductive (C9)?Please explain.What controller did you use?Here's the link to what I built:http://forums.planetchristmas.com/showthread.php?t=37562They are M6 lights, have no idea if resistive or inductive?Using LOR, latest version softwareThe lights I purchased from CDI, I have Red and Blue nets, no problem with the Blue one's dimming... It just puzzles me
ErnieHorning Posted April 5, 2010 Posted April 5, 2010 It could be that your particular light strings have more capacitance then the ones that Chuck tested. Have you tried put two or three snubbers on a string? It could be that you just need a lower resistor value.
Max-Paul Posted April 5, 2010 Posted April 5, 2010 pokrplr,I dont know if you did this or not. But this past year I kind of messed up my supply lines and had flipped my hot and neutral leads going into the controller. So, what happened is that I always had the hot going out to the lights and the return or neutral was being switched via the Triacs. Dimming was lousy and depending on how damp / wet the ground was on a particular night would mean how much the LEDs glowed and would not turn fully off. Once I got the supply leads swapped at the plug to the receptacle all was good.I dont know if this is your problem or what LOR board you have. I do know that LEDs are a bit more picky about things like this than the old ican lamps. I would just suggest that you take a minute and double check the hot lead and neutral from the plug to the controller.
jcheslin Posted April 5, 2010 Posted April 5, 2010 I had LED light string dimming problems last year where the lights dimmed ok, but some strings flickered really bad --- I read somewhere here that I should try [of all things] plugging in an Air Freshener at the start of the light string. Well, 25 Air Fresheners later [minus the actual scent packs] the Flickering almost disappeared. I bought the cheapest Glade version $1.97 at Target --- oh, I also changed the LOR Fade from a low of 25% to a low of 50% --- it did seem that going too low with my LEDs could have contributed to the flicker [and 50% still gave the Fade effect]. I think newer versions of LEDs will address this issue, but I have too much invested in my 45,000 LEDs [mostly G12 Globes] to start changing now.
George Simmons Posted April 5, 2010 Posted April 5, 2010 jcheslin wrote: ...I also changed the LOR Fade from a low of 25% to a low of 50%... [and 50% still gave the Fade effect].If you wrote this to mean a fade from 100% to 50%, then there must be a really big difference in LEDs old and new. Most of the LED's I have (a combination of half- wave and full-wave) were purchased within the last 18 months. In my experience, fading down from 100% to 50% is barely noticeable. Yes, I'm a soon-to-be geezer so the eyes might be lyin', but what they tell me is that it's between 50% and 0% where 90% of the actual fading takes place.I, too, notice fewer fading problems with blues...
rmturner54 Posted April 12, 2010 Posted April 12, 2010 I am using all LED's in my display. All bought from either Paul or Travis. No snubbers in my display whats so ever. I have had no probelms in fading from 100% to 0. The glade air freshers are just another type of snubber. The resistor type snubbers you talk about do the same thing as the air freshners. An incandescant lamp on the string will do the same thing.On the hot and neutral subject, I play very close attention to the hot and neutral hook ups. I also make my own extension cords using zip cord, which is another reason to pay attention to that detail.
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