110v RGB led rope light from China

[vanslice]

Last year I ordered 300m of RGB rope light from ATG Electronics in China. These operate on 110vdc with positive neutral. I ordered 512 DMX controllers from ATG which I control with LOR and iDMX1000 converter. If you check my video you can see these ropes on all my eves plus 6 big palm trees wrapped at front of house. I had serious problem with blues failing on the tree wraps. Out of 110m, I had 55m of lights that failed the blue sections. ATG was fair and sent me 110m of new ropes to replace the failed units. The ropes mounted on eves had no failures. The failures took place on the wrapping only. Needless to say I won't be wrapping any more trees with these rope lights. I now have 55m of rope with no blue but red and green is still usuable. I have tried to control these ropes with LOR by changing 110vac to 110vdc with full wave rectifier. However it did not work out because LOR controls with positive output and and negative common. I had a cross feed problem that would control 2 colors OK but when I tried 3rd color, the first 2 colors came on also. I then tried relays which I could control by LOR but I could not fade or ramp with this setup. My question is this! Do you know of a circuit that I could use to operate these 2 colors from LOR using rectifier to convert output to dc without cross feed problem?
WaterBill

 

[AussiePhil]

Bill

Can i ask if you any any spec sheets for the rope light and ATG DMX controller from last year? I want to understand how they are supposed to work before offering up a circuit that might work.

Are you using the LOR AC controller?

(i just added the 110v to the title so people are clear it's not low voltage)

Ta
Phil

 

[vanslice]

Phil
Yes I am using 110vac output LOR controller with neg neutral. No the instructions from ATG do not give much circuit info. I will send link on the manual and maybe you can get some info.
Bill
PS If I would post info on my water display, where do you suggest I post it?

 

[aussiexmas]

Bill

I experienced a similar problem on some 240V LED strings. I normally steer clear of 240V lights for safety reasons, however, a few years back, I bought a few strings on e-bay without realising they were 240V. These were 4 colour strings with a 4 channel controller, 1 channel for each colour. I decided to try disabling the controllers and reconfiguring the string connections on 4 strings so that each disabled controller connected to only 1 colour. I had previously done this quite successfully with low voltage LED strings where the 240V supply was stepped down to 24V using a transformer pack to supply the controllers. I could that switch each individual colour on independently using a LOR AC control board which fed the transformer for that controller.

The mods to the strings involved connecting the commons of each string together and connecting the blue connections of all the strings to a single controller, same for the reds, yellows and greens. The controllers each include a full wave rectifier which is not filtered. When I did this mod for the 240 V sets where the power to the controller came directly from the 240V mains, each colour tested OK individually. However, when I tried to control these with LOR all colours lit, but the coulurs which were not intended to be on, were dimmer. Subsequent tests with each colour plugged into manually switched mains outlets showed the same behaviour. Our mains switch only switches the active wire and the neutrals are commoned.

I concluded that the behaviour probably resulted from the common neutral providing a conduction path to the rectifiers that had not been switched on, but only in a half wave mode - hence the lower intensity of the colours not switched on. As I only had a few strings of these 240V lights, I did not chase a solution. The mods worked for the low voltage strings because the stepdown transformers fully isolated each channel.

With your rope light, have you checked whether you get it to light at a lower voltage. My 240V strings were too bright to fit with other lights in the display. They included resistors which got quite hot diring operation. I ended up running these at half voltage (two circuits in series and they lit at a comfortable brightness. If your rope light is useable at 60V DC, then you would be able to control the individual colours using a LOR DC board. (60V is the upper voltage limit on these boards). For this to work, the resistors in the rope light circuits would need to be dropping a considerable voltage.

Regards Geoff

 

[vanslice]

Geoff & Phil
Thanks for info and Geoff I think you are correct. Att find rough schematic on how I tried to do this. I could get channels 1 & 2 to operate normally but when I tried channel 3, channels 1 & 2 also would come on. I feel some type of crossfeed took place between the rectifiers. However I am now only needing 2 channels so will try my old set up and see if it will control R & G lights forgetting the blue on channel 3. Maybe it will work but this I did close to year ago and I don't remember all the facts clearly. (might be an age thing!!)
Bill

 

[vanslice]

Sorry that the schematic came thru upside down. Don't know why and don't know how to correct it. Hope you don't mind standing on your head to read it.
Bill