Different Voltage on Power Packs

Was curious about chopping up the strings Marc, is the advantage that you can control different parts of a particular length?


Will the opposite work - I have 3 x 600 lights on one pillar, can I jam all three strings into one controller output. This will mean that I can't controller the three independently, but I will be able to save on channels.
 
Charger said:
OK. Thanks again all for the responses. I ordered a 27V power supply from Ray last night, so no doubt I will have further questions once it arrived.


Regarding diodes, the advantage of using these would be that:
a) It makes more efficient use of the power supply (Reduces unnecessary voltage from being drawn)
b) It will reduce the likelihood of damage to the lights (Too much voltage being drawn)
c) Both a and b
d) I am clueless and have idea what the hell I am talking about.
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The reason for using diodes is that your light sets are all likely to work best with different voltages. The diodes fix this problem.

If you put the diodes on the common positive, they will share the current of both channels and slightly lower the brightness when you turn both channels on. David_AVD is right that this probably won't be noticeable but I am a perfectionist so that's not the way that I personally would do it. For resistors it would be more noticeable.

The reason I suggest diodes at the input and not resistors is that if you lose a section of light set due to a blown LED or cut wire, the rest of the light set will be slightly overpowered. This will be worse with resistors than with diodes.

Charger said:
Was curious about chopping up the strings Marc, is the advantage that you can control different parts of a particular length?


Will the opposite work - I have 3 x 600 lights on one pillar, can I jam all three strings into one controller output. This will mean that I can't controller the three independently, but I will be able to save on channels.
Click to expand...

Yes; you can put more than one light set into the same controller output as long as you don't exceed the current capacity of the controller output. This still applies with single light sets but you're more likely to exceed its capacity with more light sets.

You're right that cutting them up effectively makes them into shorter light sets that can be controlled separately. Be aware that they can only be cut at the points where the number of wires is a minimum (not including the thin section at the far end which can be cut where it starts to get thin).
 
I don't have any more DC48 controllers left now, so would suggest going with Alan's M60 DMX board and a DMX dongle. That's the easiest way to start out. :)
 
Charger said:
Was curious about chopping up the strings Marc, is the advantage that you can control different parts of a particular length?


Will the opposite work - I have 3 x 600 lights on one pillar, can I jam all three strings into one controller output. This will mean that I can't controller the three independently, but I will be able to save on channels.
Click to expand...

You can chop up strings or join strings together to suit specific elements in your display. For example, we joined several strings together to run around the guttering and joined other strings to outline parts of our roof. We cut other strings up to form a curtain across our garage door.

If you are buying the Mega60 from AAH, you should have plenty of channels available. In relation to Big W strings, each element only uses two channels on the controller. One for the Red and Green LED's and one for the Blue and Yellow. The more channels you use, the more flexibility you have in controlling the lights and synchronising them to music.
 
Is there any advantage to buying the mega 60 ($250) over 2 X dmx 36 boards ($260). For $10 more I could get an additional 12 channels. Am I missing something obvious here?
 
They both have advantages. The DMX36 is a fair bit cheaper and you end up with more fused zones.

The advantages of the mega60 are
-it has dipswitch settable start address (DMX36 needs to be set via da_start or similar)
-it has jumpers on the dmx inputs that allow for switching between LOR and ESTA wiring if you are mixing and matching with ESTA wired DMX boards and LOR boards.
-the mega60 will run off ANY voltage in the range of 5V-35 with no jumpers required if you are running off 5V
-there is the ability to lower the "apparent" output voltage for each of the 4 zones. You can run all 4 zones off a single 30V power supply for instance and have zone 1 set to 5V, zone 2 set to 12V, zone 3 to 24V and zone 4 off the 30V
 
Thanks for the info Alan. I think my budget will only stretch to the 36 this year, but I reckon I will be hooked once I start.
 
Yep. I was looking at David's dmx dongle. Should I be considering any others?
 
I personally use a couple of Davids dmx dongles as they are electrically isolated and protect the pc from anything bad that you may do to the dmx lines (ask ShellNZ in chat if electrically isolated is good). If you haven't got something like a Pixlite 16 or a similar E1.31 board that has dmx outputs then I actually have cheap non-isolated usb-dmx dongles on my site.
 
Charger said:
Yep. I was looking at David's dmx dongle. Should I be considering any others?
Click to expand...
I would suggest considering using an E1.31 controller with a DMX output as AAH suggested. This option is harder and often more expensive to set up but it is more reliable once you have it working plus you could run pixels depending on what you choose as your E1.31 to DMX unit. Most pixel lights let you individually sequence the colour and brightness of every single light.

Regardless of which type of DMX source you use, you only need one E1.31 to DMX unit or one DMX dongle to run up to 512 DMX channels even if these are on multiple DMX controllers.

The DMX USB dongles are very easy to set up but their timing is handled by the software and might cause everything to misbehave occasionally; I had this happen but the computer was 10 years old, using Vixen 2.1 software (obsolete) and the exact dongle I have is no longer sold. Hopefully someone will know and post whether modern systems with faster processors, more RAM and USB 3 ports are any less likely to have issues.

A DMX dongle is useful for testing purposes though and keep in mind that many DMX controllers are isolated anyway so it might not make as much difference whether your dongle is isolated or not. Having said that, a fault with a non-isolated controller could damage your USB port even if it is the furthest controller from the computer. With my lack of networking knowledge to set up an E1.31 to DMX unit, I don't regret previously using a USB dongle as it did make the setup simpler.
 
Thanks again everyone for you excellent advice. I think I am looking for a relatively simple solution that doesn't break the bank. With this in mind I am favouring the DMX36 with Alan's dongle. While I appreciate that this might not be the best long term solution, I am hoping that it will be suitable for my basic needs this year and I can expand and upgrade in the coming years.
 
A DMX36 and one of Alan's cheaper dongles will be fine as a starter. :)

Very easy to get something working using LOR software. I haven't tried the free sequencers lately but most seem to support USB DMX dongles.
 
Thanks David. I have downloaded Vixen 3 and have been playing around with that. It seems fine for what I need it for. In saying that I don't have any hardware yet, so hopefully it all works together - Ha!
 
Just a quick note. I'm new to this as well. And made a few rookie mistakes in buying power supplies, dmx boards and a dongle. I got the it all from china, and not from anyone here (silly move on hindsight) Good work on checking the voltages before starting! I'm paying for not doing this off the bat. Make sure the dmx can take the voltage too, I didn't realize there were different types. And check the dongle you get will work with your PC. My one only works with Win 7 and before... So I'm having to dig out a raspberry pi just to get it all running!
Now I've seen pixels; so thinking I might just have to scrap everything and start again!
Good luck!
 
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