Answered RGBO strings and CMB16 controller

videoman3857

videoman3857

Full time elf
Joined
Apr 21, 2016
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Glass House Mountains
Hi All,
Just a quick question.
I have several strings of 4 colour Candle LEDS - each a separate run of Red, Green, Blue and Orange.
I have a spare CMB16 lor controller and I want to control the light colours independently to each other.
This board has 16 channels with + and - for each channel.
I effectively have with my lights 1 x positive and 4 x negative wires

Can i wire:
common wire from the lights to the + of channel 1,
the red negative to the negative of channel 1,
the green negative to the negative to channel 2
the Blue negative to the negative to channel 3
the Orange negative to the negative of channel 4
I am assuming the positive is common to the channels on one side of the board and the switching dimming is done to the negative. Therefore I am assuming that I should not have to bridge between the positives of channel 1 to 4
Are my thoughts correct or am I flawed ?
 
Your assumption is correct, you only need to connect the common positive of your light set to one of the controller's V+ terminals, assuming the channel outputs are all on the same bank (side) of the cmb16 controller :). If you have a multimeter handy, in continuity mode you would get a circuit reading between the various CH+ outputs on the same side. So you have a choice to make with either CH1+, CH2+, CH3+ or CH4+ but you only need to connect to one of the +'s.

I have some dumb RGB strips connected to three channels of a CMB16DC-QC board and its single common V+ wire is connected to only one of the three V+ outputs, with all three V- outputs used (one for Red, the second for Green and the third Blue), and it all works great.
 
Here I even made a pretty picture to go along with my wall of text :laugh:. It looks like you're sorted but this might help anybody looking in on the topic wanting to do the same thing :)

videoman3857-rgbo-strings-lorcmb16-commonplus.jpg
 
Sweet. Thank you so much Ryan.
That picture is so purdy. :laugh:
Finally starting to get a handle on this stuff.
Gawd. I never thought of using the multi meter. I only use it in DC Volt mode.
Yeah found a little speaker icon, selectable with the Diode testing mode - hey presto it squeals when I test between the V+ terminals
Thanks again for the help.
Oh I see you too are a Light O rama user.
Do you use dmx boards with your set up ?
I am looking at wanting to use Allan's Mega60 boards for more of my dumb RGB lights
Not ready for it yet, but may have some questions.
Peter
 
:)

I don't use the mega60 DMX controller, but you can run most Light-O-Rama (LOR) controllers in DMX mode which then allows you to have LOR and non-LOR DMX controllers live on the same universe with an rj45 wiring converter between LOR and non-LOR controllers. The good news for you is the mega60 has the wiring converter built in via a jumper (controller wiki page and controller manual) so you won't need a separate rj45 wiring converter so long as the mega60 is the first DMX board after your LOR controller(s), or last DMX board before your LOR controller(s) depending on what USB dongle you're using to connect them to your computer.

You can even use the Light-O-Rama dongle as a USB to DMX device (put LOR boards before other DMX boards). If you're using the LOR software, just follow the steps on the wiki to do this: https://auschristmaslighting.com/wiki/LOR-and-DMX
 
Thank you/
I have saved the wiki page as a reference for when I am ready .
I got 3 x mega 60 boards, but I don't have not enough lights to use on them LOL.
Will probably work on this for next year.
Still getting my head around programming LOR showtime and papagayo for singing Christmas trees let alone setting everything up.
So much to take in
Off to the Brisbane mini to help get my head around things.
Thanks again for all your help
 
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