Single Channel Light Strings

Daniel1973

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Hi to all. New to ACL.
Starting out and a little lost with all the forums. I have 27 Channel DMX from Ray, that I have working via Vixen 3.

My test strips all work, my question is regarding running single channel light strips ( IE kmart/Big W 2 wires) as long as the are rated to my max power output(5 or 12 VDC) do I just connect up common and assign single channel with output level only. Or Do I need to do something other.

Daniel
 

Eastwood16G

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Hi Daniel, Welcome to ACL

I'm a bit lost. Don't know about KMart. Most Big W I have are 22V AC which work well at 27V DC. I think you may need to be more explicit. I believe your lamps are wired in groups of ten lamps per channel. Each lamp is notionally 3V (it depends on LED colour and chemistry).

Lots of guys on the forum are running many RayWu 27ch. And will help you. Good on you getting it working with Vix3. Mine was fine in test mode then I gave up.

I feel they are a waste of time and money given that there are better FUSED alternatives available.

I'm certain 5V and 12V is a typo unless you are cutting your strings, or I have misunderstood.

R
 

Daniel1973

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Thanks,

I am probably confusing myself. I just want to know can you connect old (traditional) strings up to Controller?

Daniel
 

David_AVD

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The Big W strings have one common (+ve) wire and two channel (-ve) wires. One channel controls every second LED and the other channel wire controls the other LEDs.

So, connect the common wire of the string to the output V+ terminal of the controller. This might be called "common" on some boards.

If you want individual control of the string channels, connect the string's channel wires to two separate controller channel terminals.

If you only want to control the Big W string as one channel, twist the string's two channel wires together and connect to just one channel terminal on the controller.
 

Daniel1973

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Thanks David,

I thought as much, And I dare say when sequencing, use that channel (R,G or B) to turn on for set time
 

scamper

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I have a heap of BigW strings that I use in my display and control them with vixen 3.
here is a wiki article to help you wire them.
http://auschristmaslighting.com/wiki/LED_String_Wiring
I bought a 27v power supply and use that to power them. You need 12v to power the controller, hook the common end to the 27v and the control end to the R,G or B output on the controller and join the earths of the 2 power supplies.
In vixen, you just use it as a normal output, but bear in mind that it will be 2 colours at once. You can create a new colour mixing property ie red, yellow / green, blue that don't mix and name it big w or similar. Just remember the channel numbers you assign it so you don't get confused.
In the photo I started with just rg for colour handling as this was when I only had Bunnings strings.
I now have 2 new top headings, 1 is RGB for all of the led's that can fully mix, and the other is just called BigW for ease of remembering. That way when I sequence it, I can do colour fades, full on colours (when I want the whole display 1 colour) etc on the RGB's and if I just want flashing and don't care so much about the colour, I can use the BigW or all.
This photo was taken from my home computer, so was early in the piece as I have a show computer that has all of my current setup on it.
 

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Daniel1973

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Thanks for the help Scamper,

I read the article and it was helpful. Still a slight bit confused with the wiring up. can you draw a mud map to explain the wire location.

Cheers Daniel.
 

scamper

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David_AVD said:
Here's another wiki article I wrote a while back that show mixed voltages with a single controller.

Example 3 in this article is what I used to do the BigW lights.
Once you get your head around the fact that you are only switching the negative or earth side of the LED's you can see it starts to make sense.
(that is the cathode side if you want to get technical 8) )
With the store bought strings, the first thing you need to do is find out which wires go where. BigW strings have 3 wires. one is common and the other 2 control 2 colours each. So if you cut the wires and connect 2 of them to a 27v supply see what happens, if they light up, then the one that is connected to the positive is the common, if not, swap them around and try again. You only have three wires, so there are only so many combinations.
When you work out the common, then hard wire that to the power supply and the other 2 wires connect to your 27ch controller.
Connect the 2 power supply earths (negative) together. **** please note, most power supplies are ok with this like the ones you buy from china etc, but some power supplies may not like it (very rare)***
now you just supply 12v to your control board and power it up.
I hope this makes sense :p
 

Daniel1973

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Thank you to all.

David and Scamper, great help. Makes sence now. (Took me a while)

Have a 27 VDC on order from Ray.

Cheers once again.

Daniel.
 
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