Author Topic: Current interest and availability of Freestyle?  (Read 4026 times)

Offline GrumpkaXmas

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First off, I should emphasis that I'm new here and new to a lot of this stuff.  Now, with that out of the way....

I'm interested in Freestyle, but I realize it is a board that's several years old.  Don't see much in the way of conversation here about it recently.  Maybe, it's come and gone and I missed the boat?

I don't need High Current control in most cases.   Most everything I'm thinking of doing will be LED strings.  So, MOC3023's or VO2223A SSR's are the way I want to go.   Hard to beat the price per channel with this route.  The only Lynx I see that would be in that direction is the old Lynx Freestyle.  Finding a completed board looks difficult. I could most likely handle the build and try and find the parts from the BOM, but I already saw some parts are marked as soon to be obsolete?  (mind you this was on the mouser link from the BOM and  wasn't anything I couldn't find elsewhere I'm sure)

Is there something more relevant in the lynx designs I'm overlooking?  I will have (hopefully) 5 working Express boards soon to handle the larger loads.  However, I don't want to keep going that route for control over the min requirements of LED strings.  It's just overkill and a waste of funds and resources. 

Any help, direction, correction in thinking, would be appreciated.   

 
Steve from NJ, AKA Grumpka Xmas
I don't get on the forums as much as I'd like but you can find me on Facebook. 
2014-First Year in the hobby.  15+ Lynx Express controllers

Offline tbone321

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Re: Current interest and availability of Freestyle?
« Reply #1 on: February 02, 2014, »
Lets not forget that the MOC3023 and the VO2223A are not SSR's, they are chips that can be used to build them.  You would still need some type of board, a socket for the chip, connectors for power in, power out, and a connection to the Freestyle.  You may also need some minor support cmponents such as a current limiting resistor and a fuse for the 120V input.  You would also need some type of case for each one of these units that you will be building.  By the time you add it all up, including the time required to design and build, the savings drops significantly. 

You will also find that LED's don't always dim as expected and different sets and even different colors from the same manufacturer don't always dim the same way.  The Freestyle has no way to deal with this itself, requiring you to jump thu hoops at best with the sequencing software to get them all to look right or at least match each other. 

The LE is the best way to go, even for low power strings.  It is a complete 16 channel unit that has the ability to load dimming curves.  It can take on 4 different curves and assign them to each channel on the controller.  This means that you can have up to 4 different string types on the LE and with the correct curves loaded, they will all be at the same brightness for the dim level selected. 
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Offline GrumpkaXmas

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Re: Current interest and availability of Freestyle?
« Reply #2 on: February 02, 2014, »
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Lets not forget that the MOC3023 and the VO2223A are not SSR's, they are chips that can be used to build them.  You would still need some type of board, a socket for the chip, connectors for power in, power out, and a connection to the Freestyle.  You may also need some minor support cmponents such as a current limiting resistor and a fuse for the 120V input.  You would also need some type of case for each one of these units that you will be building.  By the time you add it all up, including the time required to design and build, the savings drops significantly. 

You will also find that LED's don't always dim as expected and different sets and even different colors from the same manufacturer don't always dim the same way.  The Freestyle has no way to deal with this itself, requiring you to jump thu hoops at best with the sequencing software to get them all to look right or at least match each other. 

The LE is the best way to go, even for low power strings.  It is a complete 16 channel unit that has the ability to load dimming curves.  It can take on 4 different curves and assign them to each channel on the controller.  This means that you can have up to 4 different string types on the LE and with the correct curves loaded, they will all be at the same brightness for the dim level selected.

Thank you for the detailed reply.  Very well explained.  I was aware of the components, but I see where you are going.  Lucky for me, I should have five Lynx Express boards in a few days.   I might go another way on the separate SSr's though.   Good points though.   Much Appreciated.   I didn't consider many of those points about dimming and such. 

Steve from NJ, AKA Grumpka Xmas
I don't get on the forums as much as I'd like but you can find me on Facebook. 
2014-First Year in the hobby.  15+ Lynx Express controllers