My brilliance may have hosed me. Snubber wiring help. Nope, still brilliant!

[lonewolf41]

OK, quick background.  I am getting faint triggering on many of my LED strings when the are off.  This is tied to other channels coming on.  I think I need snubbers to eliminate this.  I am using all V5 LE's.  They have built-in snubbers.  When I installed these LE's, I put them in 4 to a box and hard-wired them to outlets installed in the top and bottom of the box.  This makes hook up and storage pretty easy as they are self contained and weather proof.  Anyway, the hot wires all go from the terminals on the board to the appropriate side of an outlet plug.  8 outlets (16 receptacles) per LE.  I attached an old picture that shows my setup and i think you can see what I am talking about.  The neutrals are white and the hots are black.

Here is the rub.  For the neutral's, I ran them all in series straight from the GFCI.  They never go to the board...well except for one that feeds the left or power supply side of the board.  But the neutrals for the outlets all come straight from the GFCI's mounted in the bottom of the enclosure (1 per LE).  What this means is that I am not getting the use of the built-in resistor on the board for "snubbing" purposes.  My questions is...how can I make use of them without rewiring my entire enclosure (64 channels).  I am electrically challenged/nervous and my thinking is this:

If I keep the neutrals the same except the first one in the series gets wired to the LE board (hence making use of the built-in snubber) instead of the GFCI, all the current would be going through that one channel...at least on the neutral side.  That may present a while other bag of issues that I have not considered yet, but at least that seems like it might be too much for that one channel as wouldn't all the current then go through that one terminal? 

BTW, the current on the 4 controllers in this box are 2 have less that 4 amps when everything is on, and two have less than 3 amps when everything is on (YEAH LED's).

Is my thinking correct and/or is there any other way to "snub" these strings easily or make use of the ones already on the board?  I thought about adding a resistor to the back of each outlet (I would have to do 64, but would be easier than rewiring).

Sorry for the long post, but what I thought was a good, clean setup may have hosed me functionally.

TIA,
-Keith

[rm357]

Nice setup. The snubbers are working for you, but maybe just not enough. Both neutral and hot are on the express board for each channel. If you wated to add additional snubbing, you could just add resistors across the terminals on the outlets. Before i did that, i would test using an incandecsent bulb or string with the led string to see if there is any difference. Its easy to leave sequencing artifacts that cause similar behavior ...

[jnealand]

Search for a post containing the words snubber and look for a paper I uploaded called easiest snubbers.  I made at least 100 them and they work great.  I have left them on my strings even when I have moved the strings to a v5 LE.

[lonewolf41]

Nice setup. The snubbers are working for you, but maybe just not enough. Both neutral and hot are on the express board for each channel. If you wated to add additional snubbing, you could just add resistors across the terminals on the outlets. Before i did that, i would test using an incandecsent bulb or string with the led string to see if there is any difference. Its easy to leave sequencing artifacts that cause similar behavior ...

I guess I question if the snubbers are really working in my setup.  Looking at the board, the resistor looks to bridge the hot and neutral terminals.  I am not using the neutral terminal...just the hot so I don't think I am ever using the circuit that contains the snubber.  Maybe I am wrong there too, I just can't see how the resistor is in my circuit and getting used.

Thanks for the help,
-Keith

[lonewolf41]

Search for a post containing the words snubber and look for a paper I uploaded called easiest snubbers.  I made at least 100 them and they work great.  I have left them on my strings even when I have moved the strings to a v5 LE.

I did find the information you are referring to earlier.  I was just hoping to use what is already on the board without spending extra money.

Thanks for the help!

-Keith

[comporder1]

If you have the neutral that is connected to the board and the neutral that is connected to the outlets hooked together, then you ARE using the onboard snubbers. It's all connected on the board.


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[lonewolf41]

If you have the neutral that is connected to the board and the neutral that is connected to the outlets hooked together, then you ARE using the onboard snubbers. It's all connected on the board.


Sent with Tapatalk/iPhone. Xcuse the spelzing!

That's just it, I am not using any neutral coming off the board.  My neutral comes directly off my GFCI and goes to the outlets.

Thanks,
-Keith

[comporder1]

But it also goes from the GFCI to the neutral input to the Express right?


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[combustionmark]

Sounds like a good setup.

Did you hook up both neutrals on the LE? Or install the jumpers?

You are using snubbers on 1~8, 9~16 may not.

Have fun

[lonewolf41]

Here is a diagram of my setup.  I think this will clarify everything.  I am not using any of the neutrals from the board.  They all come straight from the GFCI with 12 gauge wire.  The outlets without broken tabs have the natural bridge/connection on the neutral side.

Thanks,
-Keith

[lightguy]

I found a similar problem recently, I only hooked up the neutral to the power supply side of the express, all neutrals to the outlets were linked direct to the input supply like you did. It worked fine when tested with an incandescent lamp. However when using LED strings I found that channels 9 thru 16 would come on at about 50% if any one of those channels were individually activated. Connect the second neutral and everything works fine. It needs both neutrals for all snubbers to be in circuit and as LEDs pull so little power the snubbers become far more critical to the circuit to stop the unwanted turn on of the triacs
Hope that helps
Lightguy

[lonewolf41]

I think I still need to connect the neutrals on the outlets to the neutral coming off the board.  If I connected 1-8 to the neutral terminal for channel 1 and 9-16 to the neutral terminal for channel 16, that would put the snubber resistors back in the circuit, but i was worried about running all the current for those 8 channels through those 2 terminals.  Since I already have a neutral going to channels 1-8, it would be nice just to move my neutral connection from the GFCI to the the terminal on channel 1 and use the snubber on that channel.  See my modified diagram.

My question would be if this is a bad situation and subject to overloading anything.  And, I guess I still wonder if the other channels (2-16) will still get the benefit of the resistor since it will not be in the circuit...or will it???    I guess it would be since it is at the beginning of the neutral string...but is there a path for it to bleed off the current?  OK, now my head is spinning.

Thanks again,
-Keith

[lightguy]

All the neutrals on the express board are linked together Channels 1-8 then 9-16. The snubber resistors just need to have the neutral attatched to both sides of the board to be in circuit, there is NO current involved, the neutral for the lights is fine the way you have it, thats how i do mine also so all the current goes through the wire to the GFCI, not the express board. The snubber resistor is not connected to anything on one end unless the neutral is in place. Just take a link to the other neutral terminal from the GFCI, its only one piece of wire and that should fix the problem and because there is no current any size wire will do so long as all your outlets remain connected to the GFCI as you have them now.

[pk]

I agree with Lightguy.  All you need to do is add a wire to connect the neutral from channels 1-8 to the neutral on channels 9-16.  That will give the snubbers a connection to the neutral.
Since you are applying power to the left (channels 1-8) side, those snubbers have a connection to the neutral. 

Let us know how things turn out.

[lortiz]

Hi,

From the picture, if you are not using the DMX OUT (different from the DMX OUT 2) then you need to jumper the terminate pins as this will be the last controller in the chain. This may cause flicker in the DMX data stream.

As a rule, when you are not using the DMX OUT (again, not the DMX OUT 2) connector to feed the next controller you must put the terminate jumper.

Hope this may be of help.

Leo