seeking advice/experience: how to control LED strips

[dduff617]

i have a variety of locations in my house where i'd like to install rope or tape or strip lights. i'm talking LED's, naturally. some examples: over countertops in kitchen. above the tops of cabinets to provide indirect ceiling lighting in certain rooms, over a workbench area in the basement, ... i recently also went down the path of trying to find some good LED outdoor ("landscape") lights and found essentiality the same set of questions popping up.

i'm mainly interested in dimmable mono-chromatic ("warm") white light. for now, at least. though if someone has any cool ideas or products to share regarding multi-color tape lights, i might be interested.

insteon and z-wave devices exist for controlling and dimming 120V power. most LED's seem to operate at 12 or 24V.

i find it quite challenging to find LED's that can be dimmed. there seem to be several different methods by which an LED can be dimmed. in some cases, the 12 or 24V supply is reduced. in other cases, the device is designed to operate at a constant voltage, but can be dimmed by effectively varying the duty cycle the power (i.e. turning it on and off - aka PWM or pulse width modulation).

i have found a few LED strip lights that operate at line voltage. this is nice and simple - there's no extra transformer "brick" that you have to find a place for in the installation, for example. the driver circuitry (at least the ones i've seen) seems to behave well with insteon (triac) dimming - also important for me.

i've also found certain types of power supplies (what i call "transformers") that behave ok with insteon dimmers - that is, their voltage output can be made to vary between 0-12 or 0-24 volts when the input is connected to an insteon dimmers. one type that usually behaves well in this scenario is referred to as a "magnetic" transformers. there may be other types of electronic transformers that can also function on a triac dimmer, but i have found that it is hard for a consumer to know whether this is the case before they buy.

so the reason for my post is i'm looking for people's experiences - i'm sure folks have come up with some clever ideas...

here are some specific products i'm looking at that i'd love to know if people have tried:
- line-voltage "ultra bright" tape lights (typically with "5050" led modules). available mainly from EBay suppliers.
- Fibaro RGBW (z-wave) controller.

[dduff617]

a followup to my own post with some more thoughts/questions about Fibaro RGBW. i'm hoping someone out there has tried these and can share experience.

btw, this seems to have been out for a while, but (i think) is just now coming to the US.

it appears that this unit acts as a PWM-type dimmer. it differs from a normal insteon or z-wave triac module in that it is has separate inputs and outputs for low-voltage (12 or 24v). in fact, it appears to have four such outputs. some specific questions: can Indigo control this? if i wanted, can i use this to independently dim and control four separate strips of lights in a room? could i use this, for example, to provide independent control of different landscape lights powered off a common transformer?

anyone know what kinds of LED's this would likely work with (as a dimmer, particularly)? since it is PWM-type controller (i think?) it seems it might work with any led with a contant-current driver - so can i use any standard LED fixture (not just "dimmable" ones) and still have it work?

it seems this Fibaro module goes on the low-voltage side of the transformer and gets its own power from the low-voltage input. that presumably means i would have to keep a transformer running 24/7 -- anyone know how much power would this would use/waste? since i would be using pwm-dimming only, could i drive LED's from this with a conventional (small/cheap) power supply with this instead of a magnetic transformer?

in case anyone is interested, here is the data sheet for the unit. it's quite a complex little device, apparently capable of being an multi-channel LED driver, a multi-input sensor, etc. how much of that functionality, if any, will indigo support?

cost, btw is around $75 - there is only one US supplier for Fibaro currently, afaik.

[dduff617]

just realized amazon now has Fibaro RGBW available via amazon prime (roughly the same price as Vesternet, but perhaps more convenient ordering and faster shipping if you already use amazon).

[DaveL17]

I have rope lights above my kitchen cabinets that are dimmable. I bought them from "LED Rope Lights and More" (http://m.ledropelightsandmore.com). They were custom made to my lengths and I was happy with the cost. I control them with Z-Wave lamp modules (Home Managables in this case) and am happy with the results. That said, I had to add dummy loads between the lights and the modules because a small amount of current leaks through even when the modules are off. The leak current is enough that the lights were never truly off. The loads fixed this perfectly. The result is fantastic.

I also have an LED "Puck Light" that highlights a piece of art which also required a dummy load. But again the effect is great.

The loads can be had on Amazon for about $20 US, and I run both things at about 50% brightness. I'm very happy with how this works.

[matt (support)]

An Indigo user sent me the Fibaro RGBW module along with an RGBW LED strip, so I could create the device model to control it.

It works very well, but I'm not sure about where to source the RGBW strips. He had the ones he was using manufactured in China, so I don't have a link for them. I do know, however, they are SMD5050 controlled LEDs (RGB+W) so probably something like these strips would work:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_ ... ds=SMD5050

If you find one that works well please let us know.

in case anyone is interested, here is the data sheet for the unit. it's quite a complex little device, apparently capable of being an multi-channel LED driver, a multi-input sensor, etc. how much of that functionality, if any, will indigo support?

Indigo only supports driving the RGBW channels, and reading the energy values at this time. It creates 4 independently controllable dimmer style devices, one for each channel. There is also an Indigo action available to set all 4 channels at once (with a single action/command).

[colinpartridge]

I have a Fibaro RGBW controller running a combination of SMD5050 based led strip and some 12v led downlighters, 4 circuits in a bathroom. Works very well for me, There is one thing which doesn't work reliably and that is "on" commands sent to the component dimmers, This isn't really that much of an issue as you can always use set brightness instead...
Colin

[matt (support)]

I've noticed the same problem. The firmware is a bit buggy with the ON command. But just setting specific levels seems to consistently work well.

[dduff617]

i've just received some components. doing some first-time testing and setup and could use some help. i have little experience with z-wave and until now, none with Fibaro RGBW.

i bought:
Figaro RGBW
a 12v power supply
a few 10m rolls of warm white (monochromatic) 12v tape light w/ 5050 chips.

i hooked up the power supply. tested the lights connected directly to the power supply inputs. they work as expected.

then hooked up Fibaro RGBW (FRGBW) to power supply. unplugged my aeotec z-stick from my mac USB and took it over near the FRGBW. pushed the button on the z-stick and got a slow blinking blue light. then triple-clicked the little B button on the FRGBW and (i think) detected a change in the flashing pattern, which then resumed slow blinking. pushed the z-stick button again (it stopped blinking). reconnected z-stick to USB on my mac running Indigo. in indigo, i clicked to add a new device. type=z-wave. there was a new device to choose off the list of available devices that wasn't there previously. so i conclude that the z-wave "inclusion" process has worked as intended.

in indigo, i can see five devices related to the FRGBW - one each for R, G, B, W, and Composite. i believe this is as designed.

i first try connecting an LED strip between ground and R terminals on the FRGBW. try turning the R unit to 100%. lights don't work. try turning on all 5 FRGBW devices to 100%. no change lights still don't work. thinking i may have a bum connection or a bad LED strip, i recheck some things. strip works when connected directly to the power supply. using a voltmeter i can measure 12V at the power inputs to the FRGBW. i measure 0V at all the output terminals. retry changing levels in Indigo. re-test. i can't get the LED strip to illuminate and all output voltages measure 0v at all times.

i try sending status requests from Indigo to the FRGBW - from everything i can see and everything in the logs, it appears that comms are reliable (no errors). i can set all the devices to different levels, turn them on/off, etc. and from the Indigo side of things, all appears normal.

does it sound like i have a bad FRGBW unit? or am i missing something? FRGBW seems to have a zillion different modes it can be in - is there some chance i may have put it into some strange mode? is there any setup required for a FRGBW fresh from the factory? is there a factory reset procedure?

thanks if anyone can share their experiences.

[dduff617]

reading lots of fine print in the Fibaro RGBW instruction sheet.... it appears that this device is designed to measure power consumption and transmit data back to main controller. i wonder if i'm somehow confusing it by only connecting a load to one set of output terminals? if the device thinks it is supposed to be controlling RGB & W channels but it detects open circuits on 3 channels and my monochrome LED strip on the 4th channel, maybe it is getting confused? is there another "mode" i need to use to drive separate loads on each channel? this does seem to be something that the unit is designed for (shown in figure 7 of the instructions), but i don't know if there's some additional setup required to facilitate this.

another possibility i've considered is that my trying to test with an entire 5m roll of LED tape might be too big a load - i will consider testing with a shorter strip just to rule out that possibility. FRGBW is supposed to handle max of 6A per channel and 12A total. i thought my 5m strips were supposed to be roughly 60w or 5A total @12v - i guess that's not much "headroom"... next experiment: cut a short strip to use for testing.

another oddity: i bought a 12V power supply but it appears to be putting out upwards of 20V (as measured by my cheapo voltmeter, which i've never calibrated). power supply has an adjustment pot, but even at the lowest setting, it appears to be putting out roughly 19v. i may need to invest in some better test equipment or possibly find a better power supply source - not sure which.

finally, i notice that all the use cases depicted in the instructions show pots or switches connected to the FRGBW's inputs. i'm running mine with nothing at all attached to inputs - is this allowable and will it work in the default config? i really (for now, at least) want control only from Indigo.

[colinpartridge]

Check that you have the +12v of the led strip connected to the 12 v supply and the 0v to one of the pwm outputs. Its also worth checking that the configuration is correct. Using the modify zwave configuration menu check that parameter 14 is set to 4369, this is for all output as RGBW with momentary switches as inputs.

Colin

[dduff617]

thanks, colin.

i was mulling over possible problems and i had just come around to possible polarity confusion when i read your post. indeed, my assumption was that the negative LED terminal connected to ground and the positive LED terminal connected to the output, but that was wrong - duh!

everything working well and now i'm just trying to figure out where i want to put the lights.

thanks again.

[colinpartridge]

thanks, colin.

i was mulling over possible problems and i had just come around to possible polarity confusion when i read your post. indeed, my assumption was that the negative LED terminal connected to ground and the positive LED terminal connected to the output, but that was wrong - duh!

thanks again.

Its an easy assumption to make, and have done the same myself a couple of days ago..

Colin

[iblis]

Why can't we operate this device using RGB values (0-255) instead of dim values (0-100)?

[matt (support)]

Because Indigo is treating the individual device channels as dimmers, which have a range of 0 to 100%. You could send raw Z-Wave commands to get the higher resolution control...

[iblis]

Thanks for the info Matt.

How would I send RGB data to the unit using raw z-wave commands? And is it scriptable?

I'm trying to convert a Lua script from HC2 that changes the color on the RGB strip depending on the temperature from a sensor. In Lua and HC2 they are using RGB values when setting the color.




Best regards,
Andreas

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