Best way to control RGB LED Strip Lighting...?

poldim · Apr 3, 2013

znelbok said:

http://rs232ledcontroller.com/
Mick
Click to expand...

This looks interesting. My two initial concerns is that I've never interfaced with Clipsal over RS232 and price of the controller. I've emailed the company for more info...

daveymit · Apr 10, 2013

bmerrick said:

Hi Dave,

I don't usually like to promote my non-standard use of standard products in case someone else tries and it messes up for them and doesn't work satisfactorily, but I think I can make an exception in this case as there are now more commercial products available.

When I went to do my pool 6 plus years ago, the choice of LED systems was almost none. The one available / heavily promoted system in the Australian market at the time was the Aquaquip Aquastar Spectrum now replaced by the Aquaquip Evo2.

Although the Aquaquip Aquastar lights themselves are well thought out from a flush mounting and future maintenance access viewpoint, are sturdy and look good, particularly with the stainless surrounds, the early LED controllers were IMHO horribly basic (hopefully they have been updated) and very difficult for automation colour control thereof. It used a two wire cabling arrangement into the housing and in my personal opinion (IMHO) completely ridiculous to try to automate sequencing LED controller whereby you had to switch the power line on and off multiple times of 2 second on/off intervals to cycle it though the colour choices or modes of operation. So if you wanted a colour near the end of the cycle, it could take you up to 60 seconds of fudding around to get the lights displaying the right colour or set a particular mode eg sequenced colour change, and you could only select from a fixed set of colours like 4 bit Windows screen drivers eg cyan, blue, green, violet etc. I believe there are now more colours and to be fair, the controller seemed designed to allow the units to easily replace like wired halogens and for people to set the colour and not change it too often, if at all.

I never really considered using this inbuilt controller as I wanted full RGB colour control so it got summarily deleted immediately. See picture of LED board and controller beneath with the 2 wire inbound link. I just removed the lower board, cut off the 15m 2 wire cable (that became great outdoor speaker cables ) and drilled in a new 4 wire chlorine safe PVC cable, sealed with proper chlorine/chemical safe safe polyurethane. 4 wires only needed to the LED board gave RGB plus common.

I ran these to an Osram Optotronics OT RGB 3 channel dim LED dimmer unit that uses 3 x 0-10v analogue inputs to set the 3 LED output channels. They also have DALI and DMX version of the controllers if you prefer that way. I just connected this to the Clipsal L5504AMP Analogue output Module, 3 x 0-10v output lines and a common and a 12v DIN Rail PSU to run the controller and LEDs. The whole Osram LED catalogue makes fun reading too with all the things you can think of doing with the Dragon-eye LED strips etc.

Now for pools there is far more choice in LED underwater luminaire hardware. Another model is the Astral Pools Delta colour series of LED RGB drivers which now conveniently have the 4 wire driver cable already installed without the need for my housing modifications. You can now run these directly into their own simple internal LCD controller called the Viron (Hurlcon), or otherwise should be able to use the same controller/C-Bus gateway combination I used to treat the 3 RGB channels as 'dimmers'. See here for more info about these LEDs.

Can I just also add that anyone contemplating using LEDs in their pool should possibly also consider either adding a few normal halogen lights as well near the bottom, or far more LED heads than you would expect to bright it up a bit. This might sound crazy, but I have 6 heads in my pool and they are nowhere near bright enough in my opinion. The LEDs don't seem to convey as much light through/into the water as the neighbours halogen whites. I would like to have a 'brighter mode' for times when you are looking for something on the bottom. I think the newer LEDs might be brighter than mine. And remember R+G+B <> White. Hence a system with White LEDs (or added halogens on the 4th channel) will give you a much better useability IMHO.

The Colour LEDs do look nice though..........

Good Luck with your installation.

Brad
Click to expand...

Thanks for the detail Brad. Definately gives more more insight... i am going to incorporate DMX as i think it is more efficient regarding slots/unit.

Thanks again!
Dave

waxoctopus · May 1, 2013

RS232 Inquiry

poldim said:

This looks interesting. My two initial concerns is that I've never interfaced with Clipsal over RS232 and price of the controller. I've emailed the company for more info...
Click to expand...

Were you able to get all of the information that you needed? I am involved in the production of this product. We also have another which can interface with audio controllers, and we have Android and IOS controller apps.

znelbok · May 2, 2013

I chased up more information and got the replies I was after except the price for the new Mini and the specs for it.

I am keen to get one for testing with my system to promote it as option for RGB LED without the need for DMX.

So far, price looks good, serial commands are a usable for a two way system.

My interest was not just with C-bus but the HA system I install as well.

Mick

Best way to control RGB LED Strip Lighting...?

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daveymit

waxoctopus

znelbok

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