Thorfun

hi all. qq (and this is going to sound very stupid and I 'think' I already know the answer but here goes anyway). with LED strips that have, for example, 12W/m power rating. if they're dimmed I presume that the power usage will drop accordingly. e.g. if you dim to 50% will the power usage be 6W/m? and, follow up question, can you limit the maximum brightness of a strip/light fitting within Loxone? so I could permanently ensure that a 12W/m LED strip never gets pushed up to that maximum when the kids are ******* around with stuff.

that's a fair point

ps. I'm not changing my main lighting to 24V no matter what you all say. 😛

please don't apologise and please don't stop the discussions! If I even glean one nugget from the conversations I'll be happy and it'll all be worth it. 🙂

the problem with using someone else's prices is that it seems that companies quote differently for different people. if you read enough window costing threads on here you'll see this pattern. for some Rationel will be cheap but for other expensive. others will find Internorm are stupidly expensive but others' quotes are more reasonable. I think the best thing to do is to get quotes from various suppliers and then choose the best price/performance/style point for you. we did just that and it soon became apparent which would could dismiss and which were moved to our shortlist. also, visit the suppliers at shows to see the quality of the windows. some we just discounted out of hand as we didn't think the quality was all that but others we thought we'd happily pay a premium for that sort of quality and also pay more for great customer service (can't really put a price on that!) in the end we went with Norrsken who were brilliant. good quality windows/sliders and a reasonable price and excellent customer service. they also fit them so we had one company do it all. I'm not surprised Alu-clad windows have gone up in price though when you think of how much timber has increased in price recently.

have you spoken to Mike about this? maybe if it's the dimmer then he could fix it in a firmware update?

yeah, I've already got one of those too. can't wait for the day that I can get all of this wired up and we have a finished house to use them all in!

exactly this! I'm very happy to support a local company and pay a little more. plus it hasn't had to be shipped half way around the world. think that might be decision made on this one then. just need to run the calculations with regards to total current for each bank of led strips to make sure it'll work.

right. I get it now. the +ve in each group is used to power 3 single-colour led strips in that connector giving the, from my understanding, ability to run 48 single-colour led strips! assuming the total current does not exceed 12A per bank of 4 connectors. the more I learn about this dimmer the more I love it! I think I might have found my solution. 🥳

this statement is correct. the +ve pin can't be used for anything other than power.

forgot to mention that Mike said the following when asked about using the RGB dimmer for WW. "The dimmer will drive any constant-voltage strip. For single-colour, you need to common up the +ve for each group of 3 on one connector" so that sounds like one of these 48 channel RGB dimmers can run 16 single-colour led strips? although, tbh, I'm not entirely sure what 'common up the +ve for each group of 3 on one connector' actually means! nor how to wire it. but I'm keen to learn. 😉

Mike responded and you have to spread 3 RGBW across 4 connectors. e.g. RGB WRG BWR GBW. I guess that means it can run 12 RGBW led strips (Amperage permitting) on the one unit. which at £250 for the dimmer makes it £21/RGBW strip. makes it quite a bargain! (again, presuming I've done my maths correctly (please see previous disclaimer about my A-levels ) so I can only presume that the '+' pin is solely for power and nothing else. I have asked the question though and will see what he says.

sounds like an expensive solution then. I'd be tempted to risk the flickering of the 123Hz PWM from Loxone instead! don't suppose you have any insight on those D4 dimmers from Aliexpress do you? thank you for confirming. you'd never believe that I did A-level physics would you! but, I did get an 'E' and spent more time larking around that learning so I'm not surprised I don't know much.

I wish you the best of luck!

photos? 🙂

I sent an email to Mike and will see what he says. but I've also been looking at these https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32734822895.html that were mentioned in an article that @Dan F sent me about Loxone PWM frequencies and flicker. they seem too good to be true, right? £22 for each RGBW led strip seems stupidly cheap. I know that @joth had some S1-DR units which were supposed to be a little flakey but has anyone actually used one of these 4-channel drivers? the spec says 4A per channel so that would more than cover the 8A for a 10m run of 19.2W/m RGBW LED strip, right? and that's without running 2 x 5m strips in parallel (or have I got that wrong and do you add the 4A for each strip when running in parallel to get the same 8A as a single 10m run?) our WW Led strips are actually only 6 locations but some locations have a couple of strips or more, e.g. around a mirror, within bookshelves, around edge of false ceilings etc. so it sounds like I can buy 4 of these things and for under £100 I could run our entire 24V led strips. am I missing something here?

ok thanks. I see you what you mean. so a 5-core cable from the terminal block in the cabinet to the led strip and then a cable from the PSU to the +ve on the terminal block and one pin from each block on the whitewing to the RGBW wires of the 5-core on the terminal block. starting to make sense now! and yeah, an email to Mike might be useful! I'm also wondering if I could use the RGB dimmer for just Warm White LED strips? just use 2 of the 4 pins? I know he has a 32 channel LED DMX driver but if I could amalgamate our LED strips to use one controller it'd save money!

ok. so that's starting to make a little more sense, thank you! does the '+' HAVE to be on the first pin due to some internal electronics or is that simply a guide? is it simply a case of, as you say, running each pin to a terminal block in the cabinet and you can pick and choose what goes where? so, in theory, a single RGBW led strip could have 24V on block 9 pin 3, Red on block 4 pin 1, Green on block 1 pin 4, Blue on block 10 pin 2. I'm not saying that's wise to do but is it like that?

as much as I love the look and flexibility of @Rob99's solution I don't have the depth in my standard LXN5 to house those PSUs and any other large power DIN rail mounted 24V PSUs seem to be similarly deep. I like the simplicity of the Loxone PSU (not the price so much but such is life!) and also the reporting capability and the potential to reduce power to specific lights if too much power is being drawn. I honestly can't see ALL our LED strips being on full brightness at the same time, just like I can't see every audio stereo extension pumping out music full power at the same time so I'm confident that the Loxone solution gives adequate headroom so as to not be running it near capacity. As such, I've decided I like the 'neatness' of the Loxone power supply and backup unit and decision has been made to go with that and I can then power all my 24V LED strips centrally from the cabinet. now I just need to make a decision on how to control them! Can someone please explain to me how the Whitewing RGB Dimmer (http://whitewing.co.uk/rgbdim48.html) will work with wiring? let's start with the RGBW strips. I would presume I run a 5-core 1.5mm (a 12m run to a 5m RGBW Led strip of 19.2W/m is 4A and the voltage drop calculator shows a 0.93V drop over that distance. see I did learn and retain something @Dan F 🙂 ) but how does that 5-core cable get wired at the cabinet end? I'm confused by the 'channels' on the Whitewing and how the 24V power gets to the led strip. it's confusing and makes me want to choose the Loxone compact or Loxone RGBW Dimmer for the simplicity of it! I mean, they even give a simple wiring diagram that a fool like me can follow. that diagram makes sense to me. so I would take an output from the Loxone PSUB (my new acronym for Power Supply & Backup) to the Power Supply connectors on the dimmer tree and then a 5-core cable directly from the dimmer tree to the led strip. simple. the multiple 4 pin connectors on the whitewing doesn't seem logical as I need 5 wires per RGBW led strip. I'm sure it's not complicated but I can't get my head around it. ps. sorry for the long post! 🤦‍♂️

yeah, having that ability would be interesting and would tick the geek boxes in me. also, if I bought more expensive WW Led Strips that were only 5W/m then my total Wattage would be around 930W. Also, if I can keep the Loxone system and 24V lighting going in a power cut from 36V batteries it would reduce the load on my Solar Battery setup allowing me to run more things in a power cut! 😉

I think I'm leaning this way tbh. more research is required.

I guess something like this would do (I believe @joth has one in his cabinet). https://uk.farnell.com/mean-well/hdr-150-24/power-supply-ac-dc-24v-6-25a/dp/3265809 at £44 each I'd need 8 so cheaper than the Loxone Power Supply and Backup but I have a feeling that 8 of these will take up a lot more space in the cabinet! And also not have the reporting capabilities that the Loxone one does, e.g. per output power usage.

yeah, you know I was looking at it and even at £668+VAT it seemed reasonable when looking at the cost of multiple smaller PSUs especially when something like this Mean Well DIN PSU (https://uk.farnell.com/mean-well/wdr-240-24/power-supply-ac-dc-24v-5a/dp/2815676) is £230 on it's own! but I was concerned about it only having 7 outputs as I have 15 WW LED strips. but, I presume I can run more than one strip off one output as long as it doesn't exceed 10A/240W, right? so with an LED strip that is 9W/m I could, in theory, run 5 x 5m strips from one output?

I did look at these but the power rating per channel seemed low (48W @ 24V) so I discounted it, but that's probably me not knowing what I'm talking about! Also, each connector only has 4 pins so how does that work with RGBW? how does the power get sent to the led strip? I read through the detailed documentation on the website but I couldn't understand how it all worked. 🤦‍♂️ thanks. will take a read.

I even used a laser level to ensure the clips were inline. 🤦‍♂️