YALANCT (Yet Another Loxone And Network Cabling Thread)

[Dan F]

11 hours ago, Rob99 said:

I have a preference for using larger power supplies connected in parallel and then seperately fusing each 24v circuit. This balances the load and provides some redundancy. Also means you don't have to define which circuits are fed from which power supply so much more flexible and if one dies (rare I know!) you can disconnect and swap it out without half your circuits not working or needing to rewire anything.

 

This is how I generally do it..........

 

 

That looks neat.  Is this in Loxone panel, or you have a seperate panel for lighting?  Do these drive Loxone RGBW tree dimmers?  Looks like that setup is around 500

 

My initial plan was to centralize everything and use DIN-mounted power supplies for LED's (potentially in a seperate/deeper cabinet), but had to give up on that idea when I realised that our electrcian had used 0.5mm2 flex for all LED locations, even those 20m away.   Instead, we've now ended up with 3-4 locations throughout the the house (some in the loft, one on top of kitchen fridge etc.) that have a 5-core 230v+DALI feed from the plant room and then have fairly local HLG-series meanwell power supplies which supply 1 or more EldoLed drivers and in LED's.   Not centalized and not going to look as good, but will do the job.

 

13 hours ago, Thorfun said:

13 hours ago, joth said:

https://www.loxone.com/enen/kb/power-supply-backup-block/

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

Its an attractive option if you loads is <960W, even though it's almost twice the price of a couple of 4080W power supplies, given the additional capabilities it has.  In your case though, where you are up at 1.3kW, I wonder if you can assume average usage <960W and/or maybe have Loxone automatically DIM lights when total power consumption gets high. That would be interesting!

Edited November 10, 2022 by Dan F
spelling

[Thorfun]

1 hour ago, Dan F said:

Its an attractive option if you loads is <960W, even though it's almost twice the price of a couple of 4080W power supplies, given the additional capabilities it has.  In your case though, where you are up at 1.3kW, I wonder if you can assume average usage <960W and/or maybe have Loxone automatically DIM lights when total power consumption gets high. That would be interesting!

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! 😉 

[Rob99]

4 hours ago, joth said:

Nice. Those supplies are 128.5mm deep. Looks like you mounted a custom rail directly to the back plate to fit them, and presumably this is all behind a blanked off cabinet cover section so not visible to the user.

They're fitted in a FA LXN6-D enclosure and literally just fit behind the cover plate. They are fitted on a standard 7.5mm deep DIN rail bolted directly to the back plate of the panel.

 

4 hours ago, joth said:

Do you worry about ventilation for them, or do they run pretty cool even when loaded?

They have sufficient ventilation in the panel as there is plenty of air space around and through the slotted trunking. They do run pretty cool anyway. I've had a couple fitted in my home system now for about 4 years running 24/7 and they never get much more than luke warm.

 

4 hours ago, joth said:

What's the standby power draw like with them all powered on but unloaded?

 

I couldn't find the standby current on the spec sheet but measuring them in the cabinet with no load they draw about 0.18A each.

 

[Rob99]

1 hour ago, Dan F said:

That looks neat.  Is this in Loxone panel, or you have a seperate panel for lighting?  Do these drive Loxone RGBW tree dimmers?  Looks like that setup is around 500

Yes, it's an LXN6-D panel. It will power a dozen or so 24v circuits with LED strips using RGBW compact dimmers and also has 5 RGBW tree dimmers in the panel powering quite a few WW Loxone spots using seperate channels.

 

Regarding lighting power usage, Loxone's project planner says it assumes a load factor of 30% for lighting when calculating power requirements. I think that's way too low but is probably part of their assessment as to how big the new power supply and backup product was designed. I always sit on the "over engineered" side of the fence and wouldn't like to see power supplies at max capacity. Loxone installers will just design and install and not worry about future requirements whereas I think it's always good practice to have a bit of spare capacity.

[Thorfun]

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! 🤦‍♂️

 

Edited November 10, 2022 by Thorfun
typo

[Rob99]

36 minutes ago, Thorfun said:

I like the simplicity of the Loxone PSU

I agree it's a good solution, especially with limited panel depth. One of the better products to come out but a little pricey. You can get a couple of decent 20A power supplies for around £300, so it'll come down to whether the additional functionality of the PSUB (!) is worth the extra £350. If you balance it against the higher cost of a deeper enclosure then it starts to look a bit more affordable too.

 

My home setup has a standard depth panel and needs 40A so I might be tempted at some point to get one.

[joth]

39 minutes ago, Thorfun said:

Can someone please explain to me how the Whitewing RGB Dimmer (http://whitewing.co.uk/rgbdim48.html) will work with wiring?

http://whitewing.co.uk/dim96_48info.pdf has a bit more info.

The key is this little stencil:

 

Basically each connector is 3 channels of dimming, plus a (convenience) +24V supply for them.

This is great for RGB but bit of a fiddle for your RGBW strips. You need to wire them across multiple connectors. Once you break them all out to cabinet terminal blocks it's moot, just bit of a head scratger trying to understand from the images they provide 

[Thorfun]

2 minutes ago, joth said:

http://whitewing.co.uk/dim96_48info.pdf has a bit more info.

The key is this little stencil:

 

Basically each connector is 3 channels of dimming, plus a (convenience) +24V supply for them.

This is great for RGB but bit of a fiddle for your RGBW strips. You need to wire them across multiple connectors. Once you break them all out to cabinet terminal blocks it's moot, just bit of a head scratger trying to understand from the images they provide 

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?

[joth]

4 minutes ago, Thorfun said:

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?

If it's like every other constant voltage dimmer I've used, you can ignore the +ve "outputs" completely and run the light directly from your +24V supply (via appropriate fuse). This is why I call it a convenience. I expect internally in the unit they're all just paralleled to the main supply rail .

But you could email whitwhig to confirm, he's pretty responsive with questions I had in the past.

[Thorfun]

5 minutes ago, joth said:

If it's like every other constant voltage dimmer I've used, you can ignore the +ve "outputs" completely and run the light directly from your +24V supply (via appropriate fuse). This is why I call it a convenience. I expect internally in the unit they're all just paralleled to the main supply rail .

But you could email whitwhig to confirm, he's pretty responsive with questions I had in the past.

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!

[Thorfun]

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?

[Dan F]

2 hours ago, Thorfun said:

 I'm confused by the 'channels' on the Whitewing and how the 24V power gets to the led strip.

I haven't used this, but the details talk about RGBW so there must be a way to use it for RGBW.

 

1 hour ago, Thorfun said:

I'm also wondering if I could use the RGB dimmer for just Warm White LED strips? just use 2 of the 4 pins?

Yes, you can use each one of theese dimmers for 4 white LED strips (or for two tuneable white strips).  So you would need 6 of these, 4 for your white LED's and another 2 for your RGBW strips.

 

38 minutes ago, Thorfun said:

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?

Yes, its still 8A/192W back to the driver. Each 5m LED would be 4A/96W each.

[Thorfun]

1 hour ago, Dan F said:

Yes, you can use each one of theese dimmers for 4 white LED strips (or for two tuneable white strips).  So you would need 6 of these, 4 for your white LED's and another 2 for your RGBW strips.

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?

 

1 hour ago, Dan F said:

Yes, its still 8A/192W back to the driver. Each 5m LED would be 4A/96W each.

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.

[Thorfun]

1 hour ago, Dan F said:

I haven't used this, but the details talk about RGBW so there must be a way to use it for RGBW.

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.

[Thorfun]

1 hour ago, Dan F said:

Yes, you can use each one of theese dimmers for 4 white LED strips (or for two tuneable white strips).  So you would need 6 of these, 4 for your white LED's and another 2 for your RGBW strips.

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. 😉 

[Thorfun]

7 minutes ago, Thorfun said:

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.

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

[Thorfun]

26 minutes ago, Thorfun said:

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. 😉

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. 🥳

[joth]

2 hours ago, Thorfun said:

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.

You can get them in larger formats, I used these 24ch ones:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002995692320.html

They were £1.30 per channel when I bought them! Now about £2.20 

 

That page is light on details, the old seller that I bought from had more info:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32837953011.html

 

Again the terminals are grouped in quads of "+RGB" with 3 DMX channels per four terminals. I just ignore the + terminals and treat RGB as 3 arbitrary DMX channels - some drive white LEDs, some drive RGBW, some drive SSRs etc.

 

You can select 500Hz or 2kHz.  using 2kHz derates the power rating slightly.

 

I'm even using one channel to speed control a PWM controlled extractor fan for the AV cupboard, that one had to be 2kHz as that's what the fan required.

 

 

EDIT to add - at half the price per terminal, and higher frequency, I'd be tempted to go with the AliExpress ones; they work very well for me, and also mostly because screw terminals seem preferable to IDC crimp connections!

That said, Mike's gear is excellent, great to support a local company, and the price is totally reasonable. You should do fine with either. 

 

Edited November 10, 2022 by joth

[Thorfun]

10 hours ago, joth said:

great to support a local company, and the price is totally reasonable. 

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.

 

 

[jack]

1 hour ago, Thorfun said:

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.

 

I have one of Mike's 16 channel DMX dimmers. Great quality at a decent price, and as you say, supporting someone local. 

[Thorfun]

56 minutes ago, jack said:

 

I have one of Mike's 16 channel DMX dimmers. Great quality at a decent price, and as you say, supporting someone local. 

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!

[joth]

1 hour ago, jack said:

 

I have one of Mike's 16 channel DMX dimmers. Great quality at a decent price, and as you say, supporting someone local. 

Yes!

So only caveat with the mains dimmers is the lights on them flicker quite noticeably when the house is being powered from the house battery. (new development as we only recently got the battery).

 

This is with:

 Phos lights& mains dimmable driver <- whitwig 16ch mains dimmer (early prototype version!) <-  Solar Edge

 

So the blame may not be all with the dimmers. I need to do some more experiments.  But, dies make me wish I had central constant current drivers that I could run straight from a nice pure DC battery....

 

[Thorfun]

8 minutes ago, joth said:

Yes!

So only caveat with the mains dimmers is the lights on them flicker quite noticeably when the house is being powered from the house battery. (new development as we only recently got the battery).

 

This is with:

 Phos lights& mains dimmable driver <- whitwig 16ch mains dimmer (early prototype version!) <-  Solar Edge

 

So the blame may not be all with the dimmers. I need to do some more experiments.  But, dies make me wish I had central constant current drivers that I could run straight from a nice pure DC battery....

 

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

[jack]

2 hours ago, joth said:

But, does make me wish I had central constant current drivers that I could run straight from a nice pure DC battery....

 

Very much wish I'd gone with CC drivers (using a DC power supply) to begin with. I thought they were expensive at the time, but once you factor in the cost of mains dimmers and a driver per fitting, I'm not sure there's that much difference. 

[Dan F]

2 hours ago, joth said:

But, dies make me wish I had central constant current drivers that I could run straight from a nice pure DC battery....

Nearly all LED tape needs to be run with CV though, so depends on fittings..