EB8's necessary for LED fixture?

[Misos Anthropos]

Hi all,

I've got a quick question that I hope will save me a bit of money:

I'm planning a LED fixture with 72 Led's, 50/50 RB and CW with 6 drivers as of now. I know I can use the dimming circuits to control the sunrise/sunset effect but will the signal also shut the drivers completely down?

Originally I had planned on an EB8 to plug the drivers into and to shut the power to the outlets off when not in use. If the dimming circuit will shut them down I can save myself $150 and just plug them into a GFCI outlet.

When I added up everything I wanted to get for my controller the total came to $1180 and I hadnt even put the cables for everything on it.... My wife was not impressed I got that "Are you out of your mind" look!!:sad1:
Between losing an EB8 and replacing the PM2 with a PM1 (And losing the conductivity probe) I can shave $300 off that price tag. And then maybe "Apex" wont be a bad word anymore.

ETA one more question:

Doing some more reading here and I've discovered that, apparently Apex will be coming out with a revision to the software that will allow you to control the base unit completely from a PC. I have an old laptop that I could dedicate to the system, but its running WindowsXP, that shouldnt be a problem, should it?

And wouldnt it be easier to control it from a PC anyway?

 

[ChuckLawson]

Running Meanwell eln-60-48d drivers, I had odd results shutting them down just by dimming them to 0 -- they'd occasionally just "flash" on and off in the middle of the night. I was also having some other issues with my variable ports, so it's possible this was just related to that. In any event, I figured if I killed the AC power to the drivers, I knew they weren't drawing any parasitic power, and even powering all of the drivers together, they draw less wattage than one of my old MHs, so I didn't see any issues with only using one outlet on the EB8 for all of the drivers.

An alternative to buying another EB8 is to keep an eye out on deals for used DC8s and DC4s -- these can still be used with the Apex, and (at least around here) there are a lot of people unloading old AC3 equipment pretty cheaply.

 

[Gold Stripe]

It is my understanding that you do not want a bunch of ELNs turning on at the same time. They draw a large amount of power when charging up and could possibly cause problems with your circuits. Since they dont dim all the way to 0, I've been told that its best to have them dim all the way down as low as they will go and then have them pluged into an EB8 so it can cut power to them one at a time. Then in the morning power them up one at a time maybe a minute or two apart. Then you can have them ramp back up as normal. You may never have a problem but then again you might. Evidently its a timing issue with AC power. Dont have mine yet so cant confirm this but the information came from some pretty smart people.

 

[kayl]

You can always make a gfic like this for your outlets: