X10 Community Forum

🔌General Home Automation => Automating Your House => Topic started by: marv on December 08, 2005, 08:38:16 PM

Title: Controlling LED Christmas Lights
Post by: marv on December 08, 2005, 08:38:16 PM

Hi,

Has anyone figured out a way to control
LED Cristmas lights.

I tried a lamp, appliance and the receptical
modules and they all left part of the lights
on dimly when turned off.

Any ideas?

I wam going to try a relay and see if that
works

Thanks

Marv

Title: Re: Controlling LED Christmas Lights
Post by: Brian H on December 09, 2005, 06:56:25 AM

An appliance and lamp modules have the local
sensing circuit in it and will keep the low
current leds on dimly. The relay turned on
and off by the X10 module should work. I
would use a 120 volt coil relay and an
appliance module. The other fix is remove
the sensing circuit in the module. There are
hacks that show how to do it. Also some
other brand X10 compatible modules have a
much lower sensing current that maybe better
with those led lights. X10 would say put a
small 7 watt night light on the same output
of the module as the led lights are
connected to.

Title: Re: Controlling LED Christmas Lights
Post by: aaron on December 13, 2005, 07:29:22 PM

I just tried adding a nightlight to my
module's output, and still see the LED lights
when the module is switched off.  And this is
an appliance module that I'm using.

I *love* the LED xmas lights.  I guess I need
to go hack a module!

Title: Re: Controlling LED Christmas Lights
Post by: Brian H on December 14, 2005, 06:34:22 PM

http://www.idobartana.com/hakb/index.htm (http://www.idobartana.com/hakb/index.htm) Is one place that shows mods. Note there are two mods for local sensing. The small jumper disables the sensing but the current is still there. The cut the diode top stops the current. As always you mod it is yours.

Title: Re: Controlling LED Christmas Lights
Post by: LeeBear35 on October 09, 2006, 12:32:35 PM

I found the schematic for the lamp module listed on one of the replies above. The common alteration to remove local control is to clip the D10 diode that allows the signal to feed into the control chip. This leaves the current sensing circuit in place causing the 1.4v drop over the LED string to light the lamps when the module is off.

If you clip the 100K and 330K 1/2 watt resisters then the current sensing look is disabled on the lamp module. This also disables the Local control, you can replace these two resisters, but I have not computed the required values to ensure that all types of LED strings are off.

Anyhow the resisters are the larger ones in the circuit and they both have a common connection with the Triac to the output of the lamp module.
 :)

Title: Re: Controlling LED Christmas Lights
Post by: HA Dave on October 20, 2006, 11:08:58 PM

Have you tried a socket rocket? Screw in a plug adapter, and plug in the lights.