Error in the Fibaro RGBW Controller v2.1-2.3 manual

[budda 5]

Hi - i think there maybe an error in section III 6) regarding installing the device.

Reference:

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It currently says:

"6) In case of connecting long RGBW/RGB/LED strips voltage drops

may occur, resulting in lower light brightness further from R/G/B/W

outputs. To eliminate this effect it's recommended to connect few

shorter strips in serial connection instead of one long strip

connected parallel."

Should the serial and parallel not be the other way around based on information i'm getting from LED strip retailers?

So to cover a ring around my ceiling i'm running 4 separate strips in parallel from two of the corners in the room.

[petergebruers 1,268]

I agree that's an error in the manual, "parallel" and "serial" should be swapped.

As a design rule, voltage drop should be lower than 3%. I've checked the technical documentation of one of mij LED strips and it doesn't give technical details, so I cannot calculatie the voltage drop. But it does warn not to use more than 10 meters of strip in series. What does your documentation say?

[budda 5]

I've got a length of RGBW 10m on a non Fibaro z-wave controller in a room running fine.

But i've also read

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suggesting no more than 5m length. Another article i read (link escapes me) suggests that tests show a drop in light after 6m if connecting strips in series.

[petergebruers 1,268]

Factors that come in to play are:

-12 or 24 Volt

-Watt per meter

-Resistance of the conductor of the strip

Voltage and Watt per meter is easy to find, resistance is not. If you don't know the resistance, you can't determine if you have a 3% Voltage loss.

But you can make some assumptions from two strips I own...

Strip 1: this is 24 Volt and 14.4 Watt/meter. So 5 m is 72 Watt or 3 A. The manual says NOT to daisy chain more than 5 m. That's clear enough

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Strip 2: this is 12 Volt and 4 Watt/meter. So total power for 5 meter is 20 Watt or 1.7 A. It's a no-brand strip, so no documentation. But can we make an educated guess? Difficult... this is cheaper and likely to contain less copper. So while it looks like it has only half the current of the 24V strip, that advantage could be cancelled out by the resistance. So although with much lower Watt/meter the recommendation is still not to put two strips in series. But it possible to try 10 m, because of the lower current.

I think the lack of documentation (specification) here is not a sign of quality...