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Fibaro Dimmer 2, LED surge problems


soltix

Question

Hi,

 

I renovated my house and installed LEDs on the whole floor. I remote these with several fibaro dimmers. All of them is working fine except for in one area. I get an surge error in HC2. The thing is that I have the same amount of LED spotlights in another area with no errors. I have tried replacing the fibaro dimmer and also disconnecting one LED at a time. The original amount of LED on one dimmer is 9 LED 10W. When I come down to 6 LED in my troubleshooting it starts working most of the time. 

 

Is there something I'm missing here? I can't seem to understand why it won't work.

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May be try excluding and reincluding, if the load has been changed since inclusion dimmer 2 will see the load is different and think somthings wrong.

 I have some retrofitted mr16 led lamps in old halagon fittings and one of the lamp holders is playing up. HC2 then sending me fault reports, and somtimes switches the 

lights off.

Do you think any of the LED fitting or there drivers have bad connections, or are in some way faulty?

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When does the surge occur? How long does the lamp light? The protection mechanisms and the reporting of FGD212 is very good. So I'd start from there. I'd disconnect the load, get a socket and attach incandescent lamp of at least 50 W and less than 200 W (to be in spec, it's in the manual). Set p13=1 (or 2 with bypass) to calibrate or use the circuit breaker to power down for a few seconds. See if that works. Then try the original circuit, with the incandescent lamp only. Work from there.

BTW long shot but did you use Bypass 1 or Bypass 2?  Or got something else, besides the switches, connected to Sx? Or L?

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  • 1 hour ago, Jamie mccrostie said:

    May be try excluding and reincluding, if the load has been changed since inclusion dimmer 2 will see the load is different and think somthings wrong.

     I have some retrofitted mr16 led lamps in old halagon fittings and one of the lamp holders is playing up. HC2 then sending me fault reports, and somtimes switches the 

    lights off.

    Do you think any of the LED fitting or there drivers have bad connections, or are in some way faulty?

     

    Every time I exclude one LED or change the load I force the calibration mode. So that shouldn't be the case. It might be some faulty drivers. I will continue my troubleshooting and maybe swap out with some of my other LED that I know is working just fine. 

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    1 minute ago, soltix said:

     

    Every time I exclude one LED or change the load I force the calibration mode. So that shouldn't be the case. It might be some faulty drivers. I will continue my troubleshooting and maybe swap out with some of my other LED that I know is working just fine. 

     

    OK but please remember this while diagnosing:

    • Dimmer 2 needs a load to start (a few watts. A bypass 2, with no load, can act as a load! If you connect nothing, the FGD212 won't work...
    • If it's a 2-wire setup, minimum load is 50 W specified. I'd say it should start with 25 W too, but below that it may behave erratically.

    That's why I previously suggested "attach incandescent lamp of at least 50 W and less than 200 W ".

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  • 38 minutes ago, petergebruers said:

    When does the surge occur? How long does the lamp light? The protection mechanisms and the reporting of FGD212 is very good. So I'd start from there. I'd disconnect the load, get a socket and attach incandescent lamp of at least 50 W and less than 200 W (to be in spec, it's in the manual). Set p13=1 (or 2 with bypass) to calibrate or use the circuit breaker to power down for a few seconds. See if that works. Then try the original circuit, with the incandescent lamp only. Work from there.

    BTW long shot but did you use Bypass 1 or Bypass 2?  Or got something else, besides the switches, connected to Sx? Or L?

     

    It varies, sometimes right after an calibration. Sometimes it can work on and off a few times before the error occur. It seems that when I narrow it down to just 6 LEDs instead of the original 9 it works better, almost flawless without the error. But I find that strange since I have the same amount of LEDs on a separate area. It shouldn't be an overload problem then?

     

    I don't use any bypasses or have any switches connected, just the LEDs. 

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    5 minutes ago, soltix said:

     

    It varies, sometimes right after an calibration. Sometimes it can work on and off a few times before the error occur. It seems that when I narrow it down to just 6 LEDs instead of the original 9 it works better, almost flawless without the error. But I find that strange since I have the same amount of LEDs on a separate area. It shouldn't be an overload problem then?

     

    I don't use any bypasses or have any switches connected, just the LEDs. 

     

    Dimmer 2 has several protections. One of them refuses to turn on a load that causes a spike at the start. LED lamps are capacitive loads, they need high current when they start (higher current than incandescent). How much? Depends on the brand and type of circuitry. As a rule of thumb: if you use more lamps in parallel, you get a higher surge. Why is the problem random? Because the power supply is "Alternating Current". Your supply goes from 0 to plus minus 320 volt, one hundred times per second (it's a sinoid, but that's not important). If you happen to switch on at a peak, the dimmer might see this as a short circuit and shut down + send an alert. 

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  • 15 minutes ago, petergebruers said:

     

    Dimmer 2 has several protections. One of them refuses to turn on a load that causes a spike at the start. LED lamps are capacitive loads, they need high current when they start (higher current than incandescent). How much? Depends on the brand and type of circuitry. As a rule of thumb: if you use more lamps in parallel, you get a higher surge. Why is the problem random? Because the power supply is "Alternating Current". Your supply goes from 0 to plus minus 320 volt, one hundred times per second (it's a sinoid, but that's not important). If you happen to switch on at a peak, the dimmer might see this as a short circuit and shut down + send an alert. 

     

    Alright that seems logical. Is there anyway to make the dimmer "forgive" that short spike? Or maybe add some hardware that swallows the spike? I was thinking of dividing up the 2 sections of 9 LEDs each to a setup of 3 * 6 LEDs instead, do you think that might solve my problem?

     

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  • UPDATE

     

    The problem was solved with a fibaro bypass.

     

    Now when the bypass is installed I feel that I can't dim the lights down as far as before. Is there anything I can do about it?

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    @soltix,

     

    I had same problem with 7 Osram dimable LEDs and dimmer 2. After connecting them to dimmer 2 I was almost always getting surge fault on this dimmer. First day I try everything except replacing LEDs blaming dimmer that is not ok. Next day I continued to play with it and then found out that one of the LED bulbs was faulty. After replacing it no more problems or faults.

     

    It is interesting how we are always blaming Fibaro and never thinking that some of the bulbs could be faulty even there is light coming from them. I also had some bad experience with some older Osram LED bulbs that dimmer didn't recognise properly so I had to play with parameters until manage to make them working.

     

    I have 8 dimmers 2 which are controlling different number of LED bulbs and they are all working fine without bypass 2. Of course most of them are connected with 3 wire system, but two of them that are connected with 2 wire system also work ok.

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