RGBW controller

[therealdb]

Hi everybody.

I'm finishing my garden lights project and I added some RGBW strips to enhance accent lighting.

I'm evaluating a couple of options in order to automate the colors, and I found that most of them use the same 12/24v converter to power the unit, so the converter will be always ON and consuming electricity during the day.

Is there any option (WiFi or Zwave is OK, Zwave is better) to avoid that?
(I'm in Europe for what is worth)

[Don Phillips]

A z-wave switch or outlet?

[therealdb]

Yeah, I thought about that option. If I'd go for the zwave route I'd have troubles, but using a wifi rgbw controller it'd be OK behind a normal zwave switch.
Thanks.

[kwieto]

Are you sure it is worth the effort?
Out of curiosity I connected wallplug switch with metering to the power adapter which I use for RGBW Controller (12V/6A)
Stright after switching it on it presented 10W consumption, then after couple of minutes it dropped to 0, which means that the standby consumption is probably below 0,1W (I don't remember exact threshold, but consumption about 0,5W or more should be reported)

But even if it was about 10W, then you have 1kWh after 100hours of permanent operation. Cpunting the price of wallplug switch as 35USD, the cost of the switch wil return in about 2 years (based on electricity prices in my country), under condition that you will have your RGBW installation disabled during all that time.

Taking into consideration that real power consumption on standby will be most probably under 0.1W, the investment in wallplug will return in 200 years.

And I don't count the power consumption of the wallplug switch itself into the calculation, which has to be added no matter if your RGBW installation is on or off.

Are you sure that it really makes sense?

[JohnRob]

Hi,

I'm not sure the savings would be worth the effort either,  however you could use a simple Timer.  Either outlet or plugin.

[therealdb]

My only fear is that by having the power adapter always on, I could shorten its life.
I had to use a 120W power adapter (for 15 meters of led strips) and these things are getting hot very easily.

I'll talk with my electrician and let you know what he thinks about both setups, since it will be done this week. I was just evaluating different routes in order to be prepared to talk to him.

The timer has the problem that the Vera will probably report the RGBW device as not responding, if I cut power off at the power adapter level.

I'll probably order a Fibaro RGBW anyway and start comparing the results. Thanks for you help!

[fooey]

I have the same situation : I have a 24v RGBW LED Strip that needs a 240V -> 24V transformer. The strip is controlled via a Fibaro RGBW module, however, I also wanted to use a wall switch to turn on/off the LED Strip. Both transformer and RGBW module are located in a ceiling void.

As the RGBW controller needs 0-10V switches to control it directly and cannot use 240v switches, I decided to simply use a 240v wall switch (using a spare output from Fibaro Double Switch 2) to power on/off the transformer instead.

However, if you don't keep the RGBW controller powered permanently, then it looses the settings (like last brightness, last colour etc).

My hack work-around is to use PLEG and monitor the Double Switch 2 output, ensuring this always in an on-state, and programmatically turn on/off the LED strip.

The downside to this means that the transformer does use power 24/7 though. In an idle state, on but RGBW strip off, Vera reports 0.8W. Whilst this is not ideal, it gets the WAF from having the LED strip turn on/off via a wall switch!

[therealdb]

I double checked with my electrician. The issue is related to the life of the power adapter. The consumption is, as noted, negligible.