Negative. It was the second it clicked into the second light. I know my basement needs new electrical bad but it’s running as is for now.
Plus the moment I unplugged the daisy chain chord they turned back on. This happened with my dehumidifier/AC so I had to run it to another room with an extension chord.
That’s what I did with my second light just to another separate room that isn’t used at all for electric.
But this is only a bandaid for now. I can’t obviously rely on this forever.
My main concern is if there is an issue with the daisy chaining or if it’s just my 15amp breaker. Lol:skull_and_crossbones:
If your breaker tripped you would have to manually reset the breaker for anything to come back on. Since the light came back on when the second light was unplugged it’s not a problem with your breaker.
I know several have had issues figuring out the master/slave relationship on dimming. Maybe just reach out to SF and see if they can help you.
I technically bought them off the street at a very discounted price so idk how much they will help. They may though.
I do have the light into a power surge strip… do you think if there was too much power going through it that it would do that instead of the breaker whilst still resetting itself when less power returns to be the normal?
Maybe if the conducters were small and cords were really long. This could potentially create enough voltage drop that neither driver would fire. Or if something within the circuit wasn’t terminated or wired properly. Neither is likely, especially if the lights run fine independently.
When you overload a circuit they will typically trip breaker on power up because the inrush current is typically 2-3 times the normal operating current. Been there and done that, trips breaker every time as soon as timer clicks. If you have janky wiring I would certainly get it fixed, but your branch circuit probably isn’t the cause for this issue.
As @dbrn32 pointed out, the fact that the lights turned on again when you disconnected the daisy chain cable and didn’t trip the breaker proves they didn’t turn off because of insufficient AC power.
Are you saying the lights turned off when you turned the dehumidifier/AC on and the lights turned on again when you turned the humidifier/AC off – without tripping the breaker? That would be very odd. If the breaker tripped, though, it means the dehumidifier/AC overloaded the circuit.
When I first plugged my lights in, they all turned on. When I connected the daisy chain cables, they turned off because the controller’s dimmer was set to zero. Increasing the dimmer setting caused them to illuminate, as one would expect.
@dbrn32’s suggestion that you consult Spider Farmer is a good one.
You might also add up the rated currents for all the devices that are on that circuit. If the total is > or near the circuit’s breaker capacity, adding a 2nd circuit or swapping in a breaker with higher capacity makes sense.
See that’s what I was thinking. I just don’t know why they would turn off like that. Do you think it is because they are same model just different makes?(I think I got that correctly)
And yes correct even the dehumidifier triggered the light to shut off without tripping the breaker.
I doubt there’s an incompatibility in your lights’ daisy-chain circuitry, especially since they come from the same manufacturer. Frankly, I’d expect a hodge-podge of lights from different manufacturers to daisy chain fine.
The only explanation I can think of for that is the dehumidifier overloads the circuit and the lights protect themselves from the resulting brownout by turning off before the breaker can trip. Breakers react slowly, from an electrical component’s perspective.
Have you been able to get both lights turned on while daisy chained? If not, one of them may be defective. Have you been able to consult Spider Farmer yet?
I have not been able to get them both on yet. Tbh idk if my 15 amp breaker could handle it and I’m not wanting the lights to go on and off constantly while I’m trying to figure it out. So I figured at night before they go off I’ll mess with them and trouble shoot with advice given so it’s not too abnormal
I’d expect them to want users to get the best from their products regardless of how you got them. How would they know, anyway?
Try turning off as many other things on that circuit as possible. A 15-amp breaker should provide 1650 watts @ 110 VAC and your two lights pull 900 watts when turned all the way up. (They probably turn on full blast if there’s no dimmer telling them you want less.) It’s possible they’re overloading the circuit and – if my self-protection hypothesis is correct – turning themselves off before the breaker can trip.
BTW, don’t worry that turning them on and off frequently will shorten their life, as happens with incandescents. LEDs are dimmed ordinarily with pulse-width modulation, which amounts to turning them on and off many times per second.
Oh that’s great information to have about the LEDS!
I actually do have dimmers and they’re not up all the way which doesn’t make sense as to why they still turned off. I pretty much only have 2 fans, occasionally two dehumidifiers, usually only 2 though, and the lights plugged in.
Both lights have a dimmer – are you speaking of other dimmers?
I notice they both have pushbuttons that switch their dimmers in and out of the circuit. If you haven’t already, try switching one of them on and the other off. That may make the one that’s on the master dimmer for both.
I’ll try that out in the morning. They just went off for the night so imma let the girls rest. I will let you know if I have any luck with turning one off!
That’s actually how I’ve been trying. I wish I could send a video.
I have the first one plugged in at ch2 and the 2nd plugged in at ch1.
But the moment electrical current is received my lights immediately break off. Both of them.
On the plus side, I guessed correctly how the switches and dimmer knobs (are supposed to) work. Yay for me!
I believe there are 2 different problems. The first is that connecting the RJ11 cable causes both lights to turn off. This happens even though one light’s dimmer switch is set to DIM and its knob is turned up while the other’s dimmer switch is set to EXT. We know this malfunction isn’t caused by the lights overloading the house AC circuit because they light up as expected when the RJ11 is disconnected.
Try another RJ11 cable.
The dehumidifier must be a different problem because it has no way to send signals to the RJ11 ports on the lights. My best guess is the lights turn off when the dehumidifier is plugged in (and turned on?) because it overloads the circuit. It should have a label that shows how much power it requires – what does it say? Same question about the fans and anything else (e.g., overhead room lighting) that’s on the same circuit as the LEDs.
