'Max' Lighting Controller Parameter is rubbish?

[Rob_in]

Hi all,

I've finally got round to installing the battery backup on our 24v supply. Works like a charm and the Miniserver detects when we have a full power outage (via dry contacts on our power supplies). Great :)

As the lights also run from this 24v supply am thinking that it would be a good idea to limit brightness when the power is out and it's running on battery. No problems, just set the Lighting Controller 'Max' parameter to '50' when power is out, '100' at the rest of the time and job done, right?

Wrong!

I tried this and notice that while the 'Max' parameter seems to be taken into account when turning lights on, if the lights are already on then it doesn't do anything!

Has anyone else noticed this, or tried to control the lighting levels via this parameter (for example, set 'Max' to something low at night to stop normal moods being too blinding)?

Have I missed something or is there a better way to set maximum brightness across all your light controllers?

Thanks,

Robin

[Tomasz Nowak]

I believe this is only for limiting dimming actions (see Max value is allowed only in range 50-100)

I've tried to set Max to 50 on one of my LC and it doesn't even work for configured moods.

So even you'd turned off your lights on power outage and turned them on again to the same mood - this parameter would not limit output brightness.

The only idea comes to my mind for this is to create power emergency moods in every LC (skipped in cycle list) and activate them on power outage with pulse on T5/X if AQs != 0.

Btw, what battery backup system have you deployed?

[Rob_in]

On Friday, 3 July 2020 03:02:54 UTC+2, Tomasz Nowak wrote:

I believe this is only for limiting dimming actions (see Max value is allowed only in range 50-100)

I've tried to set Max to 50 on one of my LC and it doesn't even work for configured moods.

So even you'd turned off your lights on power outage and turned them on again to the same mood - this parameter would not limit output brightness.

That's disappointing. I have to admit, I sometimes find the 'logic' of Loxone rather odd to say the least!

 

The only idea comes to my mind for this is to create power emergency moods in every LC (skipped in cycle list) and activate them on power outage with pulse on T5/X if AQs != 0.

Possibly. I could also intercept the switches inputs to try and avoid the brighter moods but that would get very messy.

TBH, think it would be easier just to put analogue limiter blocks on each dimmer output.

 

Btw, what battery backup system have you deployed?

What have we ended up with, or what would I deploy if starting from scratch? ;)

**Sorry, long story...

Originally we had 400W of Meanwell PSUs spread as 3 x 100W for lighting and 1 x 100W for Loxone, Modbus relays and the like. These were DR100-24 units. I have them for sale (lightly used) if anyone is interested ;)

Then I discovered the EldoLED dimmers we have didn't like a PSU that wasn't grounded so switched them out for 4 x NDR-120 units.

Given the decision to go to the NDR range form factor added 2 x DR-RDN20 units to connected the 4 x NDR-120 in a redundant manner.

This worked great for a while but then the issue of our unreliable mains electrical supply came into focus (we live in the French countryside and the supply is very susceptible to storm activity) so added a DR-UPS40.

Thing with this setup is that the DR-UPS40 unit doesn't charge it's SLA battery unless the input voltage is high enough. For 24v SLA battery one should charge to at least 28.4 it seems. I had hoped the DR-UPS40 would have a built in DC-DC boost for that, but it isn't designed that way, and TBH, no wonder given how economical it is. I did look at other 24v UPS systems but they were all much more expensive and also wanted to work with what we already had. TBH, having separate DC-DC units later (read below) makes the the system more modular so think I prefer that.

So to get the batteries to charge, the DC bus between the DR-RDN20 units and DR-UPS40 has to be adjusted to 28.4v. No problem as there are pots on the NDR series PSUs that allow that.

Problem is then that Loxone (and I later discovered, our 24v lights - not the dimmers, they can handle higher voltage just fine, but the LED emitters themselves) don't like 28.4v input so I bought a Meanwell DDR-60G-24 to regulate (it's a boost/buck unit) the Loxone, Modbus supply to 24v and some cheap Chinese DC-DC regulators for lighting (200W for 2-3EUR each!) as the dimmers are obviously redundant (if one fails other lights are still available). I also added a cheap Chinese DC-DC boost converter to get a 29v supply from the DC bus and connected that to an ABB DR/S4.1 KNX choke (replacing our original MDT KNX PSU) so that the KNX devices can also run from the battery.

All this works great. Phew!

I used 2 x 7.2Ah 12v SLA batteries BTW. SLA batteries are only supposed to be discharged to half capacity but even with that, these will run our Miniserver and a few lights for several hours. I will also add more cheap DC-DC converters later to run a Raspberry Pi and network router from the battery. Stopping these things rebooting during short power outages is more important to me than having really long term battery power.

I should also note that the DR-UPS40 has dry contacts for DC OK, Battery Discharge & Battery Fail but... the 'Battery Discharge' only comes on when it's pulling more than 2A from the battery. I had to turn on a lot of lights to get that to come on! Because of this I've utilised the dry contacts on the DR-RDN20 units to detect power outage as these are triggered as soon as the PSU on the associated input fails (if they all fail at the same time assume mains has failed). I couldn't get the 'Battery Fail' light or dry contact to function either, although that might just be my misunderstanding of that contact - perhaps it's only meant to come on when the battery charge level is getting critically low.

This was all a bit of an evolution as you can tell! At one point I was getting a bit annoyed at having to get more hardware, especially around regulating/boosting the DC levels but TBH none of this gear is that expensive.

So yeah, in the end it really isn't that expensive (I imagine still be cheaper than equivalent 24v & KNX PSUs from Loxone!) and has a lot of redundancy and the battery backup.

All that taken into account, if I was starting again what could be done better? I'd probably change out the small Meanwell DDR-60G-24 and the various Chinese converters for 2 x DDR-240B-24 units. These are voltage regulators that do redundant current sharing so would be more reliable, but they are a bit more expensive. I should really have used a DDR-30G-24 (adjusted to it's max output of 28v) for the ABB KNX choke rather than a cheapo Chinese one I guess, but we'll see how long the cheap one holds up.

Anyhow, hope that wasn't too long winded and helps in some way.

Cheers,

Robin

[Tomasz Nowak]

Huh! What a crazy story! Thank you for so much useful info.

I suspected it wasn't easy. I remember reading this blog post: https://smarthome.exposed/loxone_and_ups/

That nice guy had similar problems with a higher voltage requirement as you and finally stayed with Weidmüller ConnectPower UPS that seems to do it internally.

I'm yet to plan my future house infrastructure so love to read others people setup. For PSU's currently I look at:

- MeanWell HDR-XXX-24 (ie HDR-100-24) line for any 24V rail modules - because of its good efficiency, compact design and wide range of models

- Enertex® LED PowerSupply 160-24 - for LEDs because its dedicated for lighting and has good efficiency
With UPS setup I will probably go with Weidmüller as this seems to be the easiest way.

Having your experience, what do you think of those choices?

[Simon Still]

On Thursday, 2 July 2020 13:03:52 UTC+1, Rob_in wrote:

TBH, think it would be easier just to put analogue limiter blocks on each dimmer output.

While it initially seems inelegant, intercepting and modifying the outputs from the lighting block does seem the easiest way of dealing with situations like yours.  

I've got hall lights that get brighter when a movement sensor detects you in the hall.  I tried various things with scenes but by far the easiest was to have the movement sensors linked to some logic after the outputs of the Lighting block

I've also got some garden lights where they're normally on at a low level for 'atmosphere' but when I'm cooking at the barbecue I want a few of them brighter and an extra spotlight on.  A simple on off switch and a modifier on the output works really well 

[Rob_in]

On Friday, 3 July 2020 19:56:53 UTC+2, Tomasz Nowak wrote:

Having your experience, what do you think of those choices?

I think perhaps you'd like to make an offer on my DR100-24 units ;)

But joking - sort of ;) - aside... yeah... that Weidmüller UPS is close to 10x the price of the Meanwell one so you'd hope it made a few things easier!

TBH, if you're thinking of using a UPS on one of your 24v supplies then I don't see why you'd want to split the supplies for automation and lighting. I mean, that UPS is so expensive use it for everything and make one really robust 24v supply.

I know my story was long, but it's honestly not that complicated and now is very robust. It would be even more so using those current sharing regulators I mentioned - that would be an upgrade I would recommend. Or go with Weidmüller. I assume it will work well.

FWIW, I put fuses on all the connections out of our UPS. Just automotive blade types - Wago do nice DIN rail holders for these but I put them inline in the wires because I'm cheap ;) - so one can just pull a fuse to turn that stuff on and off independently and a fault or short in one device shouldn't break the supply to the rest.

Robin

[Rob_in]

On Friday, 3 July 2020 20:06:02 UTC+2, Simon Still wrote:

While it initially seems inelegant, intercepting and modifying the outputs from the lighting block does seem the easiest way of dealing with situations like yours.

Yeah, I think you are right. Oh well, not that tricky really so no worries.

Cheers,

Robin 

[Tomasz Nowak]

That's because I'm not sure yet what I will run out of standard APC Smart-UPS rack and what from out of 24VDC UPS.

~200 EUR + batteries for that Weildmuller seems not that expensive after all. If I correctly understand it handles up to 20A so might be powered out of 480W 24V PSU and connected to 2x17Ah batteries. Lot of power for 24V devices then.

Btw, you've mentioned you discovered EdoLED dimmers. What is their advantage? Never heard of it before.

T.

[Joth]

Thanks for sharing this story, useful stuff!

 Sort of related to what you do differently if starting over, if you have a Future Automation LXN cabinet, how much. of these various PSU components fit inside it? 

For various reasons I have a TDK-Lambda DPP240-24-1 PSU, 117mm deep, and now I've received my LXN I realize that even removing the spacers t the rail is pushed back onto the cab back wall, the PSU still won't fit under the standard front cover. I've managed to squeeze it into the top of the cabinet bolted on its side, but replacing with something more mechanically fit for purpose  seems desirable.

I see NDR-120 would fit fine, but if I wanted to go down the PSU redundancy path the DR-RDN20, DDR-240B-24 &  DR-UPS40 don't seem like they'd fit, nor the Weidmüller UPS. (If you have an LXN, how did you make them fit?)

I had already been looking at the LRS-350 for LED strip lighting purposes; the fan & standby current doesn't worry me too much as I can use a relay to shut the whole thing off when not in use, but then it's another weird shaped non-DIN mounted PSU.

> Then I discovered the EldoLED dimmers we have didn't like a PSU that wasn't grounded so switched them out for 4 x NDR-120 units.

I maybe missing the context here, but if this is regarding the 24V -ve output not being grounded, what is the problem is just grounding it?  (Reason I ask is I'm wondering what I should offer for 4x NDR-120! LOL I think the postage costs could ruin the deal)

Thanks

[Duncan]

Are you using v2 light blocks ?

[Rob_in]

Who are you asking?... if it's me... yes :)

[Duncan]

Then there’s other ways you can limit the brightness without having to modify the outputs, by modifying the master brightness

[Rob_in]

On Tuesday, 21 July 2020 at 13:36:37 UTC+2 Duncan wrote:

Then there’s other ways you can limit the brightness without having to modify the outputs, by modifying the master brightness

Sorry, but I don't see how the 'master brightness' UI control is useful here.

Robin 

[Duncan]

instead of setting the 'max' which doesnt work, set the master dimmer which will limit all moods to the % set by its value

you can use the event of running on battery to send the api command to say 50% to each relevant v2 lighting block, and reset it back to 100% when back on power

create a virtual output which points back to your miniserver:

http://login:password@ip-address

and a digial virtual output command of /dev/sps/io/bathroomlights/masterValue/50

where 'bathroomlights' is the name (1st parameter at the left) of the lighting block and the number is the chosen master dimmer %

create another output command /dev/sps/io/bathroomlights/masterValue/100 to return everything back when power is back on

do the same for each lighting block you wish to limit

[Rob_in]

On Tuesday, 21 July 2020 at 21:29:24 UTC+2 Duncan wrote:

instead of setting the 'max' which doesnt work, set the master dimmer which will limit all moods to the % set by its value

So that's the same as messing with the 'Overall Brightness' slider in the app/web UI (I checked this and sending that request and messing with the UI is the same).

Nice idea, but sadly it doesn't work that way. Here's an example:

The 'dining' mood in our main living area has 3 dimmers controlled at these percentages: 40, 40, 70. This is fine and should not change even during a power outage as I decided a limit of even 80% substantially cuts power consumption. So let's say the 'dining' mood is active and a power outage occurs. if this sends ...masterValue/80 to the Lighting Controller... that sees the dimmer outputs change from 40, 40, 70 to 45, 45, 80 which is actually brighter! Then, say power is returned so send ....masterValue/100... that sees the dimmer outputs change to 57, 57, 100 which again is not what this mood should be!

Robin

[Rob_in]

On Monday, 13 July 2020 at 16:30:52 UTC+2 Joth wrote:

 Sort of related to what you do differently if starting over, if you have a Future Automation LXN cabinet, how much. of these various PSU components fit inside it? 

...

I see NDR-120 would fit fine, but if I wanted to go down the PSU redundancy path the DR-RDN20, DDR-240B-24 &  DR-UPS40 don't seem like they'd fit, nor the Weidmüller UPS. (If you have an LXN, how did you make them fit?)

Sorry I missed this earlier. These Meanwell UPS/Redundancy/PSU components I mention have the same height/depth form factor. They are much deeper than regular 'consumer' DIN rail components such as breakers, the Loxone Miniserver, etc, etc. so be careful with cabinet choice if you want to use them.

Luckily I fitted an IDE Atlantic cabinet which is more 'industrial' but can accept these devices.

Robin