(Old) Loxone LED Tape Spec & RGBW Dimmer Air loading

[Robbie]

Hi all,

I'm about to start installing RGBW LED tape in the shadow gap around our ceiling. The tape is the original Loxone RGBW LED tape with the separate RGB & W LED's (purchased over two years ago), not the newer type that Loxone now sell. Unfortunately that means that the spec is no longer on the Loxone web site.

From memory, I think the tape was 20W at Metre, therefore around 5W per LED colour. But I do remember that some of the colours drew a little more current that others.

I want to power 10 Metres of this RGBW tape, ideally from one RGBW Dimmer Air, which is rated at 50W a channel. If any of the LED colours are slightly more than 5W a Metre, I could be overloading a channel. Is this likely to be an issue in actual use?  - Particularly as most lighting scenes are only using two of the four channels at any time, and never more than three of the four.

If possible, I may even want to attach 10.5 Metres of the RGBW tape. Would that be going too far?

Unfortunately there is no space in the local cabinet to add another RGBW Dimmer Air, so I may have to be clever with the tape spacing.

[Duncan]

i wouldnt worry about it - its highly unlikely that you have all the channels on maximum brightness for a long time, but you can always throttle the max output if you are that worried about it using the output correction, lighting controller, scaler block etc

[Robbie]

Thanks Duncan, but I'm not sure if that is a safe solution.

A PWM dimmer reduces the output/brightness buy reducing the length of the "on" pluse. The average voltage (& therefore current) reduce, casuing the LED's to appear dimmer, but the peak voltage of 24V (and therefore current) stay the same.

I assume the 2.1A (50/24V) limit is the maximum current rating of the output devices in the RGBW Dimmer Air, rather than a thermal limitation (which would have allowed higher peaks, provided the average was <2.1A).

I did, however measure the current draw of the (Old Loxone RGB+WW) LED tape and found that the white draws substantally more current than the R, G or B. Whilst I dont have the figures to hand, a single RGBW Dimmer Air will easily power 10.5M of RGB, but the White channel with need to be split across two channels (or I could use an LED amplifier).

As a short term solution, I'm just going to initally install the tape as RGB only, and maybe come up with a solution for the White later.

[Kevp]

Hi Robbie,

Would purchasing some newer tape be out the question?

There are cheaper alternative places to get the strip. I suppose you would not actually need 10.5m of new tape but just enough to reduce the total power to 50w on each channel.