View Full Version : ELDO LED drivers DALI and Profilux?
http://www.eldoled.com/images/products/POWERdrive_AC/POWERdrive-AC_3Dview_w421px.jpg
I have been very patient (or lazy!) with my LED build. I do have all the LEDs for maybe almost a year now, as well as over 40 Meanwell drivers. I am selling off the drivers as I do not believe that these will work well given their relative inefficiency. This would not be a problem if I just wanted to run 8 drivers, but over 40! Too much current because of the poor power factor correction.
Anyway, I've been looking at the ELDO site and really liked their drivers, very flexible. Especially the PowerDrive AC mains driver. It has four outputs each programmable for up to 1050mA and up to 60 volts. The only limiting factor is total power must be less than 100 watts. And it is a DALI driver which would make dimming functionality much simpler, I think. Am I correct in assuming this will work with a P3ex with a DALI card? I wanted to get some official word from here before ordering because they are fairly expensive and I really don't want to waste the money and effort like I did with the Meanwells.
Here is a link to the PowerDrive's data sheet:
http://www.eldoled.com/dsheets/Datasheet_POWERdrive_AC_Series_V3_3.pdf
Yes, the specs and versitality of this ballast style drive sound nice. I have ordered one of these last year. It turned out that they had some problems with manufactoring over in China. I am still waiting to receive the driver to this point, but it was promisied to me that they will be available around now. Will follow up with them and keep you posted.
Cheers,
Robert
Yes, the specs and versitality of this ballast style drive sound nice. I have ordered one of these last year. It turned out that they had some problems with manufactoring over in China. I am still waiting to receive the driver to this point, but it was promisied to me that they will be available around now. Will follow up with them and keep you posted.
Thanks Robert. I look forward to your followup.
Given that it has DALI support, it should work, right? I'm just looking for some official GHL help before I spend $2K on drivers. I understand that there cannot be a guarantee, but if it doesn't work, is there a way that GHL can try to make it work? I've seen at least one other DALI related post where the user sent a ballast in because they were not working and a subsequent DALI firmware upgrade to the expansion card and I think a new card made the ballast work.
The company itself is member of AG-DALI: http://www.dali-ag.org/index.php?n=am
So there is a good chance that they have implemented the interface and protocol correctly.
tekfreak
02.02.2011, 20:29
I have also been looking forward to order the eldoLED POWERdrive AC, and drive it through its 0-10 volts interface directly connected to the Profilux'es native 0-10 volt interface - not dependent on an extra DALI card and possible DALI protocol issues.
Blahenazo
03.02.2011, 00:47
I beleive I saw a thread somewhere ( I think on reefcentral) where someone with a Profilux to used these dali drivers.
I beleive I saw a thread somewhere ( I think on reefcentral) where someone with a Profilux to used these dali drivers.
I did do an RC search before posting here but found no such thread. There is a build with an eldoLED driver, but it is being used standalone without a Profilux:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1849927
Robert, have you received the driver yet? I have an email out to the company again inquiring about it, but no response.
Yes. It was a long wait - I ordered them in November - but I finally received them about two weeks ago. Apparently it took them them time to get these drivers finally into mass production. First impressions are good, and their support (US based) is quite helpful getting me started. I only hooked up the AC so far and played with the menu settings. The LED inatallation will follow till the weekend, time permitting.
One downside so far is that the driver is not recognized via DALI at the moment. Though, I expected this since I have the same problem with my Sylvania DALI ballast. Presumably the DALI card is defective. Working with support to resolve this.
So for now I will use the 0-10V. Will see if I can take some pics once it is running.
Yes. It was a long wait - I ordered them in November - but I finally received them about two weeks ago. Apparently it took them them time to get these drivers finally into mass production. First impressions are good, and their support (US based) is quite helpful getting me started. I only hooked up the AC so far and played with the menu settings. The LED inatallation will follow till the weekend, time permitting.
One downside so far is that the driver is not recognized via DALI at the moment. Though, I expected this since I have the same problem with my Sylvania DALI ballast. Presumably the DALI card is defective. Working with support to resolve this.
So for now I will use the 0-10V. Will see if I can take some pics once it is running.
Great! Thanks for the update. Hopefully the 0-10V output works for you, though I see no reason why it shouldn't. There is at least one other forum member who had some difficulty getting the PLM-DALI card working and Osram DALI T5 ballast:
http://forum.aquariumcomputer.com/showthread.php?2036-Dali-module-and-OSRAM-quicktronic
It seems replacing his card, presumably with a newer version, fixed the problem. Maybe you also have an older version of the DALI card? As I understand it, the firmware on the DALI card is not user upgradeable.
Alas, if I cannot get the driver to work via DALI, then it will not likely be useable for me. I was going to have lots of channels and that many 0-10V channels on the Profilux would be difficult to achieve. As an example, I had planned on 9 or 11 of these drivers, so it would be something like up to 32 DALI channels, though I would have to group them to come up with 16 or less to work with the DALI card, as I understand it.
I had my card already replaced once, but it was an exchange of the old version for another old version. I am crossing my fingers that my local support will receive the new version of the DALI card for an exchange and, well, that this card will work.
The 0-10V is only a fall -back solution to get something working at the moment. The big disadvantage of this interface is that there is only one 0-10V input, so all channels are dimmed simultaneously. Ultimately, DALI has to work to use this ballast to its full potential and control each channel individually.
Update. Summer seems to delay thing ...
I did receive my third DALI controller card this weekend, which now has firmware 1.03 loaded. With this card I got the Quicktronic ballasts finally working. That's the good news.
The bad news: the EldoLED driver isn't being recognized by the Profilux. I believe that this time the problem lies with EldoLED; it doesn't respond to the addressing request. I contacted them and their support is good so far in order to resolve this issue. Keep those fingers crossed!
On a positive note: the LEDdriver itself works very well. So does the dimming portion. For some reason, the driver has copied the addresses of my Quicktronic ballasts. So for now, all four LED channels follow the four T5HO channels. Weird this is ...
I am really hoping to get the DALI IF working on EldoLED, but there is a fallback in case it doesn't work out. This would be a 1-10V to DMX brigde, between L1-L4 of the profilux and the DMX interface of the EldoLED. Obviously, that would "waste" the L1-L4 and make the complete setup more complicated. Let's hope I won't have to go this route.
Once again, thank you for the update. I am still following you and still hoping that all is not lost for my DIY build. I was planning on ordering many of these drivers, but if they don't play well with DALI I will have to reconsider. Looking forward to your response from ELDO ... Dipan
All is looking good: EldoLED has discovered an issue with the batch my driver came from and is going to replace the ballast. Great support so far. Stay tuned ...
Wow! That was fast! I received the new ballast today, quite impressive. Replaced the old ballast, started "New Numbering", and counted ...1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...Ready! :D
Reassigned illumination channels and voila. At last, it works like a charm.
Now I have to install all my LED's into the hood and give it a real test. It's going to be 4x channels with 10x LED's each (daylight, 3000K, red, blue) running at 750 mA. I might up the daylights to 1A later on as I don't plan to run them all together at 100%. Will have to see how it looks on the tank first.
Wow! That was fast! I received the new ballast today, quite impressive. Replaced the old ballast, started "New Numbering", and counted ...1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...Ready! :D
Reassigned illumination channels and voila. At last, it works like a charm.
Now I have to install all my LED's into the hood and give it a real test. It's going to be 4x channels with 10x LED's each (daylight, 3000K, red, blue) running at 750 mA. I might up the daylights to 1A later on as I don't plan to run them all together at 100%. Will have to see how it looks on the tank first.
Great to hear! Post up some pics if you get a chance ...
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