Ren24 v3 Current Observations

[Virtus]

This was the current draw to the entire Ren24 version 3.0 board running PWM firmware renard-20071229 with (3) 1/3A strings of mini-lights connected. Based on these measurements and viewing the lights in a dark room I am planning to only ramp between 20% and 80% as the initial ~0.25A made little-to-no visible difference and the last ~0.1A wasn’t very noticeable. By operating within this range I hope to save ~1/3 of the energy with very little visual difference in the end product.

[omzig]

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing.

[fkostyun]

I did this comparison last year (who knows where that post ended up at!) - I ran a lot of things at no more than 75% - and with 100,000 lights - thats a LOT of juice to be saved.

[Virtus]

I thought the most interesting thing was at the bottom of the scale. The first ~25% of supplied current doesn't produce any visual benefit. Skipping that range should make the lights' visual effect line up better with the music and save energy.

I thought I had seen fkostyun's previous post (long ago) but that was well before I had the hardware in hand to see the difference for myself. It is funny how important these kinds of details become when it is personal!

If it worked for fkostyun it'll work for me!

[ppohlman]

For those of you wanting to look at the original thread posted by fkostyun, you can find it HERE (http://www.doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=130).
It's great to know that two different tests returned similar results.

Once I get my hardware up and running, I'll have to look into these price saving tips a bit.

Thanks for your input guys!!

[techwiz1394@hotmail.com]

Hey thanks. This is really helpful. Since i really dont have the means to install a separate line for my lights....this is really great. thanks.:D

[Santacarl]

I'm not up on all the tricks that Vixen has in the bag but is it possible to set the limit at 80% and cover all channels after you already have a sequence programmed? Or do you have to set the limit as you go on each channel?

[Wayne J]

I'm not up on all the tricks that Vixen has in the bag but is it possible to set the limit at 80% and cover all channels after you already have a sequence programmed? Or do you have to set the limit as you go on each channel?


Yes, you can change it. Open the sequence... click 'sequence' at top left of screen, then click 'settings'. Change the 'max illumination' setting... save.

Don't forget to make a copy of the sequence first (just in case ;) )

[Santacarl]

Thanks Wayne...

I hear ya on the copy thing..... When I started playing with Vixen I decided to change my profile about half way through sequencing a song....got it all messed up and lost everything......aggggggg

[Virtus]

I expanded the "research" to 48 strings and ran them outside at night last night. My new idea is to run the dark colors up to 80% and the light colors up to only 70%. The light colors were too bright at the top of the range compared to the darker colors.

Also interesting to me was the "Sparkle" Vixen effect using a minimum of 20% and a maximum of 35%, frequency about 4 notches up and decay about 3 notches over. I had BLUE on solid and YELLOW using the Sparkle effect. It really looked nice and used little current (to tie it back to the thread topic!).

[Wayne J]

I am curious to know..... does the 'Watt Meter' in Vixen take the lower intensities into account with it's calculations?

[Virtus]

Here is a screenshot of the Vixen WattMeter add-in. It appears that it does consider the relative intensities of the loads.

[Virtus]

So I am looking to begin sequencing for 2009 shortly and I still am not clear on how to ensure all my ramps run only from 20%-80%. Last year I forgot about this issue and ended up using partial ramps on everything. This year I want to set the max/min first and then start sequencing. If I do that can I use full ramps all the time and will it automatically adjust them for me? I saw the Lynx demo video on Light Normalization from Bill and was impressed with it and want to come as close as I can on my Renard equipment this year.
Thanks in advance for any insights on this.