Using Rope Lights

[toodle_pipsky]

Thanks for that - the display is great. Near the airport I take it ;)

So are they working as 1 channel? Or are you able to control different channels?

[Xccentric]

The way the 3 prong connectors are soldered only lets us combine both channels (work as 1 channel). But that can be changed if needed for a display. We prefer to have both channels working together to make it brighter. We already have over 300 channels on that display... If we were to run the the ropes as 2 channels we would over 500 channels...
to hard to program. And yes about 15mins from the Airport/Gateway bridge.

[Zaphod12]

I had a look at the rope lights id removed the controllers from a few years back and all were standard three wire chasing types with the common black box controller with eight functions. These all had three wires leading to the ropelight (Brown,Aqua and Black). All i did was connect the Black to your Neutral and the other two to the active that your providing to the ropelight. Im assuming your using an extension lead or something. In these the Neutral is generally Black or Blue and the active Red or Brown. Again make sure everything is disconnected before doing any work and use proper connectors to join the wires before testing. I found the best way was to purchase a small Junction or J box from "Bunnings" and put all the connections safely inside. If this is to be used outside this will not be waterproof and as everyone knows 240V and water dont mix very well. You will need to seal it and or protect it from water.

Just in case anyone comes looking for this info, as I did, I thought it best to correct this slightly inaccurate information. I bought some of these rope lights from Deals Direct and in both cases the chaser controller box was faulty. I wanted the lights always on anyway so decided to remove the controller box as per the instructions above. But when i wired it up that way only one string of LEDs lit up - ie. three on, three off, repeating.

After some trial and error i worked out the correct procedure. The lights have a two pin plug leading to the controller - this cord has a blue and brown wire. Coming from the controller to the rope light is three wires - blue, brown and black. The brown wire is active and you need to connect brown to brown. The other two (blue and black, on the controller side) are neutral and need to be connected to the blue wire from the plug side. This will result in all LEDs lighting up. I didn't bother with a J-box, just twisted the wires together and taped them up (separately of course) with electrical tape.

By the way, I'm not an electrician so if you don't know what you're doing get someone qualified to do the job. Also, I would echo the safety warning about 240volts and water.