question

ksaltman avatar image
ksaltman asked

LED Light strips blinking when on inverter

I have a system with 2 Quatros 12V with a bunch of Battleborn batteries. The RV has some LED light strips mounted under the counters. When the RV is on shore power everything appears to be fine however when I turn shore power off and switch to the Inverters the LED light strips start to flash/blink especially when they are dimmed. The more they are dimmed the more they flash but only on inverter power.

Any idea why that would happen and how I can correct it?

led
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3 Answers
wkirby avatar image
wkirby answered ·

This is most unfortunate side effect of some of the LED driver modules. They chop up the waveform to perform dimming functions. It's not an elegant way to produce dimming, but that is how some of them are done.
When you are on shore power the effect is minimal because the network is much bigger than the inverter and it can absorb the horrible waveform that the LED driver is making.
With inverter power, the inverter is trying to make a smooth waveform but the LED driver keeps chopping it up and so the waveform gets interrupted and you see flicker.
When full brightness, the LED driver is not chopping the waveform, so the inverter and the LED driver can play nicely together.

3 comments
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Alexandra avatar image Alexandra ♦ commented ·
@ksaltman

AES coupled with the dimmer could also produce and interesting effect as well.

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ksaltman avatar image ksaltman commented ·
So are you saying it basically can't be done?
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wkirby avatar image wkirby ♦♦ ksaltman commented ·
I'm saying that I'm not sure what can be done, given the principle of why it does it.

I would like to get my hands on one of the offending units and see if anything can be done.

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sharpidea avatar image
sharpidea answered ·

FYI, just use any current LED light bulb (dimmed or not) and you get this slow strobing effect - so the dimed or full bright seems to be not the issue...

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duivert avatar image
duivert answered ·

The quality of the led bulbs or drivers is also very important, cheap chinese one’s can even destroy your wifi network…

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