Small Issue

Apache Lights

Apache Lights

New member
For a few years now when it rains or even just high humidity my some of my SS24 controllers just kinda stay slightly lit even when not running. The wetter it is, the brighter it gets.
We don?t get much rain around here so it?s never become a large problem but, it does make my family a bit nervous.
I feel confident this is a common knowledge problem, but I can?t say I?ve ever seen it discussed, any suggestions would be appreciated.
 

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Happens on my AC channels all the time. Usually caused by moisture causing a bit of leakage current at the triac gate on the SSR. It is not a problem and you can clean the pcb and seal it or swap out the triacs. For me, it is not worth the effort to make the singing tree outlines turn off completly whenit is raining outside.
 
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Thank you.
When I discussed the problem I did use the word leakage, however I believe your explanation will do a much better job of elevating my families concern. I think I’ll wait for the end of the season and see about making the appropriate changes.

Again, thank you very much.
 
I think it is called a "snubber". We added resistors across each of the outputs of our SS24s. This bled the "leakage" and allowed the triac to close. You may want to do a search of the different wiki writings for it to get the resistor values.

Note that it has been almost 5 years now since we left the AC display world (went to pixels), so hopefully some of the AC guys can chime in and correct me if needed.
 
A snubber helps with flickering at the High and low intensity levels on a dimming curve. It has less (some but less) effect on leakage current going to the gate of the triac.
 
FYI-All of our SS24, SS16, SS8 had them applied. The original reason was that LED strings weren't enough of a draw to shut the triacs down, leaving some to slightly glow when they were supposed to be off. Though we had similar problems as the OP during wet weather, we found that after the addition of the resistors, even the leakage problems went away. Our original AC setup had 416 channels and we were thankful that we didn't have to hunt down the glowing lights after their application.

Of course 416 channels seems trivial against what we send out today, but that is another thread at another time.
 
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