Signal interference with Tr!mlight system

[CanuckPE]

I've had a contractor at my house (single family) for several days. He's been endeavoring to figure out what's causing a signal interference issue with my Tr!mlight system that he installed. For days I suggested he, "figure it out for himself," but his presence at my the house is starting to grind on me. So, I'm going to pitch in to help the contractor. I'm a mechanical/structural engineer, so I'd like some help from the electrical crowd... please.

The basic issue is that when a wire (2 conductors, sheathed [each wire and the combo], speaker wire gauge) controlling a string of Tr!mlights is strung through the attic space above my garage, the downstream Tr!mlights occasionally have a flash of blue pass through the each light (note that the lights are able to vary color based on the controller settings, which I assume is voltage based). This blue streak occurs with the controller powered (i.e., plugged into the wall) even if the Tr!mlights are "off". With the system "on" and the Tr!mlights lit the same blue streak occurs occasionally (with similar or identical frequency). Frequency is in the range of one instance per minute. With the controller unplugged, the blue streak does not occur. When the same wire and same string of Tr!mlights is pulled out of the garage attic and laid on my garage floor, the blue streak does not occur. The issue is 100% reproduceable in all trials. I've seen it with my own eyes. He's tried several new controllers.

I suspect there's some sort of signal interference that's occurring in the garage attic. I have an elaborate system of wires (14-2) powering an old(er) school T5 CF lighting system (installed around 2016) for SUPER HIGH brightness in my garage. The CF bulbs are installed two-per-fixture, each fixture has one ballast in the fixture (not in the attic space), and there are about 15 fixtures in the garage (some 8' in length, and some 4').

On other variable is some exterior potlights around the perimeter of the garage (two per eave for a total of four, and three "near" the Tr!mlights).

As I'd prefer to not go back to the dark ages in my garage, I'm planning to shield the wires controlling the Tr!mlights from where the wires enter the attic space (or perhaps upstream to the controller box) to where the wires connect with the Tr!mlight string. Essentially endeavoring to create a Faraday shield around the conductors between the controller and string of lights. This is where I would like your help with a couple of things.

1. Does this (Tr!mlight shielding) sound like a good solution, or are there other avenues we should be exploring?
2. Do you agree the garage lights are causing the interference? If so, is it likely the ballasts, or hefty load of 14-2 power lines in the attic, or both? Is there a potential for the potlights to be causing the interference?
3. Does this have anything to do with wire gauge (i.e., the wires from the controller to the Tr!mlights)? If so, would larger gauge conductors potentially be a solution?
4. If we agree conduit shielding is likely to fix the problem, what shielding details do you recommend? I was thinking of galvanized steel conduits for the length of the attic complete with rounded corners and shielding uninterrupted from end to end. Standard Home Depot stuff. I'm wondering if each Tr!mlight wire deserves it's own conduit, or if we can buy one larger conduit and string the wires through he same conduit. I think there are four or five Tr!mlight wires in the attic.
5. Does a galvanized steel conduit act as a Faraday shield for the conductors inside the conduit?

I can post some photos if that's helpful.

 

[waross]

Conduit is overkill. Use Electrical Metallic Tubing. (Sometimes called "Thin Wall Conduit")
all conductors of a circuit in the same raceway or conduit.
As much as I hate to take off my favorite hat, try covering the wires with tin-foil. (Grounded of course)

 

[3DDave]

Is there a place these are sold on-line. I only see one and it uses a 3-wire system: Power, Ground, Signal.

Color programmable LEDs often use a digital message passing system that is pushed along the string; they are not individually addressable.

Your installer will need at least a protocol analyzer to see who is sending the "blue" message if the controller isn't. Otherwise a digital oscilloscope that can store a string's worth of messages and a lot of time looking to see if the timing is correct will be required. The messages are very timing dependent.

See an example: https://www.arrow.com/en/research-and-events/articles/protocol-for-the-ws2812b-programmable-led

I would not expect interference to cause anything to happen; it seems more likely the LED chip would simply ignore an invalid message due to noise.

 

[RedSnake]

2. Do you agree the garage lights are causing the interference? If so, is it likely the ballasts, or hefty load of 14-2 power lines in the attic, or both? Is there a potential for the potlights to be causing the interference?

If the disturbance disappeared when you laid the string on the garage floor, it should be easy to exclude the garage lightning.
If you have the string in the attic and just turn of the power of to your garage light off you would see if it disappears then too.

Could be just one bad fixture in one of this lights.
Maybe a capacitor, something that realises short high pulses (magnetic fields) that gets picked up by the string and goes to the controller and then to outlet through the earth and the neutral at least the earth would be connected to the outlet even if the controller is off.

 

[MintJulep]

I'd guess that something coming in on the power feed is causing the controller to send the blue flash signal.

 

[CanuckPE]

I'd guess that something coming in on the power feed is causing the controller to send the blue flash signal.

I will try a fresh power source. I'll try something with a short distance from the panel and a big extension cord. That will be a lot less work than shielding the wires. Thank you!

 

[CanuckPE]

If the disturbance disappeared when you laid the string on the garage floor, it should be easy to exclude the garage lightning.
If you have the string in the attic and just turn of the power of to your garage light off you would see if it disappears then too.

Thank you for you comments, RedSnake.

I was thinking the disturbance, if caused by the garage lights or ballasts, would be proximity-based if the disturbance is active only when the wires go through the attic space.

The disturbance occurs when the garage lights are off.

Could be just one bad fixture in one of this lights.
Maybe a capacitor, something that realises short high pulses (magnetic fields) that gets picked up by the string and goes to the controller and then to outlet through the earth and the neutral at least the earth would be connected to the outlet even if the controller is off.

The contractor started with a bunch of fresh lights. And wires. Nothing seems to help, other than running disturbance prone components on the garage floor. To be clear, this is second hand info, but he has motivation to move onto the next job as well.

 

[CanuckPE]

Is there a place these are sold on-line. I only see one and it uses a 3-wire system: Power, Ground, Signal.

Color programmable LEDs often use a digital message passing system that is pushed along the string; they are not individually addressable.

Your installer will need at least a protocol analyzer to see who is sending the "blue" message if the controller isn't. Otherwise a digital oscilloscope that can store a string's worth of messages and a lot of time looking to see if the timing is correct will be required. The messages are very timing dependent.

See an example: https://www.arrow.com/en/research-and-events/articles/protocol-for-the-ws2812b-programmable-led

I would not expect interference to cause anything to happen; it seems more likely the LED chip would simply ignore an invalid message due to noise.

This is a proprietary system, and I don't see it sold online. Only "professional" installers that are associated with the vendor may sell and install. That said, the wires and lights look like the most cheaply produced garbage from China that you would find at Princess Auto (I'm in Western Canada).

I only saw 2 wires, but I'll have another look tonight.

The oscilloscope is WAY above the installers head. The vendor might be able to troubleshoot with tools like that. I'll suggest it, but I'm doubtful that will occur at my house.

 

[CanuckPE]

Conduit is overkill. Use Electrical Metallic Tubing. (Sometimes called "Thin Wall Conduit")
all conductors of a circuit in the same raceway or conduit.
As much as I hate to take off my favorite hat, try covering the wires with tin-foil. (Grounded of course)

Thank you waross.

I'll give this a shot if the alternative power source doesn't tune up the problem. Will post again in the morning.

 

[3DDave]

There is no manufacturer site at all? Nothing?

Does the name literally have a "!" in the middle of it?

What company is doing the installation/selling it to you?

 

[MintJulep]

Nothing seems to help, other than running disturbance prone components on the garage floor.

When you did this, where did the power come from?

The disturbance occurs when the garage lights are off.

That's pretty strong evidence that the existing lights are not the cause of the problem. To be sure you'd need to physically disconnect their wiring.

If a new string of Tr!mlights didn't solve the problem then you've mostly ruled out a problem with the tiny brain in one of the LEDs.

If a new controller didn't solve the problem then you've ruled out a problem as being a defect of one controller.

So, if my guess is correct, the controller design is susceptible to noise on the power input, or your power input quality is really bad (worse than could be reasonably expected for the controller to be immune to).

Systematically isolate stuff on the same circuit until you find the source of the noise. Using the Tr!mlites as a proxy for a power quality analyzer, because real power quality analyzers are expensive.