Are these lights compatible with my Kulp Board?

[Tandtmah2]

Hello All, I'm hoping you can help. A few years ago, I had professional installed some Gemstone lights.  https://www.gemstonelights.com/

They come with their own proprietary controller, but I believe they are ws2811 llights.  Picture here:


The controller box looks like this:


It looks like there is a small cable with 3 wires connected to the white controller.  Does anyone recognize this?  Do you think it would be safe to try to plug this into my Kulp K16A-B Board and see if I can can use an xLights sequence?

thanks in advance for any help you can offer!


Terry

[allknowing2012]

I think you need to know the chip that is on the led .. or perhaps google up the device to see what chip / protocol they are. 3 wires doesn't really tell you much.

[algerdes]

You probably have done this as well, but I searched quite a bit for the lights.  Only information I could find was the sales pitch trying to get you to a local vendor/installer.  Sorry.

Looking at the picture, there seems to be a chip missing if these are truly WS28xx.

[Tandtmah2]

So, I've checked the settings in my app to control the lights and under IC type it looks like they are set to: WS2811 (UCS1903)  does this mean that they are compatible?

[Gilrock]

I assume you mean you want to connect the light strings to a Kulp board and not the controller right?  You would need to know exactly which wire is what to hook it up.  I had to repair 3 props this weekend due to the ground and data lines being swapped which caused the first pixel in the prop to die.  Two of them were because I was wiring in new pigtails and didn't notice I had used my older wiring standard and the third one happened by accidentally plugging in the green connector off by one.  I swear I've connected those greenies off by one before without an issue but this prop had power injection wires which probably caused it to actually damage since the ground lines were really connected to ground at the injection points.

[Tandtmah2]

UPDATE:
I looked on the back of the proprietary controller and there was a diagram of the wiring.  I was able to see which wire was positive, negative and the data wire.  I felt confident that I could wire everything together to my board.  After setting everything up and going to Display Testing in my browser, I tried to test out a solid fill color.  My mega tree lights with the standard bullets were fine.  The house lights were multi-colored.  I then tried a sequence out.  The timing of the lights were fine, but the colors are not.  Is there anything I can try to see if I can get the colors in sync?

[allknowing2012]

For the prop in properties there, under controller connection is color order. Check that box.
Normally it is RGB .. sounds like you might have BGR or some other type.

Test all lights at Red .. see what color these are .. if B then B is the first type
check Green .. see what color these are .. if R then 2nd letter is R ... so they would be BRG for example.

Make changes to the props and set the right color order then upload to the controller.

[Tandtmah2]

In the app (screenshot posted above), it looks like it should be set to RGB, but I did try to change the settings to BRG, RGBW, etc.  No luck.  One other thing I noticed, when I try Display Testing and set it to a solid color like blue, only the 4th light is the blue that matches, the other lights remain multi-colored.  Then I set the display testing to all white lights, then all lights turn white.

[Gilrock]

Its still not clear exactly what you hooked together.  Is the proprietary controller hooked up at all or did you just connect the strings to a Kulp board?  If a string is set as RGB and you drop a red On effect that will activate channel 1.  The start channel for the model needs to also be correct in xLights or that can cause channel misalignment which will give the wrong colors.

[Tandtmah2]

I pulled the 4 pin connector that connects the lights to the proprietary controller, then I followed the pattern that was printed on the controller to find the pos/neg/data wires and jumped them with a 50t 18/3 thermostat wire (which may be the issue) and connected just the lights to my kulp board.  I did not touch the cables running to the meanwell ps.  I think I am going to try using 12 AWG wire to see if that resolves the issues I am seeing.

[Tandtmah2]

So I called my installer and he said that these lights are RGBW - UCS2904 lights.  Can anyone tell me how I would set this up in xLights?

UPDATE: Just to close the loop on this, in FPP I set the number of groups to match the number of pixels and the colors synced to my sequence.  I think this issue is now closed!

Last Update: I had to lower my brightness to 50% in FPP, then the lights started working.  This is for the next person who has this issue.