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Flip Flopping a meanwell driver on LED Strips

Posted: Sat Oct 12, 2019 5:06 pm
by rubegoldberg2
For those who aren't familiar with what a "flip flop" means. Its basically a piece of tech that allows 2 rooms to utilize the same ballast (in the hps/mh days) What would happen is each of the 2 rooms would be on opposite 12/12 cycles so that the rooms could share the same ballast.

this would be accomplished typically using a double pole, double throw relay, sometimes there were delays to compensate for igniters etc on old core/coil ballasts.



Anyhow..... to me as a laymen, it seems like it would be easy to switch the driver between rooms quite easily, since the driver should have no problem turning on a different strip immediately?

The advantage here, money savings, and also the ability to spend money on really fancy arrays of strips.

my question would be.

1. how far can the drivers be away from the strips before there are losses over wire length?
2. would only a relay/contactor with proper ratings be required? any other tech that would need to be implemented??

Re: Flip Flopping a meanwell driver on LED Strips

Posted: Sat Oct 12, 2019 11:17 pm
by TEKNIK
Your gauge of wire will effect how far you can remote mount the driver from the lights.

I would have a simple plug set up to unplug wiring from one light to the other. You need to make sure that the driver is turned off when switching between lights as it can cause damage
With the pricing of drivers getting so cheap I'm not sure it's worth the hassle now to do this