Apex Controller Programming

[anomaly]

Originally Posted by LilRobb

How did you manually dim them?

Using a potentiometer. Just hook it up to a 0-10V source and dim by adjusting the knob.

Edit: Well it turns out that we must have messed up code afterwords that was causing the issues. Not sure what exactly since he managed to fix it, but he said he just removed a line or two after what we had and it started working.

We didn't have exactly as above, our variable names were different, I was just repeating the code because it was basically the same minus the variables.

Edit:

Originally Posted by JJ Ocean

I don't have any experience with what happens if you plug a custom LED into it. Will it even create any LED outlets? My guess is no because the AI LED "handling" is built into the apex firmware ... for example, 9 months ago the VDM would only create 2 AI "outlets" (white and blue) when an AI unit was plugged into it. You couldn't control the 2 blue's separately. Upgrade to the latest firmware and the VDM now creates 3 "outlets". Now, you might be able to use the Varspd1 - Varspd4 outlets that come defaulted on the VDM, but I don't have any experience there.

I've never ran the AI units, so I have no idea. When he logged into the Apex on his computer the four variable ports were there. We just measured them on and off to ensure they put out 0-10V then hooked them up to the meanwell drivers accordingly. Everything was wired up before we turned the Apex on, so it's possible that's why it recognized them quickly.

[Schwaggs]

Cool that you got it working.

Summarizing and confirming what the others have said: When using a VDM with industry standard 0-10V variable ballasts, you connect and program the variable speed (or variable voltage) outlets 1-4 to dim the lights using ramp profiles. You can also use the variable speed outlets that come on the base Apex (you don't need a VDM). Some people also plug the power cable from the dimmable ballast into an EB8 outlet so power can be completely removed from the ballast when the LEDs are dimmed to nothing. When you connect the VDM to the Apex, the variable speed outlets are created automatically. If you have the full Apex, the variable speed outlets exist by default.

You program the variable speed outlets with the ramp up profile, ON, then ramp down profile. Optionally if you don't want to run the LEDs at 100% power, you can create a ramp profile with the same start and ending intensitiy (say 85%) and use it instead of "ON".

Your ramp up and down profiles configure what intensities to start and finish ramping from and to and how long to take ramping.

You (optionally) program the EB8 outlet to be OFF just after the LEDs finish ramping down in the evening and ON just before the ramp up starts in the morning.

The proper way to get AI lights to dim from an Apex is with a VDM.

[anomaly]

Yes, this is the full Apex. We don't have a separate module, it's using the built in dimming capabilities. Actually I never thought about dimming them to zero to cut them off, that's a much better idea as it saves multiple slots on the EB8. I guess I'm so used to the old school neptune controllers with standard lighting and using my DC8.