If the LED controller is drawing all its power in high current pulses adding choke will cause a big reduction in average current and the lighting performance will suffer.

The first thing is to find why the cap blew, and then do a test with a cap which works. Once that is sorted, a choke might be added BEFORE the big cap, but may not be needed.

I use 4x 220uH chokes in series to bring current from 2.1 Amps to 1.7 Amps. For a 20W LED.

 

I'm back I am not sure why the cap blew, and I am certain I had it connected correctly (-> pointing towards negative). I did have a distance of about 8"-12" between where I installed the cap and the controller and based on gootee's response, that was likely a problem. I used a 2200uf axial lead electrolitic cap from radio shack (25v or 25v, can't remember). I did a lot of ready about decoupling capacitance so now I know what you guys are talking about, sort of. I will try the 1uf and 100uf caps and see what happens.

Thanks

Tim

 

If you could get inside the controller, you could put the decoupling caps in the best-possible location. If you could tell us what the numbers are on any ICs that are inside, you could get some good advice. (Or just download their data sheets and figure it out.)

I would try them outside the box (between box and battery), first. I'm just telling you the above in case they won't work outside the box.

P.S. If the 100 uF and 1 uF don't help much, try something like 1000uF or 10000uF, in place of the 100 uF.

NOTE, too, that you might need a cap that has a few-amp ripple current rating. If the electrolytic cap gets HOT, quickly, disconnect it and find one that will handle a lot more current.

 

FYI, myself and another boater have this same LED controller and are experiencing the same whine coming from the speakers. Sometimes is goes away, but it is there most of the time and very annoying. I think this controller just has some issue.

 

Would you post a drawing of exactly how the power and audio connections are made ?
Unwanted noise injected into audio signal chains can usually be cured.

And, it would be good to start your own thread on this.

 

Try grounding the controller in a different location all by itself. I am an electrical technicians for a Mercedes upfitter. We have been experiencing the same issue in our stereo systems and in our TVs. We have tried every filter and cap amd nothing seems to help. One thing we did do which helped a little was, completely isolate the RGB lighting system from everything else. I do not believe the problem is in the ground for the simple fact that no isolator helps. Neither do power caps. RGB seems to have a super dirty signal especially when red is being mixed in. So, separate everything and let me know how it works out for you.

 

Try grounding the controller in a different location all by itself. I am an electrical technicians for a Mercedes upfitter. We have been experiencing the same issue in our stereo systems and in our TVs. We have tried every filter and cap amd nothing seems to help. One thing we did do which helped a little was, completely isolate the RGB lighting system from everything else. I do not believe the problem is in the ground for the simple fact that no isolator helps. Neither do power caps. RGB seems to have a super dirty signal especially when red is being mixed in. So, separate everything and let me know how it works out for you.

@Limo Sam
How did you find this thread? It is 18 months old. Did you come in through...
- a Google search
- browsing old threads on this site,
- using search function on this site,
- other?

If it was google, was it a top hit for your particular search or was it way down among the page 2 and page 3 garbage results?
Responses to old posts has suddenly increased on this site in recent months so I tought I would ask how you ended up finding the post. I hope you can help and thanks in advance.

 

Yes i was trying to research different solutions and this was on the first google page that came up. I knew it was an old thread but i was hoping to get a response from somebody with more input.