If you're seeing dimming on your garden lights, there are a few things which you can review and troubleshoot.
Here are the most common reasons for dimming and how to resolve those issues:
Connecting more than 60W of lights to your controller
- Check how many lights are currently connected to your controller
- Take note of how many watts (W) each of these lights will consume
- If the total exceeds 60W, you will need another controller or transformer to power your entire system
Extending a daisy chain set too far
Value pack spotlights (4 x 3W) and our deck light sets (6 lights) come with a single cable 'end light' - if you extend the chain too far you can have issues including voltage drop and loss of sync for the lights in the chain.
Please do not extend chains of spotlights and keep deck light chains to 12 (or less) lights.
Using too much cabling (extension/main cable)
If your system is running up to 60W worth of lighting, we recommend using a maximum of 75 metres of cabling to avoid a drop in voltage and dimmer lighting.
Using too may 'mini spacer cables'
These are made for extending spacing between deck lights, no more than 5 should be used in any one deck light chain.
Squashed cables and dim lights –
Electricity in some ways is a bit like a garden hose, and just as a crushed/kinked hose won’t allow all the water through, a crushed/squashed cable can result in dim or non-functional lights. We recently saw an issue where a 0.5W light would work, but not a 3W light, simply because of a crushed cable.
Caution: Please avoid having cables bound up underneath very heavy objects or bend over like a kink – the best way to bundle excess cable is in a loose loop, in a similar way to it was in the pack (say you were using deck lights with 3m spacing but only wanted them 1m apart).
If you have a cable which has been kinked right in half, or badly squashed, they will in many cases ‘restore’ by being gently straightened back out. Test the cable for full function before using it again.
Article verified: CLWRGB60, CLXRGB60, CLBW60, CLXW60