I have a number of simple LED strip lights, purchased to replace fluorescent tubes in a kitchen. Having installed the first ones, they have a noticeable flicker (to me, but not my wife!) on moving objects. I was wondering if it were possible to solder a smoothing capacitor across the dc drive to the LEDs.
The 1500mm strip is divided into 2 separate circuits each fed from 240v ac.
Each circuit consists of 5 blocks of 12 white LEDs (12 in parallel, then the 5 blocks in series). They are fed from 3 triac looking device circuits, with an output of 178v (on a cheap digital multimeter) so presumably 36v on each LED?
What uF of capacitor would I need? And will I need an extra leakage resistor too?
Electronic – AC mains LED flicker
ledsmoothing-capacitor
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Best Answer
No, not at the level of detail appropriate to this question.
These LED light strips run from 240 V AC line power. That's not something you should be messing with. Getting this wrong can cause electrocution to you or anyone else that might touch these lights, burn down your house, possibly violate your electrical code, and almost certainly invalidate your insurance if these modified devices are found to have caused a problem.
We can't tell exactly how the conversion from AC to the DC the LEDs run on is accomplished. Deep inside there may be a point where hanging a capacitor on would smooth out ripple. Without a schematic, that's hard to tell.
Basically, you bought the wrong lights.