Fault finding series LED outside lighting (collingwood)

[mattg4321]

Got a regular customer who has just bought a house with some series wired Collingwood LED lights wired in series in the garden. Sparks who has done it hasn't done a bad job to be fair, but clearly didn't think too hard about those behind him!

All 9 lights are on 1 switch and 1 driver (constant current). None of them currently work. I'm assuming (perhaps wrongly?) the reason for this could be any of the 9 lights/the driver having failed, thus breaking the circuit to all lights.

Lights are all joined to the SWA's running round the garden in adaptable boxes, then filled with magic gel, as is the driver.

Has anybody got any bright ideas as to how I can locate the faulty light without just selecting lights to link out at random. Obviously I'd check the driver first but if its not that I dont really want to clear out all the gel out of all the boxes until I find the faulty unit.

 

[rich.250]

It's a constant current driver, so the output voltage is not fixed, it varies to maintain the constant current

Fair point!
Ignore me.
Think it's time for bed after this week lol


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[marc8]

why not call collingwood & ask them what the resiatnce of the LED light should be, if you have the resistance of the fitting you could if possible just probe down through the Gel on each fitting & check the resistance at each light point if you can get to it in the box.
also if you prove that the driver is in fact ok & you suspect a light fitting put a 3 pin plug onto the driver plug into an extension lead & visit each box in turn to find out which lamp it is, may need lower current driver for that.

done some last year the IP68 units think we had 19 units or something like that over 2 drivers, they were the 1 Watt unit sure it was 350ma driver.

good luck

 

[davesparks]

why not call collingwood & ask them what the resiatnce of the LED light should be,

It's an LED, it doesn't have a resistance!The only measureable value will be the voltage dropped across the LED.

Most multimeters these days have the function to measure it, usually combined with the bell type continuity function.

 

[marc8]

ok thanks for info just an idea, but then i would go with plug in power & take a extension when i had proved the driver was ok.