Blackstar LED's staying dimly lit when off

Freakin' me out man....... had to go check on a few. None of the Blackstar's I see dimly glow at night, some of them are on digital timers.

PSUAGRO. said:

Alright Kushfan I got some questions for you.......Do the panels eventually go off, or does it stay dimly lit constantly during lights off?? Are your plugging these panels into a grounded plug(three prong)? Is your mechanical timer a heavy duty(three prong!) unit.........If you are indeed plugging it all up(timer/outlet) and their all three prong and it stays dimly lit you have a GROUND fault(even a slight short will cause this/bare wires touching) without question due to it not discharging the current out of the line.........

And no a line conditioner will not resolve this issue/ any electricians in your fam/friends ...........good luck

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They do not shut all the way off, however you can BARELY tell that they're lit still once I fixed that electrical issue. Like not even enough light to illuminate the area below whatsoever. Every plug and socket is 3 prong. So you think all the blackstar owners that have this issue all have electrical faults? Maybe it's something in the panels themselves? I honestly don't even care if it doesn't affect my flowering.

Rasser the panels are plugged into the timer>surge protector>wall socket.

Hey Kush I've been taking apart my panels to clean and screw around with all weekend and I'm pretty sure it's the ground in the panel that's causing the "dimming effect" in our panels. I took apart a BS240 that wasn't doing it and went into my tent to grab a 5x60 that was doing it with digital timers and lo and behold my BS was doing exactly what yours are doing. Mine was pretty bright and I freaked out and unplugged it so I hope yours isn't as bright as mine. Anyway I tested the 5x60, whose ground I connected differently when I was taking off it's glass this weekend, and it didn't glow when I plugged it into a digital timer that had made it glow previously. So now I'm off to go grab my BS to redo the grounding. If it stops I'll tell you what I did.

^^ yeah Fran will confirm this soon IMO.....and the good eyes on Rasser spotted the ground fault within the panels/mass rep.....it's an easy fix

I assume the panel has metal case? Connect some speaker wire onto a metal screw on the panel and connect the other end to a metal water pipe. If the panel goes dark, you have a ground issue or high humidity that may be allowing slight current leaks. LEDs don't need much.

Yeah it was the way it was grounded. I wish I remembered the way it was grounded before I took it apart to clean, cause it was not having any dimming issues in the grow tent before. You probably have to open the case and my 2 BS240s are slightly different from each other so I can't just right you a FAQ or something without seeing a photo or two. But that's all up to you. The one I fixed is my original 2010 version that has a very long screw that goes through the whole fan and the other Blackstar's screw only goes halfway through, so the way I grounded each is a little different and I think how the fans are mounted are important too. So thanks Kush for starting this post, (and everyone else who responded too), that led to me getting my panels properly grounded and my digital timers back in the game. and and for all!

Interesting!

My controllers don't have an earth wire on them but my metal chassis certainly does! That's electronics 101.

Funny design those controllers have it seems.

FranJan said:

Yeah it was the way it was grounded. I wish I remembered the way it was grounded before I took it apart to clean, cause it was not having any dimming issues in the grow tent before. You probably have to open the case and my 2 BS240s are slightly different from each other so I can't just right you a FAQ or something without seeing a photo or two. But that's all up to you. The one I fixed is my original 2010 version that has a very long screw that goes through the whole fan and the other Blackstar's screw only goes halfway through, so the way I grounded each is a little different and I think how the fans are mounted are important too. So thanks Kush for starting this post, (and everyone else who responded too), that led to me getting my panels properly grounded and my digital timers back in the game. and and for all!

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Well, I just took them both apart and they were both grounded differently also. One was grounded to the plastic frame of the middle fan, so I put a metal washer in between the plastic frame and ground wire. The other was grounded to the metal chassis but it was a bit loose, so I tightened the heck out of it. Plugged them both back into the timer, shut it off and still has a dim glow . I don't know what else to do besides manually unplugging them. I even pulled out the outlet in case my outlet tester was wrong but it's wired up correctly.

Hey Kush, I had to ground both my 240s differently and hese are the ways that worked for me. Maybe this will help.

One way was to put a washer on the outside of the fan case on the screw you are going to ground the power to. Then where the fan is bolted on top I put another washer, then the ground and tightened the bolt on it. I think the washer on the outside connects the screw to the case well enough to ground to it, but like I've said before I'm no electrician. Also this was the 240 that wouldn't turn off so hopefully this is the way that works for you. The other way was to put a series of washers and bolts in the middle of the fan mounting screw with the ground wire sandwiched in between. The only reason I did it this way was the fans on this panel mounted to the case differently than my other LED panels and it worked without having to put a washer on the outside of the case I should add. Maybe this will help. It's an annoying problem but stick to it Kush, you'll get there.

I had my blackstar 240 in a cabinet on a regular timer plugged in a surge protector, as far as I know everything was fine coze I got a successful crop out of it, but now I had it plugged in the same timer directly in the wall just to finish one plant and I realised my blackstar did the same thing as yours. So I will have to try again through the surge protector to see if it fix the problem but anyway blackstar is the only light I have with this problem. Its not your fault bud, .... lighthouse just cant make it work... every other LEDs I have, even the cheap UFO, dont have this problem, worked with every timers...

Endur0xX said:

lighthouse just cant make it work...

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My Blackstars didn't do it until I screwed with them, though both my 5x60s did. It's that generic Chinese housing and I guess unskilled overworked laborers putting them together. Blackstar doesn't build those cases, they just order them and put their LED panel into it, though it doesn't make it OK that they don't know how to ground them properly, as in your case probably. Good Luck with that End!

I took them apart and tried to screw with the ground connections inside, one was indeed grounded poorly but the other was fine. They still stay lit dimly as they did before so I just started manually unplugging the timer. Right after that they started developing flowers (3 weeks after 12/12 switch). Well a couple weeks after that I forgot to unplug the timers a few times, and didn't seem that anything was affected so now I don't even unplug them and the plants are flowering just fine. I'm thinking the small amount of light delayed my flowering, but once flowering was kicked into gear, the small amount of light doesn't matter as much. I would still like to know how to correct the issue, but my buds are growing by like 25% daily so I'm leaving it alone for now.