MeanWell P Series DO work with APEX & 0-10v

using the 0-10v is a budget way of making the driver dimmable and work if you dont have a pwm controller. A switching power adapter from 1.5-9v will also work to dim with this driver.

 

The purpose of this thread is to inform the use of P series drivers and compatibility of Apex (Neptune Systems) VDM. I am not sure how that would be qualified as budget but the P series will work.

 

It works, but it won't dim down as much as the 0-10v driver, and it may not do it as accurately. If you don't already own a driver, or don't see a reason to switch to a PWM controller in the future, just get the D series. In the case of already having the P series on hand, it'll work just fine.

 

Response from Rapid LED about PWM meanwell drivers

Here is the response I recieved from Rapid Led about using the Neptune Apex with the PWM meanwell drivers.


The P model may work with the Apex depending on the output voltage
ripple and duty cycle.

A 0-10V square wave (PWM) will approximate an analog 10V analog signal
at a 100% duty cycle. This being said, at 100% or thereabout on the
Apex, the P model driver will behave as fully functional.

Although it may work over a range of intensities, we have not tested the
P driver at all with lower duty cycles using an analog (0-10V signal).
Because of this, we cannot guarantee there will not be any damage to the
dimming circuitry leading to premature failure.

All we know is the P driver is designed to work off of a 100Hz-3Khz
0-10V PWM wave/signal. If the output from the VDM approximates this,
the driver might just work with it. Unfortunately, we do not have a VDM
or oscilloscope, which would be required to test this theory. There is
no documentation regarding the P model converting an analog signal.

So I finally found someone that has tried the Mean Well ELN-60-48P with the Apex. I have done a lot of research on the reef angel and was really turned off by the lack of description of the products on their website. Although they were helpful on their website but the more I read up on the Reef Angel the more the tinkering you had to do to make the controller work. Also the tiny screen and lack of options was a deal breaker for me. I really like the look and functionality of the Neptune Apex. So the P drivers will work. But will this slowly destroy the drivers? In my set up I have 9 Drivers, three drivers per channel. I am currently using the PWM controllers from Rapid. They work ok, however they don't have the unlimited dimming functionality that a controller does. So you are sure that the Mean Well ELN-60-48P work with the Neptune Apex?

 

Hey, I am using the 3x ELN-60-48P currently on my Apex system using VDM. So far everything is working great for me.

 

Do you need the VDM module or does the Apex neptune head unit have enough channels to connect 9 drivers with three independent colors? Also does the dimming function act normally or does it misbehave like a naughty school girl? LOL. In all seriousness, why did you need the VDM module? What kind of options does this add?

 

Doesn't the Neptune Apex have 4 independent channels already?

 

Yupp!

Since you only need three independent channels you should be good to go.


Just buy the highest level APEX Controller and it will have the VDM already installed.

 

Awesome. Thanks for the info!

 

No problem!!

Glad to help out.

Please keep us posted with your progress on here.