Installer Troubleshooting Guide

24V System
Version 1.0
Table of Contents
General Guidelines
Lights not turning on / not responding to commands
Lights work up until bulb X, then they don’t work after that on the data line
Control board not powering up/flashing power light/no access point visible
When I turn the lights on to bright (cool) white the lights come on briefly then turn off
Single bulb is the wrong color or doesn’t show certain colors
Single bulb is on when it should be off
All the bulbs in the string are multi-colored when set to one color
Section of a string is flickering/showing random colors
System (or Data output) Freezes when going to color white (or teal or magenta or yellow)
All the lights flash on and off 1 to 2 times per second
De-Rating for long wire runs
Long Starter Run
No cloud connectivity
Intermittent cloud connectivity
Revision History
Version Date Changes

1 2023-08-24 Initial release

2
General Guidelines
Always try to find the minimum configuration where the problem still happens. This makes
finding the source of the problem much easier, because there are less variables.

For example: If all the strings are flickering weird colors, try disconnecting all the strings except
the first one. If only one string works, you’ll know it’s an issue with the remaining strings
causing the problem. If only one string still misbehaves, you’ll know it’s a problem with the data
from the CLC to the first string.

Lights not turning on / not responding to commands

1. Check that the direction of data flow is correct. The male connector is the start of the
string, and the female connector is the end - also the data direction is marked on the
regulators boxes in the middle of each light string Data can only flow in one direction, so
if they are installed backwards, the lights won’t work at all.
2. Check that the system has power and is connected online. Two green lights on the
circuit board? DC voltage out of the power supply should read roughly 24V. This can be
measured across the V+ (VIN) and V- (GND) on the control board.
3. Check the outputs on the controller. Test this using a short pigtail connected to a female
connector with a string of lights at the control box. (remember that only data outputs with
bulbs set in the settings menu will drive lights - you can check the app)
4. If the lights work on your test, next try changing out the first light string on that data line.
Only connect the start, don't connect it to the rest of the lights yet. Does that string light
up? If the new string doesn't light up, then the issue is in the wire.
5. If it lights up, plug in the rest of the lights after it. Do they turn on? if so, you're good to
go. If the lights don't turn on AND the new string you just put in turns off, then there's
most likely a short in the power lines somewhere downstream. If the lights don't turn on,
but the string you just put in stays on, then move down the line and replace the next
string....etc.
Lights work up until bulb X, then they don’t work
after that on the data line
Usually, this will happen during installation when you reach a string length of more than 200
bulbs. By default, each output is set for 200 bulbs. After the 200th bulb, they will not respond.

1. Go into the controller’s settings and increase the number of bulbs for that data line (max
is 600 bulbs per data line).
2. If the lights stop at an isolator, the issue is very likely that there is no power going to the
section of lights after the isolator. Ensure a power tap has been inserted after the
isolator and is connected back to a power supply.
3. If the system is set for enough bulbs, but it still stops at a certain point, most likely the
issue is a bad bulb, or bad connection. Try changing the string where the bulbs stop
responding for a new one.
4. Try changing the string before where the bulbs stop responding.
5. If this is happening at a jump, then there’s a good chance that the jump is the culprit.
Check the connections at each end of the jump. If these are good then test for continuity
in the jump wire.

Control board not powering up/flashing power

light/no access point visible
This is indicative of the power supply cycling on and off due to a short.
1. Disconnect output lines (data lines and power lines) in the control box one at a time,
checking after disconnecting each one if the board powers on. If the board powers on
after disconnecting an output line, then there is a short somewhere on this output line.
2. If this does not work make sure that the power supply is outputting 24V to the controller
by using a multimeter in DC Voltage mode. If it’s not, you potentially have a bad power
supply, or the plug that it’s plugged into is not functioning or turned off at the breaker.
3. If it is outputting 24V of DC to the controller board and there’s still no lights on the control
board with nothing else plugged in, you likely have a faulty control board.
When I turn the lights on to bright (cool) white the
lights come on briefly then turn off
This typically is caused by a system that has more lights than the installed power supplies can
handle.
1. Determine the number of bulbs in the system using the LED strings page in the app or
getting an estimate based on the number of linear feet track multiplied by 1.5 to get the
number of bulbs. There needs to be a power supply for every 225 bulbs. Therefore, a
system with 272 bulbs would need two power supplies.
2. If the correct number of power supplies are installed, ensure that the power line(s)
connected to each power supply is not supporting more than 225 bulbs. If a power
supply is supporting more than 225 bulbs then some of these bulbs will need to be
powered by a power wire connected to another power supply and isolated with an
isolator.

Single bulb is the wrong color or doesn’t show certain

colors
1. If this bulb is at the end of a data line, it could be that the data line is set for too few
bulbs. Go into the bulbs settings, and increase the number of bulbs for this data line.

2. If not, this is most likely a bulb where either the Red, Green or Blue element has failed.
The string should be replaced. If, for example, the system is set to white, but this
particular bulb is showing a teal color, then the Red element has probably failed and it’s
only showing the blue and green elements. This can be verified by setting the color to
Red, which should just have this bulb show off.

Single bulb is on when it should be off

1. If this bulb is at the end of a data line, it could be that the data line is set for too few
bulbs. Go into the bulbs settings, and increase the number of bulbs for this data line.

2. If not, this is most likely a bulb where either the Red, Green or Blue element has failed
and the single element is stuck in the on position. The string should be replaced.
All the bulbs in the string are multi-colored when set
to one color
This is most often caused by the bulbs being set to the wrong type in the app.

1. Go under settings (three dots in upper right corner).

2. select your device form menu.
3. select bulb type.
4. choose SC24-GEN1 and hit save.
5. Go back to color picker and choose a color to verify the fix.

Section of a string is flickering/showing random

colors
This type of behavior is caused by a corrupted data signal to the lights. This can be caused by
many different things, so we need to figure out where the issue is. Here’s the potential culprits: -
Damaged output on the controller
- Damaged wire (screw through wire, damaged sheath)
- Damaged communication IC in a bulb
- Jump that’s too long or has a weak connection in it
- Voltage too low

1. Eliminate the controller as the cause:

a. Check the data output on the controller. Test this using a short pigtail with a starter
connected to a known good string of lights at the control box. (remember that
only data outputs with bulbs set in the settings menu will drive lights)
b. Use a known good output on the controller to test the line that isn’t working
properly. For example: your line on data 1 is working fine on the lower level of
the house, but the upper level, which is connected to data 2 is flickering. Try
plugging the upper level data into data 1, because you know that currently is
working to drive the lower level. If the upper level now works, then you know
the issue is the data 2 output on the controller. Just switch the upper level to
data 3 and update the bulb count on the controller accordingly.

2. Eliminate the power supply as the cause:

a. Check the DC voltage coming out of the power supply. It should be roughly 24V.
b. If the power is too low, check that there aren’t too many lights connected to the
power supply. If too much current is being drawn from the power supply, the
voltage will drop. A single 96 Watt power supply should be able to safely power
about 225 bulbs (about 150 feet).
3. Test the first light string of that data line
a. If the lights work on your test at the controller, next try changing out the first light
string on that data line on the house. Only connect the start, don't connect it to
the rest of the lights yet. Does that string light up? If the new string doesn't light
up, then the issue is in the wire.

4. Check the wire

a. If the controller output has been tested and is known-good, and you’ve put in a
new known-good light at the start of the string, the only things left are the wire
between the controller and the first light, and the starter connector.
b. Check the wire with a multimeter for shorts between any of the conductors
c. Check the voltage across the V+ and V- pins is roughly 24V
d. Check that the starter connector is wired properly and crimped well to the data
line.

5. The flickering starts after a jump

a. If the flickering starts after a jump, there’s a good chance that the jump might be
the issue.
b. How long is the jump? If it’s over about 20ft using pre-made jumps or if it’s made
on site 3 conductor wire, it may require a signal booster to drive the signal for the
longer wire distance.
c. Is there power drop? If the system has a long starter wire and long jumps and is
running near its limit of 150 feet of lights it’s possible you’re out of power for the
last strings. If you find that on red color everything is fine, but when switching to
bright white the strings near the end of the system behave erratically it’s likely a
power issue. The red, green, and blue colors use a fraction of the power that
bright white uses.
System (or Data output) Freezes when going to color
white (or teal or magenta or yellow)

If you power off the system then power it back on and you’re able to display red, green and blue
without issue but then it freezes going to white the issue is likely with data being corrupted
between the controller and first string.

This typically happens with a long starter wire. White pulls more power than red/green/blue, and
when all the LEDs turn white there’s a voltage drop along the starter wire run and then any data
updates after that don’t get through. There’s two fixes for this:
1. If the system handles all white without flickering (or turning on and off) you have enough
power to power the lights. In this case you can use a signal booster mid-way through
your starter line to re-boost the data.
2. Another option to lessen the voltage drop is to move some of the light strings near the
end of the line to another power supply.

All the lights flash on and off 1 to 2 times per second

This suggests that too much current is being drawn from the power supply and it’s going into self
protection mode. Check:
1. Are you using more than 100ft of starter and more than 150ft of lights?
2. Are you using more than 125ft of starter and lots of strings (see the De-rating for long wire runs
section).
3. Is it possible a cable in the light string has shorted? It’s best here to try to isolate the problem by
disconnecting one data output at a time to find which string is causing the issue, then disconnect
sections of the problematic string to find which string or run of wire is problematic.
De-Rating for long wire runs

In rare cases, extremely long wire runs can result in data corruption or flickering of the lights.
Use the guidelines from the table below to ensure reliable operation:

Example: If you have 100 ft of starter wire and four 25 foot jumps (200ft of wire total) you should
not have more than 120 feet of lights powered via that wire.

De-rating Table 18AWG/3C Starter wire:

Starter + Total Jump Max lighting powered on this wire

Up to 125ft 150 ft of lights (25 x 9-bulb strings)

Up to 200ft 120 ft of lights (20 x 9-bulb strings)

Up to 250ft 90 ft of lights (15 x 9-bulb strings)

De-rating Table 18AWG/2C Auxiliary power wire:

Aux power wire + Total Max lighting powered on this wire
Jump

Up to 150ft 150 ft of lights (25 x 9-bulb strings)

Up to 200ft 132 ft of lights (22 x 9-bulb strings)

Up to 250ft 120ft of lights (20x 9-bulb strings)

Long Starter Run

If you need a long starter, say 200ft, you will need to splice in a signal booster near the middle of
your starter wire to maintain data integrity. Using this much starter wire will reduce the system
size on that controller output to a maximum of 120 feet of lights.
No cloud connectivity
This would be where the controller is connected to a WiFi network (LED Flashing green) but not
able to connect to our server. This generally means that something on the local network is
preventing the Celebright controller from talking to the rest of the internet.
1. Check the signal strength of the connection. It should be -75dB or better to have a
reliable connection.
2. Reboot the router. Sometimes routers can get into a state where they are unable to
allocate IP addresses to new devices or are unable to process the data packets through
the network. A reboot should solve this problem, since it’s in volatile memory.
3. Check router is not limiting communication (ie. MAC filtering)
4. Ensure that ports 80, 443 and 8883 are not being blocked by the router or firewall on the
network.
5. Some routers are configured to not allow connected devices online without explicitly
being granted access. If this is the case, this will need to be done for the Celebright
controller in the router’s configuration interface.
6. Some routers provide 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks on the same SSID which can be
problematic for devices that only connect on 2.4 GHz networks. What may help, if this is
not already the setup, is having the router provide different SSID's for the 2.4 GHz and 5
GHz networks rather than the only one SSID for both. This would mean renaming the
SSID for one of the networks and reconfiguring any devices using the renamed network
to connect using the new SSID.
7. Set up a “Guest” wireless network and connect the controller to that. Most routers give
you the option of setting up a guest network that is a network not linked with the default
network(s) on the router. The guest network will get the controller online and let the user
control their lights via the cloud. In order to control the lights via local mode the user
would need to connect to the guest network as well.
Intermittent cloud connectivity
The controller is connected to the cloud sometimes, but then shows offline sometimes. This is
usually caused by poor signal strength to the WiFi network, or a poor internet connection for the
WiFi network in general.
1. Check the signal strength of the connection. It should be -75dB or better to have a
reliable connection.
2. Reboot the router. Sometimes routers can get into a state where they are dropping
packets and this can result in intermittent connectivity. Rebooting usually recovers from
this state.
3. Connect to the network with your phone standing next to the controller and run a speed
test. ( https://www.speedtest.net/ ) You should expect upload and download speeds of at
least 5 Mbps and a ping of less than 50ms for pretty much any home network in North
America. If the numbers are lower than this, there may be an issue with the network.
4. Make an IP reservation for the Celebright device. This would ensure the device always
get the same ip address and that the ip address can't be given to any other device
thereby avoiding any ip address collisions which can cause connectivity issues. To do
this you will need to know the MAC address of the device which can be found on the
controller config page. (Connect to access point and navigate to 192.168.4.1)
5. Some routers provide 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks on the same SSID which can be
problematic for devices that only connect on 2.4 GHz networks. What may help, if this is
not already the setup, is having the router provide different SSID's for the 2.4 GHz and 5
GHz networks rather than the only one SSID for both. This would mean renaming the
SSID for one of the networks and reconfiguring any devices using the renamed network
to connect using the new SSID.
6. Set up a “Guest” wireless network and connect the controller to that. Most routers give
you the option of setting up a guest network that is a network not linked with the default
network(s) on the router. The guest network will get the controller online and let the user
control their lights via the cloud. In order to control the lights via local mode the user
would need to connect to the guest network as well.