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High pitch whine on TMC LED tiles

oliverpool said:
I decided to remove the 2 caps myself. and the noise is now gone! I just hate that buzzing sound. It reminds me of the old days when florescence lights became popular and most of them buzz once they get a little older. I am glad this problem is no longer that common.
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what exactly did you do? was it easy?
 
I am slo getting this high pitched noise. What caps need to be removed to stop this noise? can someone plz help before i go crazy
 
So much better now fixed. Running at 65% for seven hours about 5cm from surface with hour ramp up and down. Totally silent. Can now actually experiment with lighting levels without wanting to smash them with a hammer.

Interesting that in two weeks with very reduced lighting basically nothing grew, but nothing apart from HC suffered at all, and algae on stones pretty much disappeared. So need to find a happy medium.

Thank you TMC for sorting and posting back... Could not be happier. Pic of tank to follow.
 
This thread was a pure gold when I searched on these tiles. Knowing about the whine and that it can be rectified. When I phoned them up to get the whine sorted out I was warned that it voids warranty on the unprotected LEDs. When you search these tile second hand on eBay you see a lot of them with two LEDs out, so it's a definite risk to the unit to get rid of the whine. But that whine, my goodness, you can't sit next to it, anywhere between 1%-99% intensity and it will drive you mad.

The whine is only heard when the unit is dimmed therefore in my eyes (ears?) it rendered my 8-way controller not fit for use. Post modification, no whine at any intensity. I only wish there was a protective method for those LEDs that didn't introduce whine even if it added a little more expense to the unit.

This is an image post modification, unit is above my tank currently and running hence the bad photo.
The banding in the image is caused by the unit being dimmed, so photographers take note that shutter speeds need to correspond to the incidence of flicker if shooting below the lights 100% intensity to compensate for the rapid on/off cycles the LEDs produce to give the appearance of being dimmed.

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3801/13847667824_9d53d3411f_c.jpg

It might be worth posting a pic of an in modified unit to show comparison.

Hope this is useful!
 
X3NiTH said:
Hope this is useful!
Click to expand...

More than useful just what I needed removed the two capacitors and low and behold silence it's so nice, this has been driving me crazy. I can now enjoy sitting in front of my tank 🙂 thanks for the photo much appreciated!!
 
Pleased I never bought TMC's stuff. Did anyone ever measure the frequency (in kHz) of the whine? Perhaps the guy that was testing them was tuned into his iPad instead!
 
X3NiTH said:
This thread was a pure gold when I searched on these tiles. Knowing about the whine and that it can be rectified. When I phoned them up to get the whine sorted out I was warned that it voids warranty on the unprotected LEDs. When you search these tile second hand on eBay you see a lot of them with two LEDs out, so it's a definite risk to the unit to get rid of the whine. But that whine, my goodness, you can't sit next to it, anywhere between 1%-99% intensity and it will drive you mad.

The whine is only heard when the unit is dimmed therefore in my eyes (ears?) it rendered my 8-way controller not fit for use. Post modification, no whine at any intensity. I only wish there was a protective method for those LEDs that didn't introduce whine even if it added a little more expense to the unit.

This is an image post modification, unit is above my tank currently and running hence the bad photo.
The banding in the image is caused by the unit being dimmed, so photographers take note that shutter speeds need to correspond to the incidence of flicker if shooting below the lights 100% intensity to compensate for the rapid on/off cycles the LEDs produce to give the appearance of being dimmed.

https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3801/13847667824_9d53d3411f_c.jpg

It might be worth posting a pic of an in modified unit to show comparison.

Hope this is useful!
Click to expand...

X3NiTH can I just ask if you still have all of your LED's working after making this change, I believe TMC are saying that this is the only fix for the buzzing and from what I see in your picture you have removed the capacitors from C5 & C2 am i right ?

I have just purchased one of these tiles and I have the buzzing noise, for me its quite faint but I know its there and after googling it I found all the others that have the same issues.

Its quite annoying but i'll do a DIY fix on C2 & C5 if it works well enough, I assume you just pulled them off the circuit board ?
 
I sent my tile back to TMC and they carried out the modification. At present all LEDs are functional (probably jinxed it by saying that), I'm running it at low intensity 20% in the centre and 30% on the perimeter, 9 hour photoperiod on the perimeter, 8 hour in the centre, includes 30 minute ramp time on both channels, the tile is powered using the 8-way controller.

Warning, modification to the unit will void the warranty, If DIY'ing do not pull the capacitor off, it needs careful de-soldering.

Send it back to TMC and they will modify it for you, although modification still voids the warranty.
 
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