Power Up
It is advised to send control levels of 0 intensity to all pixels prior to powering up. Powering up with pixels already receiving data will cause an instant change in intensity, which will increase the inrush current spike and potentially lead to the circuit breakers protecting your installation from tripping.
To further reduce the chance of breakers being tripped by inrush current, the power-up of the system should be staggered across smaller sections with a time delay to minimise the peak inrush current at any one time.
Power Down
Sending 0 intensity to all pixels before power off is less critical than at power-up; however, fading to black before powering down results in an optimal visual outcome and is strongly recommended. Without fading to black first, you cannot be sure that all LEDs will turn off at the same time (due to capacitance held in the PSU).
Is there a system that allows me to achieve this quickly?
Using the ENTTEC S-Play schedules feature, you can fade your lighting on and off and use its inbuilt relays to control high power contactors to power your pixel power supplies when all pixels are set to 0 intensity.
Recommendation
If you are scheduling the power up and power down of your installation, for an optimum visual outcome, it’s recommended that the pixel controllers and data infrastructure remains powered continuously. This ensures that when the pixels are powered up, control data is already being sent, and your pixels will not be left in a state without information whilst the controllers still boot.
If the pixel controllers are powered up and down with the pixels, there is likely to be an unknown state where random pixels may illuminate (caused by static in the line) until the entire system is online. Consequently, we recommend pixel controllers and data infrastructure are powered separately from the LED pixels that will be powered.
If the infrastructure is power cycled with the dots, it's likely to take up to 7 seconds before devices have booted, established a network link, and begin to send data.
Pixel Standby State
Different pixel protocols have other standby states. This can range from a test sequence, a static scene or all pixels at 0 intensity.
For example, the Smart PXL range’s standby state is all pixels blue. By ensuring data is already being sent at the point of powering up the pixels, you can avoid this standby state from being seen.