demon_speeding
Active Member
Rewiring my Giesemann Aurora V4 Hybrid Light -
Hello Everyone. I recently posted this to my local club forum and thought it might be helpful to post here as well.
When I purchased the light from a local marine club member he told me that it had some electrical issues and would likely need new ballasts and a power supply. I tested the output of the power supply and it was within the range specified on the label. There are a ton of helpful videos if anyone needs to know how to do this.
The ballasts were the original HEP SD254-58 UNI ballasts. I searched online for a replacement and was only able to find them through the official Giesemann parts store. They were about $120 each, and shipping was incredibly high (I was originally quoted about $80). I decided to try and track down an alternative. I reached out to HEP and was told that those particular ballasts are extremely hard to come by. They were willing to ship me some from the factory in China, but the costs were deep into the $100s of dollars. The manufacturer told me that if I was willing to wait until February there was a shipment going out to a retailer in California and they would add mine to the shipment and they would resell them to me with a minor markup. The actual cost of the ballast was around $10 bucks. I agreed and waited to hear from them. To the manufacturer's credit, they were incredibly helpful. They attempted to find me an alternative (the size was wrong) and stayed in contact for several months (this process started in Nov/22). The reseller dropped the ball and quit communicating with me. I was never able to place the order. Back to square one.
I picked up a set of Sylvania ballasts that were supposed to have the same specs as the original. The wiring was a little different but I was able to get it to work. I have experience with electronics, but I didn't know some of the eccentricities of ballasts.
Once I got them installed I realized they were a tad (like 1mm) too tall. I had to modify the reflector by mounting it on the outside of the rail it connects to, which meant the splash guard no longer fit.
While I was installing the ballast I noticed that the tombstones (the socket where the bulb attaches) were rusty and also needed replacement. I ordered a set from Amazon and worked on getting them installed. The Amazon ones had very brittle legs that would frequently snap off while you pushed them into the housing bracket. I got around this by using long needle nose pliers to hold the legs and push them into the frame.
Once the tombstones and ballasts were installed I booted up the app and tested the lights. The dimming function was sketchy and the lights often flickered or stopped working. You would have to rotate the bulbs in the socket to get them to re-ignite, then they would stay on (until the next morning). It was pretty frustrating, I was not happy with the light at all. My lighting was inconsistent, some days the T5 would work, others it would not. It would often shut off mid-day and I wouldn't be aware until I got home from work.
I circumvented a few of these issues by setting the T5 lights to be either 100% on or off. No ramp up, and no dimming. This seemed to help, but it clearly wasn't working correctly.
I picked up some reference materials from the library and found out that wires in a ballast can only be a certain length before it causes problems. Most ballasts have a warning label that states something to the effect of "blue wires must be under 12 inches" or something similar to give the installer left and right limits on how long wires can be before they run into an issue. My ballasts were old stock and the labels had been damaged, so I missed that. I pulled the spec sheet from the manufacturer and saw that mine were far outside the acceptable limit. I cut the wires down and had less, but not zero issues. I decided to start from scratch and gut the whole thing.
I picked up a set of Advance Mark 7 0-10V IZT2S54D35M ballasts. They had the same electrical specs (found by googling) and the spec sheet showed that they were almost the same size as the original. These were longer, but that didn't matter for my application. I picked them up on Amazon for about $54 each (needed 2, shipping included).
I stripped the light down to bare bones to get a clean install. If you do this, I strongly suggest you photo document everything. Take pictures of the connections, wire colors, ballast placement, screw locations, etc.
When I started my install I realized that the color scheme of the new ballast was totally different than the old ballast, which was totally different from the factory. My new ballast also had 1 less terminal than the old one.
I did a little research and found that the wiring color scheme in Germany varies from many other countries, and it looks like they kind of do their own thing. I wasn't able to track down a good lead on a definitive color chart, so I had to trace all of the wiring and attempt to pair it back to the wiring diagram on the ballast. Once I was able to do that I wired up the new ballast as best I could and I had one purple wire remaining. According to the ballast manufacturer purple is the 1v-10v dimming control switch. According to the light manufacturer purple is a bridge wire that connects voltage between 2 lamps. Needless to say, I was confused. I didn't have an easy way to figure out what this wire went to because it went into a connection block that was sealed and I didn't feel like ripping it apart and risking damage.
I managed to track down a help line for building engineers that was set up by Philips and reached out to them. Apparently this is a common question with an easy solution. Skip the extra wire. Simply cap it off and forget about it. The technology in the new ballast doesn't make use of it.
With that settled I had everything wired up. I should also mention that I ordered new tombstones directly from Giesemann. Their tombstones snapped directly into place, held firmly and put a nice snug fit on the lamps. They look very similar to the Amazon ones, but the quality is miles apart.
I tested the wiring and lo and behold the dimming function worked perfectly. No more rotating the lamps to get a connection, no more turning off during the day, no buzzing sounds, nothing. It was as good as new. The reflectors went back to their original mounting position, splash guards were refitted and the light was hung over the tank with glee. It has worked perfectly from that point on.
Hope this helps someone.
Hello Everyone. I recently posted this to my local club forum and thought it might be helpful to post here as well.
When I purchased the light from a local marine club member he told me that it had some electrical issues and would likely need new ballasts and a power supply. I tested the output of the power supply and it was within the range specified on the label. There are a ton of helpful videos if anyone needs to know how to do this.
The ballasts were the original HEP SD254-58 UNI ballasts. I searched online for a replacement and was only able to find them through the official Giesemann parts store. They were about $120 each, and shipping was incredibly high (I was originally quoted about $80). I decided to try and track down an alternative. I reached out to HEP and was told that those particular ballasts are extremely hard to come by. They were willing to ship me some from the factory in China, but the costs were deep into the $100s of dollars. The manufacturer told me that if I was willing to wait until February there was a shipment going out to a retailer in California and they would add mine to the shipment and they would resell them to me with a minor markup. The actual cost of the ballast was around $10 bucks. I agreed and waited to hear from them. To the manufacturer's credit, they were incredibly helpful. They attempted to find me an alternative (the size was wrong) and stayed in contact for several months (this process started in Nov/22). The reseller dropped the ball and quit communicating with me. I was never able to place the order. Back to square one.
I picked up a set of Sylvania ballasts that were supposed to have the same specs as the original. The wiring was a little different but I was able to get it to work. I have experience with electronics, but I didn't know some of the eccentricities of ballasts.
Once I got them installed I realized they were a tad (like 1mm) too tall. I had to modify the reflector by mounting it on the outside of the rail it connects to, which meant the splash guard no longer fit.
While I was installing the ballast I noticed that the tombstones (the socket where the bulb attaches) were rusty and also needed replacement. I ordered a set from Amazon and worked on getting them installed. The Amazon ones had very brittle legs that would frequently snap off while you pushed them into the housing bracket. I got around this by using long needle nose pliers to hold the legs and push them into the frame.
Once the tombstones and ballasts were installed I booted up the app and tested the lights. The dimming function was sketchy and the lights often flickered or stopped working. You would have to rotate the bulbs in the socket to get them to re-ignite, then they would stay on (until the next morning). It was pretty frustrating, I was not happy with the light at all. My lighting was inconsistent, some days the T5 would work, others it would not. It would often shut off mid-day and I wouldn't be aware until I got home from work.
I circumvented a few of these issues by setting the T5 lights to be either 100% on or off. No ramp up, and no dimming. This seemed to help, but it clearly wasn't working correctly.
I picked up some reference materials from the library and found out that wires in a ballast can only be a certain length before it causes problems. Most ballasts have a warning label that states something to the effect of "blue wires must be under 12 inches" or something similar to give the installer left and right limits on how long wires can be before they run into an issue. My ballasts were old stock and the labels had been damaged, so I missed that. I pulled the spec sheet from the manufacturer and saw that mine were far outside the acceptable limit. I cut the wires down and had less, but not zero issues. I decided to start from scratch and gut the whole thing.
I picked up a set of Advance Mark 7 0-10V IZT2S54D35M ballasts. They had the same electrical specs (found by googling) and the spec sheet showed that they were almost the same size as the original. These were longer, but that didn't matter for my application. I picked them up on Amazon for about $54 each (needed 2, shipping included).
I stripped the light down to bare bones to get a clean install. If you do this, I strongly suggest you photo document everything. Take pictures of the connections, wire colors, ballast placement, screw locations, etc.
When I started my install I realized that the color scheme of the new ballast was totally different than the old ballast, which was totally different from the factory. My new ballast also had 1 less terminal than the old one.
I did a little research and found that the wiring color scheme in Germany varies from many other countries, and it looks like they kind of do their own thing. I wasn't able to track down a good lead on a definitive color chart, so I had to trace all of the wiring and attempt to pair it back to the wiring diagram on the ballast. Once I was able to do that I wired up the new ballast as best I could and I had one purple wire remaining. According to the ballast manufacturer purple is the 1v-10v dimming control switch. According to the light manufacturer purple is a bridge wire that connects voltage between 2 lamps. Needless to say, I was confused. I didn't have an easy way to figure out what this wire went to because it went into a connection block that was sealed and I didn't feel like ripping it apart and risking damage.
I managed to track down a help line for building engineers that was set up by Philips and reached out to them. Apparently this is a common question with an easy solution. Skip the extra wire. Simply cap it off and forget about it. The technology in the new ballast doesn't make use of it.
With that settled I had everything wired up. I should also mention that I ordered new tombstones directly from Giesemann. Their tombstones snapped directly into place, held firmly and put a nice snug fit on the lamps. They look very similar to the Amazon ones, but the quality is miles apart.
I tested the wiring and lo and behold the dimming function worked perfectly. No more rotating the lamps to get a connection, no more turning off during the day, no buzzing sounds, nothing. It was as good as new. The reflectors went back to their original mounting position, splash guards were refitted and the light was hung over the tank with glee. It has worked perfectly from that point on.
Hope this helps someone.
