I extended the wires in the Hue Ensis
Recently, I moved into an apartment with high ceilings (3,5 meters to the peak). I was very interested in getting a Hue Ensis, but the max wire length of 1,57 meters was not enough, as I wanted the lamp over the dining table to hang lower than 2 meters above the floor. Scouring Reddit, I was not able to find any solutions. Therefore, I bought a defective lamp on Facebook MarketPlace, fixed it, and tore it apart to see if there was a way of extending/switching out the wires (Spoiler alert: It worked).
The white Ensis in the picture hangs with almost maximum extended wires (The stock wires) at 1,57 meters from the top of the power unit in the ceiling to the lower edge of the lamp.
The black Ensis hangs 2,02 meters from the top of the power unit in the ceiling to the lower edge of the lamp.
Due to the gradient of the ceiling, I made some sloped wooden blocks that first attach to the ceiling, providing a level mounting plate for the Ensis power unit, as well as a way to route the wires from the power unit to the electrical outlet.
The method
Taking apart the Ensis is both tricky and relatively straightforward. There aren't many parts, but removing the wires requires some finagling. I consulted the disassembly manual, but it is a little light on details: Ensis Disassembly Manual
You remove the end caps by pressing firmly at the mounting point where the vertical line is - I used a plastic tyre iron for a bicycle to press into the gap between the end cap and the Ensis body.
Inside the end cap you will find a little PCB - this is the Hue LED control unit. It is connected with two wires carrying 24 V DC from the power unit in the ceiling and a connector for the LED strip. This is the same for the other end cap, with each unit powering/controlling either the top or bottom LED strip.
Remove all wires and set aside the chip. The black and red wires are a little difficult to remove if you don't know what to do. It is recommended to use a WAGO #2065 tool, but I simply applied some pressure on the little tap at each terminal with a small flathead screwdriver (When reconnecting the wires, you simply slide the wire into the terminal). PS: I noted which chip controlled what light, to avoid having to rename them in the Hue app.
Now to get the wires loose, you will need to cut the black and red wires from the two LED driver/converters up and the power unit. Make sure you leave some wire for soldering your new wires later.
Now you can remove the opaque acrylic strips from the top and the bottom. Removing the top strip with wire holes requires some of the aforementioned finagling. After this step you should now have access to the wires and have all LED strips visible.
Here, the mounting method is visible, the wires are routed into these metal pull reliefs, which holds the body of the lamp. These metal plates are 1,5 mm thick and 27mm wide - they slide into an additional groove cut body of the lamp. As seen the wires enters the body into a central compartment between the two LED strip compartments, from where it is routed to the LED Strip control PCBs.
Now to the Rabbithole of the Wire Problem
Credit to the designers of the lamp - the wires is ingeniously designed. Inside the transparent PTFE tube there are two wires for the DC current. The one carrying the positive is a copper wire (seems like 22 American Wire Gauge AWG), but the negative is simply a steel wire, of a larger gauge. This steel wire provides both structural integrity and the negative electrical path. This means that the wire is incredibly thin at only 2,8mm in diameter.
Finding wire like this proved to be extremely hard, at least where I am based, therefore I opted for a 5,6 mm transparent wire, with two 0,75mm^(2) conductors within. This wire is much thicker, but is also rated for 2,2 kg of lamp weight, and with two wires, that is enough for the approx. 2,4 kg Ensis body. However, this required new wire pull reliefs.
Therefore I ground some metal washers to the desired 27mm width dimension, added some rubber cable grommets and passed the wire through. This was slid into the groove, with plenty more finagling required here. I locked the wire with a 3D Printed Wire Strain Relief with the threading removed (see next picture). Additionally, as seen from the picture, I routed two 22 AWG wires through the hole in the body in to central compartment and over to the LED strip control PCB.
After this part, all that is left is to solder the wires from the LED strip controller to the wires in the pull relief and reconnect the wires to the LED strip controller. I chose to solder them as the 2x0,75mm^(2) is too thick to go into the central compartment. Make sure you leave enough wire length to achieve your desired height.
The opaque Acrylic strips
This is the final boss of finagling, and was a little like assembling an engine through the exhaust pipe...
The top acrylic strips has wire holes, I passed the right most wire through the correct hole and slid the acrylic strip into its groove. Then to the other wire I soldered a small wire loop (see next picture) which I could get with a tweezer and pull it through the other hole after the arcylic strips is slid all the way into place.
Now connect to the ceiling power unit, routing the cable through the strain reliefs marked in Green here:
Next, solder the wires to the correct positive/negative terminals of the DC LED Driver/converter. Do this for both wires. What wire connects to what driver does not matter.
Follow the regular instructions on how to mount the lamp and you are done!!
Death By Annoyance
Upon mounting the lamp, and enjoying the fruits of my labour. One small whiny noise ruined everything in an otherwise completely silent room. I quickly located a small noise from the LED Strip controller, and to my relief somebody also had the same problem, one quoted it as Death By Annoyance.
The solution is rather simple, taken from this post: Ensis Coil Whine
I connected a capacitor in Parallel with the 24 V DC power to the led strip controller.
While the post recommends a smaller 470 µF, I had a 1000 µF rated for 35 Volts, which did the job rather nicely. It does not remove the noise, but signifcantly lowers it. In my opinion I would get a higher rather than a lower capacitance - a 100µF did not seem to do anything. I connected a capacitor at both PCBs in each lamp.
Hope this helps someone.
Please comment if I made any mistakes or left something out.
PS: Apologies for the lack of detailed pictures towards the end of the post. I am not dissassembling the lamp to provide more documentation ;)
- A happy owner of two Hue Ensis