Dimmers for LED lighting

Since LEDs are DC devices there’s no need to use AC dimmers as was done in the past.
We have ordered LED strip lighting (with dimmers) and I’m trying to get my head around what they will provide.
PS: I’m expecting a PWM type dimmer to be installed :smiley:

That would be my guess.

We’ve recently renovated a few rooms and in the process had the electrician put in LED downlights. All those in living rooms, dining room and bedrooms are dimmable. Those in passages etc. aren’t.

My experience with LED dimmers are mixed… even though they are all the same. They seem to need to have a minimum amount of LEDs on a dimmer, where we only have four LEDs on a dimmer, it doesn’t work so lekker. The dimming range is very limited.

Those with more than four are the only ones that works well… reasonably. The bell press dimmers are hateful. They are extremely sensitive. Often times, but not always (at least it also happened consistently when the electrician was here) if you switch off or on other lights on the same circuit as some of those dimmers (those with four LEDs in this case, but it isn’t obvious that this is the explanation here) would just turn off (if they are on, they’d never, empirically at least, go on when off).

When a large load turns on, the LEDs on some of the dimmers would “dip” and come back, but more dim than before. It is irritating when you’ve dimmed it as low as you want it, and now it would be lower.

Also, if the LEDs are dimmed, they flicker a little. Not everybody is sensitive to it, but I am.

And, if the transfer switch is just a little too slow (when the power goes off), the bell press dimmers go off and stay off.

Basically, the bell press dimmers are hateful. The rotary dimmers are better, but still has niggles. I think LED technology still has some way to go on dimmers.

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The retrofit dimmers are almost all in that category.

Strip lights, like under cabinets, and so-on with PWM dimmers perform very nicely. However, most of these are annoying to control. A lot of them come with silly little remotes.

I’m constantly looking for something that works well and is nice to work with. No real luck thus far.

I’ve even considered small DMX dimmers with wired controllers… If the R/$ wasn’t so bad, some would be on the way on Black Friday for testing.

I’ve pretty much decided to fit lamps that give roughly the required light level, and to just forget about dimmers.

For some undercounter lighting, which had a 12VDC supply, I made a dimmer by putting a buck converter inline, and dropping it to 9V. That works VERY well.

I’m also very interested. Please report back when it’s in.

Strip lighting has been installed.
It works fine with on/off control.
However the AC dimmers don’t work. (I was trying to tell them this for quite a while!)
So I looked for a DC dimmer and found this:Other Electronics - Dimmer 12V-24V 8A for Led Strip / Voltage regulator Control **LOCAL STOCK** for sale in Cape Town (ID:536694292)
So far it works like a dream. :smiley: