Light dimmers / LED

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gzt

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#271773 26-May-2020 16:49

I'm thinking of installing several dimmers. Are there any recommended / or to avoid?

Dimmable LEDs. Max wattage on any one switch less than 50W. Most plates have two switches. I'd like to think the max wattage means the dimmers cost less. ; ).

Something that integrates with Google Home or Hue would be nice. In practice I'm very likely to go cheapish safe and manual one switch at a time.

snnet

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#2491982 26-May-2020 17:46

Apart from the automation integration, for turn style dimming you want something like MEDM/LEDSMART dimmers - they get the most out of dimming from 0% to 100% for most LED fittings.

If you want automation consider z-wave/fibaro or something similar. You may need load correction devices for some fittings with anything other than the dimmer mentioned above as they will probably either glow when off or not dim enough

tomgeeknz

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#2491985 26-May-2020 17:52

Worth a quick chat to Andreas at https://www.futuresystems.co.nz/ - I've got these switches throughout my house, simple google home integration. Unfortunately it seems that they only do a single pole dimming switch.

richms

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#2491990 26-May-2020 18:02

brilliant smart in aussie have some interesting looking modules that will go into the typical clipsal/hpm style plates that are very very common.

https://www.brilliantsmart.com.au/smart-products/electrical/smart-mech/

Not seen them for sale locally yet, but if you badger them they might wake up to the demand and decide to do all the compliance BS that local sellers need ontop of what they need for Aussie and get them on the market here.

Richard rich.ms

timmmay

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#2492001 26-May-2020 18:28

Buy dimmers that are sold as matched to the lights. I tried three kinds of dimmers on LEDs advertised as "dimmable" but none worked well: flicking, noise, etc. I got rid of the dimmable drivers and put up with the high light levels.

richms

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#2492008 26-May-2020 18:35

most dimmers dont have a neutral connection, so their power is reliant on the light conducting enough, and they have no idea of what the voltage is when they are on so either use crude analog timing circuit to just turn off and on based on when they see a zero crossing of the current flow which changes as the lamps change in brightness, or they have fancy microcontroller based stuff that will zero in on timing that leads to no variation of things but will take time to stabalize (not too long normally)

With a neutral they have better control of things, so if you were only trying 2 wire dimmers thats probably the problem. But they are popular because so many places are wired with no neutral in the switches in the past and that leads to returns.

Richard rich.ms