Christmas lights through dimmer pack?

[ste]

hey! I'm just wandering about an idea I've had about Christmas lights for my schools talent show on Wednesday, im just wandering if its possible to run Fairy lights through a dimmer pack? which the fairy lights DONT run on a transformer (like these here)

 

thanks

ste

[scjb]

Yes, if no electronics involved. You will need to put a dummy load in parallel with the fairy lights (100W light bulb at a pinch!).

[ste]

mind if I ask why?

 

thanks

ste

[dbuckley]

Dimmers have minimum load requirements, and if your load is less than the minimum required, then the dimmer wont dim properly, it'll flicker. The minimum load should be specified in the dimmer's data.

 

You may not need a dummy load, you may, depends on the dimmer. You can try it without, no harm will be done if it doesnt work, just add a ghost load.

[ste]

ah kk thanks dude!

its a really REALLY old dimmer pack, still using analogue

 

ste

[Stu]

The easiest thing to do would be to use a grelco to add a 500w fresnel/profile/whatever you have left lying around, focussing it into the wing or something similar and putting a dark gel in such as L181 - the spare lantern will help it over the minimum required for the dimmer to function properly, and being focussed into the wing in a dark colour it won't be seen!

 

Mind you a while ago I used bog standard fairy lights on STM and JTM dimmers without a problem so you maybe ok, you'll have to try.

 

HTH,

S

[ste]

kk thanks V much

 

 

ste

[robloxley]

http://www.blue-room.org.uk/index.php?showtopic=16787