House Light dimmers

[michaelyallop]

We are currently looking to install a simple house light system. We are going to install 18 GU10 240volt down lighters and hopefully install LED GU10's with a maximum wattage of around 200watts. If we used the Equivalent non LED GU10's then it would be around 900watts.

 

Ideally I would like a simple one touch, dim to 0% and once touch dim to 100% with possibly a maximum level set for ambience if needs be.

 

Does anyone know of a simple dimmer or circuit that will do this?

 

I have been looking at domestic switches but they only seem to have 'soft on' i.e. one touch and slowly dims to full, but with a single touch to turn the lights off, not dim.

 

Any other ideas would be great.

 

I am not adverse to creating/soldering my own circuit if needs be.

 

Thanks

[Paul Turner]

Take a look at Anytronics Prodim range,

They also offer some simple DMX interfaces to go with them.

[timsabre]

I have yet to find a triac dimmer that will dim mains LED reliably. They tend to flicker/strobe at low brightness or stick on at full brightness.

IGBT (Trailing edge) dimmers seem to work better - Varilight V-pro (not vari*lite) is a domestic brand which might have a variant that does what you want.

 

Having found a dimmer that works, the other problem you will face is that mains LEDs fade out reasonably nicely with a snap to black at about 20%, but they don't fade in. You have to go to about 40% and wait for the power supply to kick in, at which point they come on quite bright. Or you can leave them on at minimum brightness and they will fade up nicely then. Also all the dimming is in the 30%-50% area of the control.

[Tomo]

LED GU10's

[snip]

dim to 0%

This is simply impossible.

 

There are no LED GU10s whatsoever that dim all the way down to 0%. It doesn't matter what dimmer you try, the dimmable LED lamps simply cannot do this.

It may even be physically impossible for any manufacturer to do this.

 

The better lamps will get down to around 5-10%, below that they snap off and some will flicker.

 

The way to do this is to choose an LED houselight system that has a power supply and a data signal - DMX is best.

 

The three main methods are:

 

• DMX to a (rackmount/wallmount) PSU & LED driver box somewhere, which then connects to the actual fixtures.
  
• DMX and hard power to each individual fixture
  
• Hard power to each fixture, DMX to a radio gizmo
  

If you're after something around the physical size of a GU10, then GDS make some nice ones.

There are probably quite a few others.

 

Whatever you decided to look at, make sure you try a couple of them out to be sure that they really do dim the way you need.

[timsabre]

The GDS lights are great, but very expensive. You're right that power and data is the right way to do it, but it's not the cheap way, and the job kinda sounded low budget.

[michaelyallop]

The GDS lights are great, but very expensive. You're right that power and data is the right way to do it, but it's not the cheap way, and the job kinda sounded low budget.

 

Yeah it is unfortunately. As you know budgets are squeezed at the moment everywhere. If I have to go down the route of non LED Gu10's then so be it.

 

With this in mind, does anyone know of a dimmer, be it domestic or not that will auto dim up and down from a single push button?

 

Thanks for your replies.

 

 

 

[timsabre]

I'd suggest something like the Mode Lighting scenestyle, and use 12V MR16 halogen lamps cos they will last a whole lot longer than GU10's.

 

http://www.scenestyle.co.uk/SS2.html

[michaelyallop]

I'd suggest something like the Mode Lighting scenestyle, and use 12V MR16 halogen lamps cos they will last a whole lot longer than GU10's.

 

http://www.scenestyle.co.uk/SS2.html

 

This looks great thanks. I will look into it.

[Tomo]

If they can be physically larger, there are a lot of quite cheap DMX controlled LED fixtures around the Par56 to Par64 size range.

Obviously you'd need a DMX controller, which would push up the total system price a bit.

 

For tungsten, I'd definitely recommend MR16 over GU10. GU10 tungsten is very fragile and has a lot shorter lamp life than MR16.

 

Most of the 'professional' theatrical dimming systems have external pushbutton 'backup station' controls available that simply wire back to the dimmer rack.

- eg ETC SmartPack has Smartlink button stations, Zero88 Chilli have ChilliNet etc.