LED 'posh' dimmable fittings for control from stage dimmers

[paulears]

Got a strange request. A hotel with a smallish stage - think function band and weddings. They have some old Act 6 dimmers, but as their stage lighting is all now LED DMX, there is nothing plugged into the dimmers, but they are still wired in. The audience area is having new aircon, needing a new ceiling so they're wondering if they can source some 'posh' looking interesting fittings that are 1. LED, and 2. Able to be powered and dimmed from the Act6 dimmers. I'm really struggling as I've found plenty of larger nice looking interesting panels, pendants and in ceiling LED units but hardly any can be dimmed. The spec usually simply says Dimmable:No. The few that are multi coloured have useless small remote controls and need proper 240V permanent supplies.

 

my enquiries to the manufacturers seem confused. A couple responded with lists of dimmable fixtures, but they're mainly in ceiling downlighters and I'm looking for larger, with odd shapes and just a bit more special to look at. there must be dimmable LED fittings out there, but I'm back useless answers from most - Yes our XYZ fitting does dim but cannot be dimmed. Doesn't help at all. I found some that were multicolour and looked like a musical clef, but turned out to have a remote control and NOT be remotely dimmable. I suspect Google translate is the culprit at the other end.

[timsabre]

An Act 6 dimmer will not properly dim a dimmable LED fitting even if you could find something suitable. You will get flickering/strobing and the fitting might latch on at full sometimes. You can sometimes make it work better by putting a hidden tungsten load on as well, but really they would be on a hiding to nothing and I would advise them not to do it.

 

Best thing would be to find a fitting that uses an external PSU and put in a PWM tape driver to do the dimming.

Or if it must be mains dimmable get some Varilight trailing edge dimmers installed which will work properly with dimmable LED.

 

Edited October 15, 2019 by timsabre

[sandall]

Repurpose the Act-6s as stage weights or bollards & either look for DMX-controlled fittings or follow Tim's suggestion of trailing-edge dimmers. Swapping my old d0m3stic dimmers for BG modules gives a flicker-free fade down to about 10% - presumably a hotel doesn't need a "houselights" smooth fade to black - more the odd dim & bright states as presets? Edited October 15, 2019 by sandall

[paulears]

Yes - that's pretty much it! This still seems to require the decorative light fittings to be opened and rewired to be able to use a PWM driver, so more complicated than I hoped. Clearly the people selling these things seem to be pretty clueless. I had hoped there was a simple solution, but looks like all the nicer fittings will need mods - which won't please the owner I suspect. I think I need to find a way to not be involved, but a relative at the hotel put me in the frame thinking my lighting is similar to their lighting!

[Tomo]

If they don't need to dim all the way to zero, there are a lot of retrofit dimmable LED lamps which will dim pretty well down to "quite low" on most reverse-phase dimmers.

 

Those could be fitted to almost any nice-looking fitting that takes bayonet, ES or SES lamps.

 

They'll need new dimmers though, as while while most of them will also run from an SCR dimmer like an Act6, they won't go anywhere near as low and are likely to mishave quite badly below *ahem* percentage.

You have to set a significant 'knee' to avoid the bad zone.

- Note that the behaviour of these lamps often varies wildly depending on how many are on the circuit, and more is not always better!

 

They also tend to flicker like crazy when they start 'wearing out'.

 

While they often claim ridiculously long lifetimes, that is usually only the diodes. The rest of the electronics will fail much earlier.

 

The fade-to-warm ones I use at home (Philips DimTone) are quite nice, but they're now starting to die and have only done around 6000 hours.

They're no longer manufactured of course.

 

Expect to have to replace the entire lot in one go every few years, as you won't find the same ones ever again.

[paulears]

Maybe if I go for just the fitting with dimmable lamps there's some hope. There were just some very attractive ones that were odd shapes and designs, and these seem to use either tape, or randomly placed LED clusters.

[timsabre]

Only if you don't use the Act6. I installed some dimmable LED in our church to run off an existing Lightprocessor Paradim rack and regretted it for a long time after, until I eventually replaced the dimmers with some reverse phase / trailing edge ones to stop the "misbehaviour" as Tomo puts it. Edited October 15, 2019 by timsabre

[KevinE]

Osram do special leading-edge thyristor dimmable GLS led lamps, I've got some in my lounge as I have a dimmer switch that works off my TV remote and I didnt want to change it. They work exceedingly well, no flicker. Edited October 15, 2019 by KevinE

[sandall]

The fade-to-warm ones I use at home (Philips DimTone) are quite nice, but they're now starting to die and have only done around 6000 hours.

They're no longer manufactured of course.

That's rather sad, as those are the ones I've started using. Still, that's better than the Halogen GU10s they replaced - even the Philips ones only lasted a few months :(