Dimmer Switch

[ban-all-sheds]

Hi,

I'm trying to set up a simple one-way dimmer switch to control the speed of a windscreen wiper motor from a 12v car battery. I'm using a 2 core cable (live and neutral) and just cant seem to get it wired properly!

Whatever made you think that a dimmer designed to work with 230V AC would be of any use in a 12V DC environment?

I've cut the cable and fed both of the live wires to the live port and both of the neutral to the neutral (as it shows on the instructions) but I just cant get it to slow down. Any ideas??

The instructions do not show that. No light switch, including a dimmer, requires a neutral. Read them again, and you'll see that they tell you to connect the live and the load.

But as Breezer has asked - why are you trying to do this? Why do you want your wiper motor to run slowly? Intermittently, yes, for when the rain is light - this is now a standard feature on most cars, but other than 2-speed wipers (normal and fast for when the rain is v. heavy) I've never heard of anybody using a slow speed to deal with light rain.

Kendor has kindly pointed you at a number of kits, ready-built products and circuit diagrams for you to build your own controller. You say that you want to keep the cost down, but all of those options are going to cost about the same as a tank of petrol.

You have shown that you have no idea how dimmer switches work, and you say that you're a novice when it comes to electrics, and now you're going to go back to your drawing board to try and outhink all the manufacturers of motor speed controllers even though you don't even know, for example, the size of the load you wish to control.

Good luck.