Basic dimming vs automation

flameport said:

ban-all-sheds said:

Is 1-10V or 0-10V really overpriced, overcomplex etc, and, after all these years, really on the verge of disappearing?

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The basic principles are not - but if all you want is dimming then you may as well fit a normal dimmer.

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Except I suggested it as a solution to the problem of a normal dimmer not working.

flameport said:

By the time they have been packaged up into a control system by a manufacturer, they most certainly are overpriced and complex, because they are not just a simple dimmer - all kinds of other useless stuff is added, such as linking to other equipment, panels which can control things from other rooms, multiple saved lighting scenes and all the other useless functions which no one uses after the first day.

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For some reason you keep conflating basic dimming, like this:



with full-blown automation.

flameport said:

Having seen several installations where the latest and greatest stuff was installed when the building was constructed, now 5 / 10 / 15 years later, the parts are failing. Spares cannot be obtained any more, the manufacturer (if they still exist) now makes a whole range of totally incompatible stuff, and because all of the wiring to the switches twisted pair, Cat5 or similar and goes back to a central control cabinet, it's not even possible to replace with normal wiring without ripping the walls and ceilings apart. Or add extra lights / switches without massive disruption.
Domintell being top of that list of fails, but are certainly not the only culprits.

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None of those problems have anything to do with the basic dimming technique used within the automation system. Above you expressed a preference for a "normal dimmer", if someone brought out a dimmer which had a remote controlled motorised pot which proved unreliable, would you start to decry the whole idea of "normal dimmers"?

flameport said:

0-10 systems are not problem free either, as different drivers from different manufacturers may not work in exactly the same way, so with multiple lights in a single room, dimming all of them with one control may result in some dimming more than others, or some turning off before others do. Even if they are all the same today, at some point one or more will need to be replaced.

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Unless things have changed since I last looked into all this (which they could have done, of course), 1-10V dimmers work by providing their own control voltage for the controller, which could just be a simple variable resistor, to control. Not the same thing as 0-10V dimmers which rely entirely on an external device to supply the control voltage.

This is great. Can all of @ban-all-sheds responses be spun off into a separate thread where they can be ignored?