LED Strip light wired to 'normal' lighting circuit dimmers?

[itsdave]

Hi all,

I have come to this forum as I am struggling to find an answer to some questions I have about LED strips/ribbon lights.

I am looking to use LED ribbon as under counter lighting in my kitchen and also on top of a couple of beams in my sitting room for some soft lighting in the evenings.

In both rooms there are conventional mains lighting cables running from wall mounted switches to the desired location, like a normal lighting circuit.

I know that i will need LED drivers to convert the mains to a 12v supply for the LEDs, but what I cannot figure out is whether I can get a driver to work with my wall mounted dimmer switches so that I can dim the LED lights? So the dimmer would be in the mains circuit prior to the LED driver. I have these at the moment - http://www.neweysonline.co.uk/newle...ay-250w/1051011691/ProductInformation.raction


Is this achievable?

I know there are low voltage dimmers for use in the 12volts circuit, but it would be much neater/convenient to use the existing switch locations if possible.

Any advice would be awesome!

Thanks.

 

[winston1]

No, you can't dim them like that.

 

[RF Lighting]

Yes you can dim your LEDs, providing you use dimmable LED drivers.

You may need to replace the dimmer switch too, as many do not work properly with LED drivers, either by being underloaded, or just incompatible with each other.

There are many manufacturers who make dimmers specifically for dimming LED drivers, and they do not require any alterations to the existing wiring.

 

[itsdave]

Hi RF Lighting,

thanks for that. Can you suggest any reasonable dimmable drivers and dimmer switches? I have had a look on the usual auction site and the dimmable drivers seem to be at least 4 times the price of normal drivers!?

The Dimmer switch on the wall was going to be a 2 gang dimmer, one doing the normal ceiling pendant (5 arm, currently low energy ) and the second doing the LED strips. Any suggestions on a switch that might work in both of these applications, or is that tricky?

Thanks again!

 

[ericmark]

In hot countries like Turkey they have used low energy lighting for a long time to keep the rooms as cool as they can.

They do not use dimming switches but split the lighting 1/3 and 2/3 with separate switches giving three levels of light 1/3, 2/3 and full. This has a marked advantage in that the colour does not change only the amount of light.

To control a LED lamp without changing colour it is switched on and off and the amount of light is dependent on the mark space ratio. The wave form chopping dimmer control can do something similar as long as there is no pulse stretching in the lamp but to avoid the stroboscopic with AC supply pulse stretching giving a smoother near DC to the LED is a good idea also to force extra light out of the LED often they are high frequency pulsed avoiding these lamps really cuts down the options of what can be used.

 

[pjcomp]

Finding the right dimmer for your LEDs can be a voyage of discovery - even the manufacturers have admitted they've been a letdown on this, with too much incompatibility between dimmers and LED lamps. If the dimmer and LED come from the same maker they "should" work together.

PJ