Eco lighting and dimming

[bailers]

Although I have my Loxone miniserver installed I am still looking at how I tackle dimming! As part of the renovation of my house I am rewireing and fitting new lighting. I have already fitted some 240v ceiling lights (WAF requested) and some 12volt down lighters.

The options I see so far are:

Loxone dimmer modules - pricey but lots of advantages
DMX dimmer packs linked to Loxone dmx extension - cheap but bulky


One other possible option.......
I am intrigued by LED however I have always thought of LED as accent lighting and not the main source of light. I would love to know how people use LED lighting. Do you use 240v fittings or low voltage? How do you tackle dimming? Any good online retailers?
I like the idea of using something like this however I am unsure what type of light fittings it can work with?

http://www.abeltronics.co.uk/product...mount/dim84din

Thanks

Chris

[Vangelis]

A user on here called Toscal is very knowledgable about this subject - Hopefully he will see this thread and respond

[bailers]

A user on here called Toscal is very knowledgable about this subject - Hopefully he will see this thread and respond

Thanks, I also know he likes the look of the Loxone system!

Toscal?.........

[toscal]

LED lighting can be used as main lighting. My kitchen is completely LED. The only part of the house that isn't is my Bedroom, as this uses G9 bulbs and the LED version doesn't fit the light fitting.

Fittings can be 12V AC/DC, or Mains . It depends on what you want and the type of light required. If you PM with what you want to do. ie downlights in kitchen with under cabinet lighting. I can give you an idea of whats possible.
If you click on the website in my signature and then click on the installs page, (you will then need to click on one of the 4 pictures to see the rest of our installs) you can see what is possible and also our design service.

[Wexfordman]

Hi toscal,

Feeling you might regret the open invite, but I have some queries you might be able to advise on. I have in the living room 7x gu10 220v lights, it's the highest load lighting circuit in the house and the most often used. Any suggestions on a dimmable alternative. I am using a velbus vmbdmi unit to dim it at the moment which is a 400w dimmer for inductive or resistive loads.

Regards
Eamon

[philipp.schuster]

Hi Bailers,

One important thing to know about dimming LEDs is that unlike incandescent lights the colour temperature of an LED will not change when dimmed. This means whilst the light output (lux) will vary, you will never get the warm yellowy glow that you get of a GU10 halogen. That said, there are now some LED bulbs that use multiple LEDs that fade in and out at different dim levels to achieve this effect. I am using some Philips DimTone down lights that work in this way with a Loxone Dimmer Extension, but the bulbs themselves are rather pricy so I am waiting for Kosnic to bring out their new range. There are rumours that they took on som ex Philips developers and got something rather similar coming out.

@Toscal: Can you recommend any 12V / 24V DC LED spot lights that can be dimmed using PWM?

All the best,

Philipp

[b33k34]

Hi Bailers,

OThat said, there are now some LED bulbs that use multiple LEDs that fade in and out at different dim levels

I saw these linked on another forum - http://www.4326chris.talktalk.net/du...d%20strips.htm both warm and cool white LEDs on one strip. Presumably you could use this on two channels of a DMX dimmer to alter the temperature and dim level.

[philipp.schuster]

You could indeed.

There are also RGBW (Red, Green, Blue, White) LED strips on the market now to make up for the fact that RGB LED strips cannot produce a warm white.

[toscal]

There are also strips which have cold white and warm white so you can fine tune even further.

[philipp.schuster]

There are also strips which have cold white and warm white so you can fine tune even further.

So 5 channels in one LED strips? RGBWW? wow... I didn't know that.