Electricians: another dimmer question

[Flyoverland Captive]

Buzzing LED track lights; help! New (to me) home. I installed track lights in the main room; all bulbs are dimmable LED GU10 bulbs. I installed an LED-specific dimmer; at anything other than 100% or 10%-ish, the bulbs hum. Shitty dimmer? Anyone recommend a high-quality one that actually does what it’s supposed to do?

[irul&ublo]

I recall that the last time I put some led lights in, the bulb instructions had info on compatible dimmers

Disclaimer...not an electrician

[Flyoverland Captive]

The bulb packaging doesn’t list any dimmers. No info on their website either.

[KQ]

I recall that the last time I put some led lights in, the bulb instructions had info on compatible dimmers

Disclaimer...not an electrician

Had an electrician tell me that not all dimmers work after I complained about a buzzing noise too.

[Flyoverland Captive]

Did he solve your buzzing? If so, any clue what dimmer worked?

[Jethro]

Our go to dimmer for led lights is the Lutron Diva 153cl. It seems to work well for most applications
Is the GU 10 lamp a 120v lamp with no driver or transformer?
Unfortunately, there is a lot of variation in led lamps, and almost endless combinations of lamps and dimmers. Just because a lamp says it’s dimmable, doesn’t mean that it does so well. More than noise, we see problems with flicker/strobing led lamps. You don’t see it with halogens nearly as much since the filament can’t heat and cool as quickly as an Led can cycle

[jackstraw]

Did he solve your buzzing? If so, any clue what dimmer worked?

The problem is the light bulb is speaking Spanish and the dimmer is speaking German, so all you end up with is gibberish.

All LED lightbulbs have a driver...that's a piece of electronics. The dimmer is another piece of electronics. They don't always like to communicate. Old school light bulbs...no electronics involved.

Lutron is the best dimmer. A lot of the led light bulbs suck. Cheap chinese shite.

[Beaver]

Not all dim-able lamps are created equal, not all use the same technology in them. Not all LED compatible dimmers are the same. Since your packaging didn't tell you what kind of dimmer to use you might have to try a few. Lutron Diva, Phillips Hue, are a couple that tend to work. Also, if your circuit is lightly loaded they may buzz, some dimmers have an adjustment screw inside them to accommodate different loads.

[jackstraw]

Not all dim-able lamps are created equal, not all use the same technology in them. Not all LED compatible dimmers are the same. Since your packaging didn't tell you what kind of dimmer to use you might have to try a few. Lutron Diva, Phillips Hue, are a couple that tend to work. Also, if your circuit is lightly loaded they may buzz, some dimmers have an adjustment screw inside them to accommodate different loads.

Yeah, within the nomenclature of Lutron you need CL. C for compact fluorescent and L for LED. Both those style lamps create issues for dimmers because of ballasts and drivers....electronics.

[KQ]

Did he solve your buzzing? If so, any clue what dimmer worked?

The problem is the light bulb is speaking Spanish and the dimmer is speaking German, so all you end up with is gibberish.

All LED lightbulbs have a driver...that's a piece of electronics. The dimmer is another piece of electronics. They don't always like to communicate. Old school light bulbs...no electronics involved.

Lutron is the best dimmer. A lot of the led light bulbs suck. Cheap chinese shite.

What he said. It was a regular chandelier that someone had put LED bulbs in. We switched them out to incandescent and that was that.

[iceman]

So, what was the other, less dim question?

[Flyoverland Captive]

These are the bulbs; straight 120, no low voltage transformer.



No clue about quality, they just had the color range I liked best.

I have no idea what dimmer I have, but I’ll try a Lutron Diva and see if it helps. I could always switch back to halogen, but I’d rather not have to.

[Flyoverland Captive]

So, what was the other, less dim question?

Ha!

Just a previous dimmer issue I had asked about here many years ago. I’d search for it but we know how these forums make that a pain in the ass.

[jackstraw]

These are the bulbs; straight 120, no low voltage transformer.



No clue about quality, they just had the color range I liked best.

I have no idea what dimmer I have, but I’ll try a Lutron Diva and see if it helps. I could always switch back to halogen, but I’d rather not have to.

You should buy the Philips warm glow. Problem with most LED is they don't dim like a traditional lamp. They get less bright, but they don't get warmer. 2700 K is the standard now for resi lamps and when it dims it drops down to 2200 K or so. Less bright and warmer at the same time. That is what the Edison did/does and still does it better.

[Flyoverland Captive]

^^^ Good info; thanks.

[Jethro]

In the early days of LED bulbs/lights, bulb manufacturers and dimmer manufacturers weren’t on the same page when it came to the dimming waveform. Today, most dimmers and Led lamps are forward facing, which means the dimming happens on the rising part of the sine wave. It’s important that the dimmer and lamp are compatible on this. On the other hand, I just installed some Lowe’s 6” retrofit led trims on some existing rotary dimmers and they worked flawlessly. From 100% down to about 10% with no flicker or hum.

My impression of most gu-10 lamps I’d that they are a budget version of 12v MR16 lamps. It’s mostly the fixture quality vs the light bulb quality. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why the 12v MR16 became so popular. I get it for safety reasons with cable and monorail lights, but not recessed cans.

[jackstraw]

^Lowes led trim? No such thing. There's a brand in there somewhere. And I'm sure it did not dim, it just got less bright.

[bobz]

Lutron [CL models] is the best dimmer. A lot of the led light bulbs suck. Cheap chinese shite.

This. And adjust the trimmer on the dimmer appropriate to the bulbs.

And also, LEDs, the best of them, just aren't great for dimming, and that's how it is. They shouldn't buzz, but at best, they don't dim down all that much, and there's going to be some strobing when you do dim them (with a high quality setup, some people won't notice the strobing when dimmed, but some of us do notice).

1) If you want to have different lighting intensities available, the best way to do it is to set up the switching so you can run 30% of the lights, or 70%, or all of them.

2) If you want to run the lights down to some kind of "candlelight" setting, <5% output, for romantic dinner lighting, sipping brandy from a snifter, or getting high while listening to Miles Davis, incandescent is the way to go, ideally using something sort of dim to begin with, and don't use that particular lamp for the room's workhorse lighting, because incandescent puts out far more heat than light, and there are more efficient ways to heat a room.

[warthog]

Lutron Maestro CL is better- better features- they remember your last dimming setting. if you hit them once, they go to that setting. twice, they go full bright. They also have a cool LED glow on the dimmer- very subtle, but helps you find them in the dark.

I am switching my entire house (where it makes sense) to the Lutron Caseta dimmers- they wire up as single pole, and you can add a battery operated remote anywhere, eliminating 3 way and 4 way switches. Totally cool, and totally expensive. I can also control the lights from an app. Very useful when you forget to turn lights off. I can also program certain lights to turn on when I am 1000 ft from the house with my phone.

No buzzing either, but as JS said, that is most likely the light.

[bobz]

^^ I didn't like the Maestro, and I promptly returned them for Divas; I found the fade-in/ fade-out effect annoying, which could be time-reduced but not eliminated (I should note that this was 7 years ago, and they might have improved them since then).

[exsparky]

In the early days of LED bulbs/lights, bulb manufacturers and dimmer manufacturers weren’t on the same page when it came to the dimming waveform. Today, most dimmers and Led lamps are forward facing, which means the dimming happens on the rising part of the sine wave. It’s important that the dimmer and lamp are compatible on this. On the other hand, I just installed some Lowe’s 6” retrofit led trims on some existing rotary dimmers and they worked flawlessly. From 100% down to about 10% with no flicker or hum.

My impression of most gu-10 lamps I’d that they are a budget version of 12v MR16 lamps. It’s mostly the fixture quality vs the light bulb quality. For the life of me, I messed up the quote here, I get it for safety reasons with cable and monorail lights, but not recessed cans.

Totally correct, the usa uses leading sine wave dimming. Its prone to creating noise.
https://www.etcconnect.com/Support/A...?LangType=1033
I think the EU uses reverse phase but I don't work there.

The noise is coming from the crappy lamps.
https://www.amazon.com/Energetic-Lig...r&pageNumber=1


"Unfortunately all 4 of these bulbs buzz quite noticeably when dimmed in my application. The buzzing actually comes from the bulbs, not the dimmer. It's annoying but not quite enough to switch back to the halogens at this point."

I use both divas and maestro's in my home. Divas are cheaper, I like the timer function on the maestro's in my kids rooms and hallways.

"I can’t figure out why the 12v MR16 became so popular."
The lamps suck, they only last 3000 hours, the photo-metrics are poor, they like to melt sockets on the pin style bases and the glare is terrible. They are small, smaller is supposed to be better and look more high tech so people got suckered into buying them. Now we are pulling all that crap back out. The 3" cans with 12v transformers in hard lids are the worst idea ever.

ps the caseta will kill crestron sytems. I don't really think either is something I need in my life though.

[PNWbrit]

There are no dimmer questions.

Just less bright ones.

[Flyoverland Captive]

You should buy the Philips warm glow.

Any source for these reasonably cheap? They're all over ebay and Prime, but they seem to ship from the UK. Any issue with 50hz vs. 60hz if I order from overseas?

[PNWbrit]

they seem to ship from the UK.

Make sure they're not UK standard bayonet connection fittings.

And there's the whole voltage thing too..

[Beaver]

Make sure they're not UK standard bayonet connection fittings.

And there's the whole voltage thing too..

And frequency