LED Dimming (DMX) - missing feature?

[Jedi Tek'Unum]

Most people are aware that LED lighting (driven through AC circuits) does not dim over the entire range of 0-100%. Most LED fixtures need anywhere from 10% to 20% to light initially. Many can dim below the level needed to initially light. Yet this behavior appears to be absolutely "raw" in Loxone despite all the talk of being "smart".

Everything I've got is driven off DMX using DFD DMX12DIM-ELV panels (using out-of-the-box default trailing edge dimming). I've been using EIB Dimmer as that seems to be the recommended one.

Most of my Halo fixtures initially light at around 15%. I've got some bulbs that need a little bit more - 17% - to be reliable. Once lit they can usually dim down to 10-12%. Anything less and they go out.

Its perfectly logical, actually expected, that a setting (say in a UI) of anything above 0% will actually produce light!

Wouldn't it be nice if the Correction settings on a DMX output would take care of that? That is, a input value of 1 should produce the minimum needed for startup light (depending on fixture, maybe 15). So input range of 1-100 would produce output of 15-100. Except, what does 0 do? In my testing 0 is NOT off. In fact, with correction set that way it won't go off. No idea how they are interpreting 0 (seems to be minimum so maybe 14?).

I've searched and looked around and see no documentation or discussion about this at all. One would think this would be pretty common in the age of LED lighting.

Of course one could build their own logic to accomplish this seemingly obvious behavior. But since there is no macro capability to make it practical to maintain it the only option is likely scripting (no thank you given Loxone's terribe scripting support).

I'm interested to hear thoughts and what, if anything, people are doing about this.

If I were implementing a DMX function block, I would go further and have a setting for minimum startup level and duration to hold it after which it could drop back lower. That is, input range 0,1-100 with output range of 0,10-100 with a minimum start of 15 for 0.5 seconds. That would give the expected behavior of 0 being off and 1 being the minimum brightness at which the fixture will produce light AFTER turning on at a slightly higher level.

I am aware of the Hotel and "legacy" lighting controllers, some of which appear to have this functionality. Hotel is a kitchen sink of features - is that what they expect everybody to use?? Legacy suggests that those will be going away in the future.

Must say I'm confused about the design philosophy. Lots of things seem to be very primitive requiring additional primitive logic to achieve things (which I'm completely in agreement with ONLY if they had macro capabilities). Yet there are also overly complex things like the Hotel lighting controller. Obviously they had customers that drove that beast. So just what design philosophy are they trying to follow?

Along with that, seeing HALF of the dimmer blocks being legacy doesn't give me a warm feeling about long term stability. Will we all be changing every single dimmer we have in a few years?

An acquaintance who has spoken with Loxone at length mentioned that they pushed back on the macro idea saying they wanted to "keep things simple" for their "customers". It seems to me they are lost in their mission. This isn't a simple product. Dumbing it down for the new customer - the custom installer - seems contradictory. Good design can provide both an easy to use product AND one that can expand to support more complicated usage if needed. In my mind they are failing at both.

[Duncan]

there is clearly a need and it could be created using logic blocks on the lighting controller outputs but it gets complicated and your loxone project expands in size very quickly, but some lighting does work properly:

philips mains dimmable dimtone bulbs will dim down to 1% using trailing edge dimmers without problems

some other dimmers have a led setting that starts around 15% then dims down to your lower setting - an example of this is the knx theben dm 8-2 but i turn this feature off when using the dimtone bulbs as its not required and i dont like the higher initial glow

since most loxone dimming is using scenes then its a case of selecting a bulb with just enough output and scene setting that avoids flickering when dimmed sufficiently