Warm glow LED dimming

[Scotsman1000]

Hi, just looking at a new Luxone system. I am very keen to use the new warm glow LED lights, that start off 2700-3000K but then dim to warm colour like a traditional incandescent bulb. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Also, most of the house's lights will be dimming, do what is the most cost effective way to achieve this?

Thanks!

[Duncan]

there are a number of issues here

1) philips do a warm glow bulb and so do others, that reduce the white k as you dim. some are ok, but there is more to good quality light than the k - also brightness, cri, beam angle etc need to be taken into account. most of these type of reducing K bulbs are 240v retrofits, which occasionally results in flickering and poor dimming performance.

do you need all bulbs to be reducing K? or just the b22/e27 table lamp bulbs - led downlights with good light quality and good dimming are a real issue and seem to occupy a great deal of the forum chatter regarding which combination of dimmers and bulbs work ok

another alternative strategy is to use rgbw strips or changeable white led strips in light channels in ceilings, cornices etc, which give you control over the K and also dim extremely well using dmx dimmers because they use PWM and dc supplies. this is great for background lighting and is cost effective.

2) dimming, particularly of retrofit type gu10 bulbs or led downlights can be difficult and expensive - there are lots of choices eg loxone dimmers, knx dimmers, dali, 0-10v lumieres etc and requires good research to find a combination of light and dimmer that dont flicker, can dim down sufficiently and is affordable to do a whole house.

i would start with a professionally designed lighting scheme first, as this what makes the biggest difference to a house, then work out with the designer which need to be non-dimmed, which could have some dimming performance (eg bedroom/corridor downlights) and which ones need a wider range of dimming for mood lighting, or split your lighting so that the lights that need the most dimming are DC (for example, plastered-in low voltage leds that can be dimmed well with dmx to provide the very dim night illumination)

in terms of cost for 240v led bulbs, there are cheap 240v dmx dimmers that are good value, but can be fussy about bulbs and are generally happy with 4 bulbs, but not with 2
loxone dimmers obviously, but expensive
knx dimmers are usually good quality, but expensive, but a new theben 8 channel led retrofit dimmer has just become available and is around £60 per channel and has lots of programmable options for leading edge, trailing edge etc like the loxone dimmer
http://www.theben.de/en/Products/Home-and-Building-control/KNX/Actuators/DM-8-2-T-KNX

[Scotsman1000]

Super interesting, thank you! Although I am researching for a UK house, I renovated a different house recently in the USA. As an experiment I used two warm glow dimming spots from Lucifer lighting. Details here:
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s3/sh/497d49d2-d0c7-46b5-856a-c0ab9c054b8e/5391e75fc95e7e8d670ef35e46135e0a

And ordering info here:
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s3/sh/e7376b15-0b0d-4d79-8aae-bf83677659fd/1ca2ebb711c0b1833f4c500e59e7cc4c

They run on a 1-10V dimming circuit controlled by an Insteon controller. The quality of the light is excellent, with no flickering. There is a sharp 'off' at about 10% brightness. The warm glow color is excellent, although they are expensive.

Seems that you can best drive them with the eldoLED system:
https://www.eldoled.com/quality-of-light/natural-dimming/

No idea se might work with Lucone though.

[Duncan]

for a recent project that required all lights in the whole house dimmable we ended up using:

feit gu10 2.7k dimmable bulbs from costco for the upstairs downlights - the colour is very similar to a 240v halogen, and they dim quite nicely with the very cheap mains dmx 3 channel dimmers (dmx302, trailing edge, around £25 for 3 channels) with 4 bulbs per channel, no flickering and sufficiently low brightness to meet requirements for mood lighting in upstairs corridors and bedrooms, although they are too warm colour for bathrooms

for corridors, stairs and playroom background lighing, some rgbw 4-in-1 led strip 96leds/m in a plaster in channel on a dmx 4 channel dimmer - enables any colour white, any colour at all in fact, great dimming and very high light output,
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/High-quality-5050SMD-RGBW-LED-strip-DC24V-input-60LED-m-5m-Roll-4-color-in-1/32449572833.html?spm=2114.13010308.0.75.9NFXf0

then added some table/floor lighting using some extremely high cri99 dimmable bulbs from civilight, which again work quite well with the same dmx302 dimmers but a little flickering below 30% brightness, but below this range we tend to use the dc led strip for movement triggered lighting at night.
https://well-lit.co.uk/ are the supplier i used for the civilight

the civilight gu10 bulbs have a great combination of high cri95, high brightness, but are relatively expensive and work ok with the dmx302 dimmer with 4 bulbs per channel above 30% or so, but are flickery at 2 bulbs per channel below around 45% - one simple solution that may work is to use the lower wattage bulbs at a higher brightness, but that wont work for all situations if you dont have enough light fittings for your required maximum brightness.
the civilight is also available in 3k 9w if you ask nicely and the combination of high light output, great light colour and cri95 is brilliant for kitchens and bathrooms

generally more fittings with lower powered gu10 bulbs with the dmx302 dimmers gives you good dimming, easy wiring (conventional mains star wired from centrally wired dmx302 dimmers) for a fantastic price at around £12 per dimming channel

i have also used the philips master ledspot dimmable gu10 bulbs - these are available in 2 powers, have a cri of 90 and are around £8 each, but only work ok with the dmx302 dimmer in groups of 5 or 6 bulbs, and the dimming range is quite compressed - they come on around 50% and full brightness around 90%, but at least there is enough control for kitchens, bathrooms etc but not suitable for areas where you might want more extreme control of the dimming
http://www.lighting.philips.co.uk/prof/lamps/led-lamps-and-systems/led-lamps/master-ledspot-mv-value/productsinfamily

i also used a mdt knx dimmer thats designed for led lighting with a minimum 2w load, but the dimming control for these types of gu10 is no better than the cheap dmx302 in small groups of bulbs (maybe slightly better in the larger groups) but at around £60 per channel doesnt deliver enough advantage to recommend them

hope that helps

[Florian]

Hi Scotsman, Hi Duncan,

we just did the new Loxone Showhome in the US with the 24V Loxone LED Spots connected to the RGBW dimmers.

http://shop.loxone.com/enus/led-spot-ww.html

Using the RGBW dimmers makes it very cost effective while having perfect dimming capabilities.

You can connect 8 WW spots to each channel - makes 32 spots per RGBW dimmer.

@Scotsman: you wrote, that you did a house in the US recently. Would be interested to hear more about your project.

Florian

[Simon Still]

Not exactly what you're looking for but UK company PhotonStar have high end colour tunable LED light engines that can be fitted to their range of downlighters. I'm using a simple light engine in their lights dimming 1-10V through Loxone.  Personally I'd not worry too much about using replaceable GU10 bulbs now - further efficiency gains from LED lighting are marginal compared to the switch from incandescent, light quality and colour temperature in good quality fittings is high/consistent and the LEDs should have a life of c20 years.   

PhotonStar Circadian lighting seems to use DMX control but I've no idea about how you'd integrate with Loxone. I can't imagine it's cheap. 

http://www.chromawhiteled.com/

 

[Martin]

Hi Scotsman,

I had the same question in a similar position. I have tried the warm glow GU10 LED's. The color is very warm and the dimming effect is really there. Unfortunately, the leds did not dim to zero in the Loxone dimmer extension. They will switch off when connected to a regular output but that is not what you are looking for in this LED type.

I have tried the Philips dim tone models. They promise to do similar under dimming. They are a bit less yellow but still very acceptable. (The warm glow is too yellow to our liking). And the best part: they dim to fully off.

The set up is such that the LEDS are connected to the channel 1 of the dimmer extension and in both cases connected in couples (2 leds to the same channel).

I have also tested regular Philips Master LEDs but they also failed to dim to fully off.

Hope this helps...

Martin

Op vrijdag 5 augustus 2016 09:30:46 UTC+2 schreef Scotsman1000:

[Andrew B]

I'll just toss my two cents in, as we've been living with the whole house all LED lighting system I build for about 7 months now, and we are well into the dark season (November in Vancouver Canada!).

My system is entirely DMX low voltage DC. 24v high CRI downlights from Lauren Illumintion. 15v E26 corn bulbs (and a few miscellaneous) from 12vMonster.com and a couple of other places (they are constant voltage builds for marine/RV use). I am super happy with the downlights, and that is the backbone for the whole house. About a third of the fixtures are standard E26 flush ceiling mounts and a trio of chandeliers. Not enormously happy with the E26 bulbs but that's mostly for power consumption reasons (they behave weirdly when dimmed), but the light quality is fine (CRI about 85).

In all the bedrooms, living room, and hallways I went with 3500K downlights, and ~2700K corn bulbs. In the kitchen, laundry and bathrooms I went with 4500K downlights, and "white" corn bulbs which I'd say are around 4500-5000K. There are a couple of MR16s (5000K) and other one offs I bought for testing purposes, which I decided against from most rooms but out them in places that don't matter much -- typically too blue. Lastly there are under cabinet tape lights (3000K), and a few strings of as-yet unmounted RGB tape lights for over cabinet and on the back deck.

Every fixture in the house is dimmable thanks to DMX and Loxone (I wrote my own picoC and used the WattStopper switches wired to Elexol IO72, cheaper cost per switch, plus I really don't like the Loxone switch logic). My DMX controllers are 450 Hz which avoids most problems with taking pictures and video (but not all, I've discovered... plus it causes FM radio interference).

I did all the lighting design myself, and a major goal was to over-light the house. Two reasons. First, since it's all dimmable I use the Loxone to cap brightness to about 75%, and it is nice and bright for our middle aged eyes (egad, how did that happen?!). Second, in theory LED lights dim with age instead of burning out... so with a "reserve" of output, over time I can dial up the 75% and get much longer life out of them. I say in theory because lots of LED bulbs are crap and the electronics fails prematurely -- although this is usually due to poor heat dissipation and having to convert from 120v AC to 3-5v DC (part of the logic in trying low voltage DC... it also lets me use centralized power supplies and build it all myself).

Anyhow, all that background was just to give you some idea of what I've done, the real reason I'm posting on this thread is this:

My wife has started asking me to swap the yellow bulbs in various fixtures for the white ones. The downlights are fine (3500K minimum), but now that we've spent some time with the much whiter lights... we really like them. They help you see much more clearly. And we definitely would not want to go any yellower than 2700K. Now, our whole decor is fairly warm tones except in a couple of rooms, so maybe that helps.... but I find myself being unhappy when I'm in other spaces that have conventional lighting.

Just something to consider.

[seb303]

Hi Andrew,

I'm in a similar situation to you: been living in our (almost) 100% LED lit house for around a year and a half.  I also went for more lighting than is actually needed, (a) to have different options (lots of concealed linear LED strips, RGB, etc), and (b) because it's all dimmable, and sometimes it can be useful to have bright lighting.  Everything is DMX with all the drivers (eldoLED) and PSUs (Meanwell) located separate from the LEDs, where they keep nice and cool and can be swapped out if any fail.

I've used both 3000K and 4000K downlights (Orluna), and quite a lot of 3500K strip.  All quite high CRI.  For some of the more subtle accent lighting I've used cheaper 3000K strip, but I think the CRI is still 80+ if I remember correctly.

I definitely find 2700K too yellow, and 5000K LED is not very pleasant to my eye.  The CRI tends to suffer as LEDs get cooler.  5000K+ fluorescent on the other hand are lovely - but then no dimming!  I used 6000K in my workshop space, etc. where I just need bright light all the time.  The CRI is 98%, far better than the best LEDs.

Out of the LED lights, I find myself preferring 4000K in most situations (kitchen, bathrooms, etc.) but I think there is still a place for the warmer 3000K, such as in bedroom, or entrance hallways, etc.  But I think it does depend on the decor.  3000K works well with lots of timber for example, but more neutral palettes such as typical bathroom look crisper with a cooler light.

Seb

[Alan]

Hi 

This is an interesting thread and was looking for the same sort of info as the OP, I'm just planning an install and lighting was one of the things to draw me into the home automation 'thing' and Loxone, but it turns out to be one of the more contentious and difficult elements to get right. There appears to be no 'simple' straightforward install when it comes to lighting and dimming with all the different issues to consider. 

Anyhow with reference to your setup I was just wondering about the drivers you mentioned, they look good but was wondering how many of the things you might have if you've gone completely LED in the house (which is what I was hoping to achieve)? I noticed that some of those drivers can run 4 LED ouputs (all white) I believe but singularly if coloured LED's. I'm guessing that could get pretty expensive? I suppose 4 white channels would be fine for giving main lighting in a kitchen, living room, hallway, landing type setup (depending of current limits of course)?

I was initially thinking of just using mains voltage and then started looking at the issues this causes and started leaning towards low voltage DMX. I don't think i'm in my forever house so was looking to just start out with some basic/useful lighting features for the main areas of the house to 'dip my toe in the water' for Loxone...

This thread has given me more to think about!

Thanks

Alan

[Simon Still]

On Friday, 5 August 2016 08:30:46 UTC+1, Scotsman1000 wrote:

I've used ceiling spot LEDs with separate 1-10v dimmer drivers (located centrally on each floor rather than in ceiling for nearly all my lighting.  Fittings came from PhotonStar Lighting.  Drivers are Lumotech-L05016i or similar.  They're all 2700k (colour temperatures are pretty unreliable from most manufactuers - PhotonStar calibrate and match their units).  Other than in the hall all the ceiling spots are directional - they light the wall or an object rather than being fixed downlighters (which are a pretty unrefined way of lighting).  The light fittings themselves are expensive but the 1-10v outputs on Loxone worked out well with the number of other outputs i needed so cost per circuit there was cheap. 

The TV is backlit with white LED strip (which was supposed to be high quality 2700k but i'd guess is around 3500 (!))  and a few rooms have some GU10 fittings dimmed with the cheap chinese DMX dimmer Duncan mentions. 

Learnings from my house - 

The 1-10v dimming works really well and dims smoothly down to 10%.  

The DMX dimmer on high quality GU10s is not great.  Can only really dim to about 50% (on a circuit with 3 bulbs connected).  A circuit with a single bulb flashes once (after a few minutes) when dimmed.  I'm convinced it also changes light level a bit when on full sometimes. 

DMX on LED strip does work well and dim reliably to a very low level but there's still a point at which it has noticeable flicker - if you want very low light levels dont' buy super hight output strip (!)

I really like the 2700k temperature nearly everywhere - it's does feel cozy.  Our house is sharp/modern/white though - having a clinical coloured lighting would have been very harsh.  I don't like it in the bathrooms - that was a mistake.  In the kitchen we perhaps should have mixed but we have a lot of light so it's not really an issue.  Although generally lighting designers say you should never have different colour temperature lights in the same room I think you can do it if you have alternative circuits.    

At 2700k I don't feel it needs to be any warmer when dimmed - at low level if feels warmer than it does when bright. 

I don't think I'd mount the drivers centrally again - it's probably easier, and better for their cooling, just to have them near the fittings in the ceiling. 

The only rooms that really need complex lighting and scenes are those that have different functions - for us just the kitchen and living room.  We've ended up simplifying scenes elsewhere just to 'bright' and 'dimmed'.  

Coloured lighting usually looks really tacky.  Just because you can doesn't mean you should.  The only place we've used it is to light the garden.  

I've not quite thought through all the practicalities but I was considering double white lighting as a way of achieving dim-to-warm.  Run double LED strip side by side - one in 2700k (or even warmer), one in a cooler temp.  Then use Loxone scenes to have warm scenes and cool scenes (or even use logic to have different colour at different times of day).  You only need 2 DMX channels for each 'fixture' rather than 4.  The strip is cheap.   I think the drawback is that strip, like downlights, tends to be a very uninteresting light. 

 

[Andrew Brownsword]

I have two 32-channel DMX boards, and power provided to my whole system by 3 600W computer power supplies (which are designed to co-operate, giving quiet normal operation and redundancy).  The need to supply 15v to the E26 corn bulbs forced me to add three marine D.C-DC converters too.  The latter portion I had to deal with in a hurry due to impending project completion, but at least it gives me more design flexibility!

You're right that if you had to go with many 1-4 channel drivers it would not be very economical.  DMX is nice because you can daisy chain, and there are many products on the market to choose from (albeit not at your local corner store).

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[Andrew Brownsword]

A note about flickering DMX lighting -- this is most likely due to low frequency pulse width modulation.  It isn't inherent to DMX.  Some drivers operate at sub-200 Hz and these will flicker noticeably.  I'm using 450 Hz and don't get flicker at any dimming level, and I'm unusually sensitive to flicker.

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[Simon Still]

> On 16 Nov 2016, at 12:16, Andrew Brownsword <andrew.e....@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A note about flickering DMX lighting -- this is most likely due to low frequency pulse width modulation. It isn't inherent to DMX. Some drivers operate at sub-200 Hz and these will flicker noticeably. I'm using 450 Hz and don't get flicker at any dimming level, and I'm unusually sensitive to flicker.

I’m using the Loxone rail mount DMX dimmer if that’s any help.

[Andrew Brownsword]

No idea what their frequency is. Need to measure it, unless they publish this info in the spec.

[Duncan]

light colour is an interesting issue, in that our eyes tend to auto-adjust for white balance, but the initial exposure tends to seem yellow or blue depending on our familiarity with the environment and exposure to previous colour of white -  so if you go from outside sunny day in northern europe (which may have a white of 5k to 6k, the standard white for TVs is 6.5k) it may seem very yellow with 3k or 3.3k, but if you go from a winters dark evening then 4k bulbs may seem too blue or clinical initially.

whiter bulbs tend to be more efficient, but have a potientially lower cri, but even for the same cri they can have some serious issues due to a negative rated R9, the bright red colour, where relative to the brightness of the other colours they suck out the red colour element and leave things with a washed-out look - particularly people.

although white point is important, a good lighting scheme is probably more important, and consulting a specialist designer can be extremely invaluable as a starting point - no amount of fancy home automation and scenes will compensate for a poor starting design, although bad bulbs can undo a lot of good design

i have found that in most cases the downlights are often not dimmed down fully, so the failure of many leds to dim completely isnt always a problem if you have other light sources such as table/floor lamps and led strips
in areas such as kitchens, the downlights may be the main source of lighting, but then we tend not to dim down to very low levels in this kind of room - other accent lighting can provide evening/night scenes
having good quality bulbs for the table lamps that will dim down well with a good cri/r9 is more important - these are more likely to be used than downlights in sitting areas
designing in more lamps/extra brightness but using them dimmed down is a very good strategy - particuarly as we age our light sensitivity and acuity reduce dramatically so more light is better

using standard downlight fittings with replaceable bulbs can be an effective strategy for keeping price down and upgradeabiliby high, the down side being possible poor dimming performance. but as led technology improves, simply swap out the bulbs for brighter/different cri/different white point etc. Of course you can use integrated led downlights with their own inbuilt dimmers, or dc downlights with centralised drivers, but both are relatively expensive, have a reduced choice on the market and tie you in to changing a whole rooms fittings if you want to upgrade

dimming performace isnt always associated with light quality either - for example philips 5.4w bulbs are aroung £8, have a cri of 85, around 400 lumens and plenty of angle and white point choices, but they dont dim very well at all below around 40-50% with even the most exensive knx dimmers, but in fact they are great for a kitchen where you can have 2.7k, 3k or 4k, lots of light with a good cri and some dimming, but use other lights such as led strip or under counter lights for dimmed/evening lighting

flickering dmx strips is very much a function of the dmx driver - i find that constant voltage tend to perform better at low levels than constant current. Recently i swapped out a number of constant current dmx drivers to LTECH 350ma drivers which can now dim down to 1% with zero flicker - they are only a few more pounds more than the generic stuff, but have lead to a dramatic improvement. the older drivers would flicker or simply switch off below around 15%

ive also tested chinese mains dmx dimmers vs knx dimmers vs loxone and a whole range of gu10 dimmable leds and the bulb is far more of a factor than the dimmer, the only problem being that the chinese dimmers tend to give a brief bright flash of light as they turn off, where as the very expensive stuff doesnt. for downlights in bedrooms,lving areas, bathrooms and corridors this simply isnt an issue as table/floor lights provide the bulk of the light and the downlights are usualy only used to find lost things or for cleaning. where as in the kitchen and utility areas the gu10s do all the work and are on/off quite frequently, where the flash is annoying so here the more expensive knx dimmers do a much better job

[Andrew Brownsword]

Great post.  Summarizes a whole lot of reading I did quite succinctly!  Some big generalizations in there though -- we might be outside the norm, but we tend to leave our downlights dimmed to 30% and all the bulb fixtures off in the evenings.  That includes the kitchen as it is a large open floor plan.  We've also moved the few floor and table lamps out of the main spaces and tend not to use them at all.  A big part of that is because of the move from paper-based to screen-based reading material.  It is also extremely dark outside where we are, and it feels more natural to not keep it super bright unless we are doing something that requires it.

Lighting is a hugely complex (and fascinating) topic, and personal lifestyle makes a big impact.  For example, having some much whiter light (with its stronger blue component) really helps when rising long before dawn during long winter nights, whereas having the yellower, dimmable lights for use in the evening doesn't knock your sleep cycle out of wack.

BTW, we went with fixtures that uniformly have diffusers / translucent glass, and almost all of them point upwards.  This takes advantage of the high ceilings and hides the ugly corn bulbs.

Lots to consider.  Far more than I realized when I set out on the project.  

Oh, one more comment:  it's not a given that you can generalize about product quality based on its origin.  First of all, almost everything comes from China and the main differentiation is the quality control metrics put in place.  Second, in my testing of about 10 kinds of low voltage bulbs, they all had "interesting" attributes... from buzzing sounds, to dimming performance, to colour quality, to instantaneous power draw, to response to different PWM signals.  Even with all that, it was a lot better than my experiences with mains voltage LED bulbs, particularly dimmable ones -- I despise those pretty much universally. And people in the retail lighting business also almost universally don't know what they're talking about, hence all the testing.

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[Duncan]

Andrew,
thanks for your comments - i think all this illustrated there is no one or simple answer to the questions of which fittings,bulbs, K or dimmers should i use.

i agree that most lighting retailers have no idea about products, and often recommend what they stock despite many of the products being of poor performance.

testing of specific products with a variety of dimmers is the only way to be sure that you get an acceptable compromise between brightness, colour quality, dimming, buzzing and flicker - ive lost count of the number of samples i have bought then thrown away - however i have found a few consistently good performers at the cheaper end, and many expensive but poor performing ones too.

i wasnt intending to be critical of chinese products - far from it in fact as i have used a large number of the dmx302 3 channel mains dmx dimmers with dimmable gu10 bulbs, and found them in most cases to be a cheap and effective substitute for expensive loxone and knx products, but with about a 10-15% attrition rate due to poor QC, but at around $40 for 3 channels then im happy to throw some away.

[Andrew Brownsword]

Nice to run into a fellow "the hard way" product tester.  :)

Re:  China... I think the main thing to remember is that China is huge and they have many producers for any particular kind of product.  And most non-Chinese companies have outsourced production there anyhow.

BTW, I've been wanting to mention a company of interest I've not seen mentioned:  LumenCache.  I've had an email conversation running with their CEO for about 5 years.  They weren't to market in time for me, but he seems to have temporarily moved to China to try and improve the available low voltage DC LED products that are available... so there is some hope that things will improve in the future.

Cheers,

   Andrew

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[Simon Still]

On 16 Nov 2016, at 16:38, Andrew Brownsword <andrew.e....@gmail.com> wrote:

Re:  China... I think the main thing to remember is that China is huge and they have many producers for any particular kind of product.  And most non-Chinese companies have outsourced production there anyhow.

This is an interesting article if you haven’t seen it already - 

http://qz.com/771727/chinas-factories-in-shenzhen-can-copy-products-at-breakneck-speed-and-its-time-for-the-rest-of-the-world-to-get-over-it/

It explains why quality can be variable on seemingly identical products.  What you get by buying a western brand name product is some form of QA/QC.  

[njamessimpson]

Duncan et al

Thanks for all your comments on lighting. Literally weeks away from lighting plans for current house upgrade. I purchased some 240v dmx 4 channel from Aliexpress. An effective solution. Now need to match with downlights for stairs/bathrooms etc based on recommendations and ensure use sufficient bulbs/load to minimise issues.

Now pondering the led DMX requirements on 24v circuit. Any recommendations? Ltech?

Would be great to get your latest recommendations across the board with the links to products (appreciating are multiple sources). Sometimes I'm not quite sure the searches deliver the precise result needed!

Many thanks.

[Duncan]

is your 24v dmx constant voltage like the loxone strip? if so, then ive found that the cheap aliexpress stuff seems to work well, but found that ltech stuff better at low dimming levels

they make 2 series - one is white plastic with integrated 240v power supplies, which is great for distributed dimmers as its a one box solution,
http://www.ltechonline.com/html/en/Dimmable-LED-Driver/DMX-RDM-Series/
where as the black metal cases are probably cheaper for central dimmers where more than one would be powered from a single larger psu
http://www.ltechonline.com/html/en/LED-Controller/DMX-RDM-Controller/DMX-PWM-CV-type/

some of the metal stuff also uses network connectors for the dmx links which is far easier to wire
http://www.ltechonline.com/html/en/LED-Controller/DMX-RDM-Controller/DMX-PWM-CV-type/LT-858-5A.html

[Andrew Brownsword]

As I mentioned above, I'm very happy with my Lauren Illumination downlights.

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[Seb]

Hi Duncan,

Just looking at the LTECH Dimmers (already have 2 of the Chinese mains dmx dimmers you recommend - still to play with them). I see the LTECH CV dimmer (http://www.ltechonline.com/html/en/Dimmable-LED-Driver/DMX-RDM-Series/DMX-CV-Driver/DMX-36-24-F1D1.html) looks to be just one channel, but has a large profile for the cabinet. Can you tell me have you used http://www.ltechonline.com/html/en/LED-Controller/DMX-RDM-Controller/DMX-PWM-CV-type/DIN-808.html as that looks to have 8 channels for the same profile - am I missing something important here?

[Duncan]

Seb,
ive only used the metal case free standing CV and CC rj45 dimmers, and their white plastic single channel CC with integrated psu

i dont think you are missing anything - its definately 8ch 3A CV in the same size enclosure

[Rob_in]

I'm looking around for various components for our system just now. I found some tunable 'white' downlights and remembered this thread.

Examples:

https://www.exklusivleuchten.de/Deckeneinbauleuchte-KapegoLED-COB-68-CCT-Aluminium-Weiss-8-00-W.html

https://www.exklusivleuchten.de/kapego-led-panel-2700-6000k-led-8w-weiss-24v-dc.html

Need a 2 channel driver to balance between the two temperatures. So that's half a RGBW driver. I like this compromise because full RGBW seems like overkill. That said, think it's still better (for cost and efficiency) to pick a colour temperature you like and stick to it.

FWIW, to answer the 'most cost effective way' to do this, I'm thinking of full DMX too. Because our house is small will just put the dimmer modules in the electrical cupboard. Even if you went with Loxone's own RGBW this is still quite affordable.

Trying to avoid 'bought from china' options for drivers I also found 'KapegoLED LED Dimmer 4' DMX controllers just now that can be had from around 45EUR which is an OK saving over Loxone (and they also drive more per channel than the Loxone model).

When going full DMX, as you don't need loads of extensions for light switching relays you also don't end up with many digital inputs. For this reason I'm going to go Tree Touch for inputs.

Full DMX + tree inputs ends up significantly cheaper than using relays and regular switches. At least it does for our design.

Cheers,

Robin