It’s that time of year again, when people start discovering that many switches (including the outdoor pocket sockets) don’t do a good job of controlling strings of LED lights. And that different brand/models handle low-level dimming differently, with some models only being able to dim LEDs to about 10% while others will dim down to zero.
Here are some examples of the brand issues people run into:
Hey guys. This is my first post here so take it easy :). Let me start by explaining my setup. My basement has a total of 12 Feit 40w Dimmable A19 LED bulbs. I had a cheap GE (builders grade) rotary dimmer on the wall and even though I’m using very low power LEDs, this dimmer worked flawlessly. I had no flicker and the bulbs dimmed incredibly low. I was surprised these LEDs even worked on a old dimmer.
I bought my ST hub about 4 days ago and I bought a few Linear (Evolve) WD500Z dimmers based on their praise here. After properly wiring one of them up in my basement, I noticed that the lights wouldn’t dim even half as low as the GE traditional dimmer. To make things even more complicated, the original GE dimmer wasn’t even using a neutral wire like the new Linear Dimmer was. I thought maybe…
Hi everyone, i’m hoping some of you electrical experts could chime in with your suggestions and advice.
To give you some background info, I purchased a Leviton DZS15 light switch a few days ago to replace the switch that controls my exterior porch soffit outlet. This outlet is intended to wire Christmas lights. I figured switching this to a smart switch would be a great solution as i could setup a schedule through smartthings to turn my Christmas lights on and off.
I wired it up last night and got it all paired up with smartthings and it works great (scheduled on/off works awesome).
I did notice though this evening when i got home and before the lights were scheduled to turn on that my christmas lights appeared to be on but very dim. I’d say 10-20% of the original power of when it actua…
Anybody want to write an FAQ for this?
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