Super smooth dimming?

Hardware
1

Hi hi hi,

I went to an immersive theatre show yesterday and in each room they had what looked like consumer grade lights, some regular bulbs, desk lamps, overhead pendants, some small LED spots, some which were probably addressable LED strips.

All of them dimmed and brightened exceptionally smoothly, super slowly, AND with no noticeable point where they went from lit to unlit.

What makes this possible and is it possible to achieve in a home environment? I really get frustrated by my lights’ inability to dim lower than 20% without simply turning off.

My setup is a combo of:

  • WLED: this works pretty well, supports transition durations, but dimming steps are too coarse and non linear, so if you want to fade off slowly, most of the perceptible changes happen in the last few steps.
  • zigbee Trailing edge dimmer switch + GU10 bulbs: this is one of the best performing in terms of linear dimming and support for low brightness levels but is still nowhere near as good as the theatre ones and my switches also don’t support transition time.
  • zigbee trailing edge dimmer switch + LED driver + 24v LED strip: this combo is garbage.
  • dedicated smart lamps: where the smart controller is built into the lamp. I only have one of these and it doesn’t support transition time but it does do low brightness pretty well.

What’s the magic tech I’m missing here? Which element is most important in getting silky smooth dimming?

Andrew

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2

Ashley’s Light Fader 2.0✨: fade lights and/or color temperature with your choice of easing (curves), including ease-in, ease-out, and ease-in-out.

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3

There is another possibility that really isn’t magic. Either they are incandescent or they use 0-10v dimming.

4

I believe this has to do with the light sources themselves.

5

Hah I do admittedly have one single pair of incandescent lights, because I can’t find any dimmable G9 bulbs that are actually decent.

Ashley’s light fader looks amazing. I’ll look into using that, thanks!

6

First make sure the dimmers you use are suited for led. The ones used for incandescent light are often not able to go very low in the minimum load they allow, while led is always low load.

Next, check the dimmer type with regard to the leds you use. Most leds prefer trailing edge dimmers, some prefer leading edge. Some dimmers can do both, most cannot.

Also make sure to check the settings for dimmers you use. Most have a min/max setting for the lowest and highest value that makes sense to the bulb. Auto calibration does not always work well. If you set the min and max correctly, the dimmer can map the highest and lowest values the best way to the dimmer range, preventing both the dreaded off below 20% and the couse steps (because only a limited range is used).

And last but not least, your light may support the loght_turn_on regular brightness parameter instead of the brightness percentage. The first one has 256 steps, the latter only 100.

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