What about when this happens after a year or so?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Justin F.
Hello All,We appreciate all of the posts and feedback regarding LED compatibility issues with Lutron dimming controls. Unfortunately, there is very little industry standardization to how LED's are being manufactured at the moment and as such there are frequent changes made to LED products by the manufacturer that change their overall performance when a dimming signal is applied to them. We have an entire team here at Lutron that does nothing but tests LED's against our dimming controls so we can provide as many recommendations for compatible LED's as possible to our customers. They keep our online LED Compatibility Tool @
www.Lutron.com/LEDFinder up to date with the latest tested and passing lamps as well as removing ones that have been identified to have characteristics changed about the lamp itself from when we tested it here at Lutron. If there is ever an LED lamp that is listed on our online compatibility tool that is being utilized with the listed dimmer that is not performing adequately, we would advise either calling in to our 24/7 technical support group @ 1-888-Lutron1 (588-7661) or email in to
LEDS@Lutron.com with the information on the LED lamp and dimming control being used. The best way to determine if there is a functional issue with the Lutron dimmer or if LED compatibility is taking place would be to remove just one of the LED lamps and replace with an incandescent or halogen lamp. If this stabilizes the dimming of the remaining LED lamps it confirms there is an incompatibility between the LED lamp and Lutron dimmer. If the issue remains with the incandescent or halogen lamp in place, there is a good chance there is something up with the dimmer, in which case we would advise giving us a call here at Lutron technical support for us to process and RMA for a replacement dimmer. We appreciate the continued interest in Lutron dimming and switching controls and look forward to assisting with any issues that may arise with our products. Thanks,Justin F. (Lutron Technical Support)
I understand your position, you can only verify the system works with certain bulbs. However some of us have this issue after a period of time. I have two dimmers that I bought about 3 months apart that worked fine initially and for about a year and then started displaying this issue ( the second one a few months after the other). It seems like this is something that can happen over time. Perhaps when the bulbs get older they have more issues? In any case I'm glad I held back buying more switches. I hope that you make a more definitive statement.
Dealing with turning flash
Let me preface with saying that I am a retired engineer, how you use my advice is entirely up to you. Follow your local electrical codes and use a professional to do the work.
I have a solution to the flash at turn on, then a pause with no light, then the lights come up to the programmed brightness. This generally happens after the lights have been off for more than half an hour. I will describe how I came up with the solution so you can investigate your situation.
If you add in incandescent bulb in parallel to the leds (just wired in like normal) you will probable find the lights work okay. Of course you don’t want this, so I started substituting in resistors until the problem reoccurred. In my system, a 100,000 ohm 2 watt resistor from the switched output of the dimmer to neutral was what worked for me. The power dissipated in the resistor with the lights on is around 1/8 watt, so this is overkill, but I didn’t want any problems. The resistor can go in the switch box, or in any one of the light fixtures across the bulb.terminals.
In my case I soldered stranded wires to the resistor, and covered everything in heat-shrink tubing, tinned the wires and installed the assembly in the switch box. There are many options, but it depends on your local code.
My hypothesis is that the dimmer needs a teeny-tiny amount of current from the neutral and an led in the off condition cannot supply it. I measured many megohms for an off led bulb. I was surprised that 100k worked, since it is a pretty high value as well. As a reference, a 15 watt incandescent is around 1000 ohms.