Hi everyone,
I'm new to the forum and hope you can set me straight.
For the past many years, I have had fluorescent lights under my kitchen cabinets. They were ok, but I never really liked them, so I ordered up a reel of LED flexible strip lights. After installing them, I found that the light was nicer, the profile was much lower, so you couldn't see a fixture under the cabinets and the power consumption was about a third of the fluorescents. Bonus!
Now here is the fun part. The lights are plenty bright to use for work lighting. What I want to do, is to also use them as a "night light". My dilemma, is that I don't want to throw away all the power savings that I gained by switching to the LEDs. The transformer that I am using is an electronic dimmable one that is designed for powering MR16s. I could just put a standard triac dimmer in line with it, just like it is designed for, but seeing that LEDs don't dim like incandescents, I'm worried about possibly having an annoying flicker. The other options that I have thought of are using a PWM circuit to dim them or maybe a voltage regulator after the PSU to drop the voltage. I am not concerned about the change in color temperature that would occur with dropping the voltage.
Currently, the strips all in total are drawing 1800mA at 12 volts. I am not needing the dimming to be variable, it will either be operating at 100% or at the dimmed output for "night lighting".
As for the 120 volt triac dimming option, if I go that way, it will be with off the shelf, CSA/ULc approved stuff, so I am fully aware of the safety issues. I am just including it in the option list to compare the efficiency compared to the other LV options.
What is the best option that won't have most of my money going up in heat while running in the "night light" mode, while having the long term bonus of reliability?
Thanks,
Ted
I'm new to the forum and hope you can set me straight.
For the past many years, I have had fluorescent lights under my kitchen cabinets. They were ok, but I never really liked them, so I ordered up a reel of LED flexible strip lights. After installing them, I found that the light was nicer, the profile was much lower, so you couldn't see a fixture under the cabinets and the power consumption was about a third of the fluorescents. Bonus!
Now here is the fun part. The lights are plenty bright to use for work lighting. What I want to do, is to also use them as a "night light". My dilemma, is that I don't want to throw away all the power savings that I gained by switching to the LEDs. The transformer that I am using is an electronic dimmable one that is designed for powering MR16s. I could just put a standard triac dimmer in line with it, just like it is designed for, but seeing that LEDs don't dim like incandescents, I'm worried about possibly having an annoying flicker. The other options that I have thought of are using a PWM circuit to dim them or maybe a voltage regulator after the PSU to drop the voltage. I am not concerned about the change in color temperature that would occur with dropping the voltage.
Currently, the strips all in total are drawing 1800mA at 12 volts. I am not needing the dimming to be variable, it will either be operating at 100% or at the dimmed output for "night lighting".
As for the 120 volt triac dimming option, if I go that way, it will be with off the shelf, CSA/ULc approved stuff, so I am fully aware of the safety issues. I am just including it in the option list to compare the efficiency compared to the other LV options.
What is the best option that won't have most of my money going up in heat while running in the "night light" mode, while having the long term bonus of reliability?
Thanks,
Ted