Can someone look at my research and offer any advice?
Thanks,
John
Requirements:
[ol][li]Dims Cree CR LED lights down at least halfway[/li]
[li]No flicker at any part of the range[/li]
[li]No buzz or noise audible from 1 foot away in a silent room, even when dimmed[/li]
[li]Strongly prefer not to have to resistors in, just to waste power such that the LEDs works more like incandescents[/li]
[li]Prefer it costs under $100 / dimmer, but would pay more if there will be no other good options in the next couple of months…[/li][/ol]
As an aside, these “secondary requirements” are nice to have, but I don’t think are a constraint:
[ol][li]Either supports three way, or has similar looking non-dimming switch that do. (I don’t need my dimmers to be three way.)[/li]
[li]Supports beaming for a door lock. (I can just put a wall plug that does near the door lock if required.)[/li]
[li]Supports instant status reporting of a switch’s manual state. (Not sure if I really need this… I just want to be able to turn lights off with my phone.)[/li][/ol]
There seems to be very little experience around here with the Evolve LRM-15/AS paired with Cree. Has anyone tried this and tested for buzz/flicker while an LED is dimmed?
Can anyone make an argument for why I should care that Leviton’s can report back the status of the switch? (Usually I’m just controlling things from my phone while already in the house.)
I’d prefer the Evolve due to cost. Yet there is more evidence that the Leviton’s are a functional, quality product.
Thoughts on which way to go for dimming my Cree LEDs?
We have a ton of the Cree 65W-eq can lights. All of our switches are Leviton. The Leviton docs say clearly that the minimum stable load they work with is 30W. These cans are 10.5W or so. We have two spots where there are exactly two on the circuit. There’s some fluctuation at startup or level change, but they settle after a while. We have one with three–nominally just over 30W at full power. Those waver for about the first ten seconds or so, and then settle. Everything else has 4+ lamps, and they’re all rock solid. For none of these do we get any noise at the switches.
We have all these on dimmers, and most of them are 3-way, 4-way. The Levitons work fine for this. I had the multi-way wired by a Sparky. He said he’d never seen multi-way dimmers that could be dimmed at the remotes.
I don’t think anyone’s wall switches beam. We’ve put a few of the GE lamp or appliance modules around to forward stuff to locks. I think the GE wall outlets beam.
Do you have the Leviton VRE06 (Electric Low Voltage) or the VRM10 (Magnetic Low Voltage) or the VRI06/10 (Incadencent)?
(The docs actually say the minimum load is 40W. But someone else tells me that the VRE is fine with a single cree and the VRM is fine with 2 crees.)
Per this very helpful table, there actually are two dimmers that support beaming (Evolve and Jasco/GE), but that’s not as important to me as smooth dimming at a decent price.
We had very limited success with the VRI06 and LEDs. Once you get a dimmer with a neutral (VRM10 and VRE06), things are fine. Best results with the VRE06.
I’d have to test it with a single downlight, but I think it will work fine, as we do have some ceiling lights with just 2x 5W driven by VRM10’s.
No noise at the dimmers. 2-way, 3-way, 4-way. No beaming; I don’t think the VRI06/VRM10/VRE06 have been updated with newer Z-Wave firmware yet.
We have mostly Leviton. The driveway floods are on a GE dimmer; that works too.
If you always control things through your phone, i.e. through Vera, then Vera will always have the correct state, and you wouldn’t have a need for instant status. But that is most certainly not the case in our house. (Also, at night time, the dimmers in the kids’ rooms are restricted to low levels and the nightstand lights can’t be switched off entirely, as they serve as a nightlight. Instant status is crucial in this case.)
You can in fact restrict the level on the dimmer itself (to a degree), but I don’t believe it’s programmable through Z-Wave (so you can’t schedule it). I use some code to get the desired functionality. Whenever the dimmer is turned up or down beyond the set limits, Vera will quickly move the dimmer back to within range.
For what it’s worth, I tested a VRI06 (no neutral) on a circuit with three Cree CR6s (actually Home Depot EcoSmart cans, but equal to the CR6 as I understand it).
The bulbs shut off completely around 10%, and the light pulsed a bit around 15%. Other than those two minor issues, though, the dimmer and cans worked far better than I expected. Dimming was smooth, and the noise was not distracting. I was surprised because the EcoSmart cans are 9.5W, giving me a total of 28.5W on the circuit, well below Leviton’s stated 40W minimum.
The one caveat is that I didn’t run the setup for an extended period of time, but I don’t imagine things would have changed much if I did.
I know that wasn’t part of your original selection, but I’m having great success with the Aeon Micro Smart Energy Illuminator G2 and any number of Cree LED cans (I have several controlling 2 or 4 can lights). They dim nicely (not linearly over the 0-100% range but good enough), fade in and out, and are more affordable. The drawbacks are that they don’t have a simple dimming slider (using momentary switches, you push the button a bit longer than for ON/OFF and it will dim in and out), and three way setup may be challenging. You also need a neutral. See [url=http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,5455.105.html]http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,5455.105.html[/url]
They do support routing, transmit beams, and you can turn on instant updates. They also measure energy consumption which is really neat. When wired with momentary switches, it looks nice because all switches “point” in the same direction (I’m probably the only one who cares about that kind of thing), and all switches support dimming. Also, at $50 it might be worth trying one.
TimAlls showed me how to put a resistor in one of the cans to make the dimmer work with led light bulbs.
I have mine hooked up to ecosmart bulbs from Home Depot.
I will say that I am using both EcoSmart led trims (6" and use Cree LEDs) and both the 2 wire leviton (VRI) and 3 wire levition (VRE) switches without a problem. I have used it with as little as 3 of the light trims. They dim well past 50% and are pretty smooth throughout the range. As these are ceiling lights (in an 8’ ceiling) I don’t hear any buzzing or anything from the lights.
I do have 2 4" ecosmart led trims on a VRI and while they don’t blink, they do not dim very well (they dim a little, stay the same level, then dim a little more at the end of the range). It’s a little weird to see them dim, so I am going to try the VRE (I have a spare) and see how that works, but I just haven’t had time yet.
I have both 2-way and 3-way circuits and the remote dimmers are nice, though I can’t get the LEDs on the remote to match the main switch (it is always on the further right setting -all on). It does dim them though and I think it is more my wiring than anything else. I have plans to rewire that switch soon as a proper 3-way switch (power to switch one, 3-wire from switch 1 to switch 2, 2-wire to lights). Currently it is not done that way and it’s a bit wonky.
I also noticed that this is a pretty old thread, but I thought I would add my experiences
To the OP, the Linear WD500Z dimmers are the same as the Evolve LRM-AS, the evolves are just rebranded Linears. Linear actually made them all along including the old HomePro ones well, in fact the old head of Evolve Guest Controls now works for Linear, after they sold out. Bottom line is the Linear’s are almost $10 cheaper than the Evolve LRM-AS, and are cheaper than both the GE 45609 and the GE 45612, yet they are a 3-wire dimmer.
Oh and the test results above for the LED and CFL’s for the Linear WD500Z is obviously exactly the same as the LRM-AS because they are the same switch!
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(Also, at night time, the dimmers in the kids’ rooms are restricted to low levels and the nightstand lights can’t be switched off entirely, as they serve as a nightlight. Instant status is crucial in this case.)