Vera upgrade, Kick start LED lights

Community Playground General Discussions
#1

It would be nice if one could program Vera to have both a kick start and minimum dimming level ability that can be used with dimmers that have neither feature.

Anytime you turn on a string of LED lamps at a low dim setting they will typically come on at different times or not at all. This happens since many time you can dim a LED lamp to a very low setting but there is not enough power to fire them up from an off setting. If vera could have a setting for each dimmer for both the minimum dim level plus a kick start feature that would solve the problem.

So what do I mean by kickstarting. Kick start is when you command the dimmer to a high enough level to ensure they will turn on together then move it back to the lower setting. Example if you program a dimmer to start at 5% but you know that not all of the LEDs will start at that level Vera would turn the lamp on to say 20 or 30%, user defined, then drop it back to 5%. This way the LEDs electronics can quickly start up so all of the LEDs come on together then drop to the required value.

I know this won’t work with all switches since to have this work correctly you need a switch that you can set the level without the ramp up/down feature. But for those that do it allows one to turn on LEDs at levels they won’t initially start at.

True this is something that should be built into the dimmers but I’ve never heard of any that can kick start LEDs even though it’s a common problem at low levels. Yes, many can set a minimum level but that still doesn’t solve the LEDs not starting at the same time even at the minimum level.

OMT, this is true not only for LED lamps but low voltage lighting with electronic transformers.

There is one thing to be said about Z-Wave bulbs. Since they always have full power they by far can have the widest dimming range. Designed correctly they CAN be easily dim all the way down to 1%.

Just a thought.

#2

Vera already provides you a way to do exactly what you describe. Just create your scene to turn on the device at the higher dim level(50%) with a 1 second delayed action that sets the lower desired dim level(5%). Adjust your numbers to suit your specific needs.

I predict that you’ll not particularly desire the bright then dim option. This is avoided by purchasing better(more expensive) dimmers and bulbs. It’s not a Vera shortcoming.

#3

I agree you can do it that way however that uses the ramp up and down settings which you will notice. If all your dimmers can do is ramp up and down then that’s the best you can do. Other dimmers have the ability to go directly to a given brightness setting and that’s where this helps. In fact this can even work with the ramp function although normally not required unless you’re running a very long ramp time.

In addition having the ability build in to the settings for each dimmer works better than adding it to scenes. You don’t want to worry about this for every scene you create.

Bottom line is this is something that the dimmers really should do so but as I’ve said I’ve never read about any actually doing it.