oops, wrong person for the location.
As for mixing DC into an AC
circuit, even on the
neutral no don't do it. Bad Karma. First what about
phase harmonics and unbalanced loads sending a pulsed
voltage into your DC
voltage neutral return line. Than it's the idea that the DC
system needs to run back to somewhere because the
ground probably is not going to be an adiquate drain for it. Could do this with an DC control
circuit if both
dimmer and
switch were DC in controlling some kind of
relay or
dimmer, especially if you are doing analog control but after that, it's not going to be much help and your
lag time will kill the
effect.
In essence we are talking about a
three way switch. Both
power sources are feeding off the same source. Attaching them to differing phases much less
power sources would be really bad. What's to stop you from having both
switch and
dimmer in the open position? When the
power to on, the
power to the second is not important because
power flows
thru the
switch that allows flow. When it is switched off - given there is no
traveler wires, than there is no
current flow. When the other path of least resistance, the
dimmer is on,
current flows
thru it. Turn on the
switch while the
dimmer is running and it's easier for the
current to flow
thru the
switch than
thru the
dimmer so the
dimmer becomes inactive for the most part. Since it's all of the same potential there is no back feeding danger to the
dimmer either. What's important however is that both switchs are gaining
power from the same source. Introduce two differing sources to it and you blow up stuff when you make a mistake and
switch them together.
As for diodes and other stuff, electronics is not my field nor skill. I'm talking very baisic electrical theory here on a very simple
switch. Want electronics Woemek,
DMX Tools and others here and elsewhere would be much more able to help. Especially
DMX tools - where are ya?
Mix in DC control or voltages to this and it gets really complex. You might use such a thing for control of a
switch but on the baisic
power flowing
thru either
circuit A or B, you don't want to mix DC into the equasion. In other words, you don't want DC
power anywhere near your lamps unless your whole
system is DC and it has lots of it's own problems especially with
voltage drop. You mix
power sources by accident or anything else and you have things blowing up. No, unless you had some kind of pause type
switch between
power sources such as an On/pause/on type
switch it would be a bad idea. You would have to have a
switch that switched both hot and
neutral for both types of
power in the same instant and had a pause between such currents flowing
thru the
line so it did not damage itself much less cause other problems. Draw it out see the problems. In general however avoid sending DC
power down any
line, even a short could really ruin your day for all other gear. It would be nice to just
send a 12VDC
current down the
line but it's not good to think about past the NO. Even feeding a 12v AC
transformer in place of a
dimmer would be bad because in that case you just might back feed the
transformer.