Leviton DMX dimmer leaves LED bulbs at level

Jlarmen

Member
I have a Levitron 4 channel DMX pack unit attached with 4 standard dimming household LED bulbs, 60w. When they are turned on they start at 0%, and I am able to bring them to 100% brightness, but when they are faded all the way down (the Levitron is attached to an ETC board), they stay at about 10%. Am I missing a setting or there something with LED bulbs like this?
 
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I have a Levitron 4 channel DMX pack unit attached with 4 standard dimming household LED bulbs, 60w. When they turned on they start at 0%, and I am able to bring them to 100% brightness, but when the fader (the Levitron is attached to an ETC board), they stay at about 10%. Am I missing a setting or is there something with LED bulbs like this?
@Jlarmen No guaranty; you could try connecting a 25 or 40 Watt old fangled incandescent lamp in parallel with each dimmer as a purely resistive load. Try one dimmer; if it works, add to the other 3. ALWAYS stay within the ratings per channel and per pack.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
I have a Levitron 4 channel DMX pack unit attached with 4 standard dimming household LED bulbs, 60w. When they are turned on they start at 0%, and I am able to bring them to 100% brightness, but when they are faded all the way down (the Levitron is attached to an ETC board), they stay at about 10%. Am I missing a setting or there something with LED bulbs like this?
Your LED globe 60w will be the incandescent equivalent to LED. I think you will find the actual load is about 6w therefore too low for the dimmer pack to work. also are they dimmable LED globes?
As suggested using a ghost load (either an incandescent lamp or something else that adds a resistive load (I have heard of toasters being used but they will produce lots of heat so be careful)) plugged in with the LED globe might make it work.
Regards

Geoff
 
Your LED globe 60w will be the incandescent equivalent to LED. I think you will find the actual load is about 6w therefore too low for the dimmer pack to work. also are they dimmable LED globes?
As suggested using a ghost load (either an incandescent lamp or something else that adds a resistive load (I have heard of toasters being used but they will produce lots of heat so be careful)) plugged in with the LED globe might make it work.
Regards

Geoff
It's also difficult to find a toaster less than 12 or15 hundred Watts on our 120 volt side of the pond?
In the mid 60's, I used to use a single burner hot plate and a two burner hot plate with three settings per plate as ghost loads on an old-fangled British Strand 3KW per dimmer resistance board.
Each plate was rated for 1 to 3 KW.

If / when I wanted to successfully / smoothly dim wall sconces, table &/or floor lights, I used the various wattages of hot plates as dummy loads. This was in the tight, dark, back stage confines of an amateur theatre.
I had the two (3 plates in total) hot plates sitting conveniently atop the Strand resistance board where they were convenient for me to change the wattage settings on the two plate unit.
When a dimmer was set at 30 < 40 % the hot plates would barely glow, no visible light (to warn innocent / naive actorines, dressers, and / or props pixies who'd pass, think the hot plates were just sitting there [which they were] and they'd casually toss all manner of costumes and props on them where they were sure they'd be convenient [Which they were aside from getting scorched, melted, and / or burnt]).

The hot plates made GREAT, adjustable, dummy loads without generating enough visibly distracting light to be a nuisance requiring additional masking. I suppose a few props pixies wondered why I'd dragged their relics from the 30's and 40's up from the basement; they probably thought I was planning on making myself a warm coffee, if they gave them any conscious thought.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
In a production of Beauty and the Beast, we had the rose petal drops (the single ones) on solenoids powered by a couple dimmer packs. Then the light cue would fire the dimmer to pull a small piece of wire that held the rose petals.
In that instance we needed a ghost load because the solenoid effectively didn't draw anything, but what perplexed me is the ghost load we used was an incandescent nightlight. I couldn't figure out how a 4w nightlight was nearly enough to help.
 
I used a laptop charger for years before it finally died. You don’t always need a light just a load.
 
In a production of Beauty and the Beast, we had the rose petal drops (the single ones) on solenoids powered by a couple dimmer packs. Then the light cue would fire the dimmer to pull a small piece of wire that held the rose petals.
In that instance we needed a ghost load because the solenoid effectively didn't draw anything, but what perplexed me is the ghost load we used was an incandescent nightlight. I couldn't figure out how a 4w nightlight was nearly enough to help.
About 6 years ago for B&B I cut the rose and petals out of a black piece of illustration board, glued red and green gel on the back, and used small 120v indicator lights behind the rose, stem, and each petal. The rose assembly was then set in a glass display dome. Wired them all to a Colortran 12-channel DMX relay box and did a sequence of cues on the console.
See still photos below... couldn't figure out how to attach a .mov file to show the motion.

Rose 1.pngRose 2.pngRose 3.pngRose 4.pngRose 5.png
 
Since we’re taking about the rose. When I worked at Starlight we had a rose. It was made with electromagnets press a button to stop the magnet from doing its thing. It wasn’t DMXd but if wanted it totally could of been with a simple relay on/off.
 
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In a production of Beauty and the Beast, we had the rose petal drops (the single ones) on solenoids powered by a couple dimmer packs. Then the light cue would fire the dimmer to pull a small piece of wire that held the rose petals.
In that instance we needed a ghost load because the solenoid effectively didn't draw anything, but what perplexed me is the ghost load we used was an incandescent nightlight. I couldn't figure out how a 4w nightlight was nearly enough to help.
@macsound In 1991 or '92, the director of a local production of Peter Pan wanted small, 120 volt candle-flame, shaped neon lamps on the end of 10 or 12 ~3' lengths of thin matte black wire laying (unobtrusively) around the set; his plan was for the scene to go to black then have 10 or 12 actorines clad in matte black, complete with matte black hoods with tiny slits for their eyes, enter, pick up his vision of Tinker Bell's buddies and wave them about; high, low, fast, slow, pause, hover, yada, yada; you've got the notion.

Props used 5 or 6" lengths of dowel with holes drilled longitudinally as handles then painted the handles matter black.
~3' lengths of piano wire were glued into the handles. 18/2 HPN ran up the shiny piano wire and was soldered directly to the medium candleabra bases of the neon candle flame lamps. Matte black heat-shrink tubing covered the shiny piano wire, including the 18/2 HPN, the base of the lamp, and held the HPN and its shiny piano wire support together.

The matte black 18/2 HPN carried on past the handle for ~25', passed through a fuse holder housed in a single gang 1110 box, then terminated in a 20 Amp 3 contact male twist.
The male twist grounded the 1110 box; a blank single gang cover was added, then the box and cover were given a generous coating of matte black paint.

Standard 12/3 SO fed the boxes; the boxes lay unnoticed on the floor behind various pieces of scenery and the LD created a variety of chase cues to illuminate the neon candle-flame lamps.

The chase cues alternated between zero and 100% as the neon lamps wouldn't fire reliably at anything appreciably less.

The dimmers were Strand CD80 2.4 K's, the neon lamps = ~0 load.

A 120 volt, 6S6 lamp wired in parallel, was covered by a dense layer of tape and formed part of each handle.
The choreographer choreographed a frenetic number. The actorines weren't exactly gentle with their little buddies, grabbing them, waving the excrement out of them, then tossing them crashing to the floor where they lay waiting to be rescued, untangled, and reset behind the mid-stage black.

A 120 volt 6 Watt lamp reliably functioned as a workable dummy load for Tinker Bell's (Or is that Tinker Belle's) 'steam punk' little pals.
The production ran two childrens' matinees daily from Christmas to New Years with a few evenings added: NONE of the abused 120 volt 6S6's were harmed in the name of art.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard
 
A number of years ago we were actively replacing the lamps in the 1960's era chandeliers in our church with LED bulbs. We initially left one incandescent lamp in each string, which worked well until it burned out. We put in a call to the dimmer manufacturer support (Lehigh Lighting) who told us to put a 2K 20Watt resistor across each output, which worked very well. Doing the math, we could have used a C7 Christmas light to achieve the same effect. I have used this technique a couple of times to stabilize shoebox dimmers.
 
LED DUMMY
 

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