Electronic Circuits and Projects Forum

you mean connect them together as one red wire? you should not do that, that would bypass switch and allow continuous current flow (even if small when dimmer is turned down). so before you do anything like that, is there a switch on the dimmer (under the knob or on the knob)? all my dimmers have switch. if it is a dial instead of slide, switch may be press to toggle. see attached file for 3-way operation. basically toggling either sw1 or sw2 changes light from on to off or off to on. the idea is to place switches far from each other like in a hallway.



when one of switches is replaced by dimmer, that functionality is preserved, only one side of hallway has additional luxury of adjusting the light. so you should be able to toggle the internal switch of the dimmer and try to adjust the brightness. please make sure to use actual lamp with a light-bulb as a test load. dimmers chop the ac sinewave and tat can cause multi-meters to show wrong or meaningless reading.

if you use two red wires (and isolate or cap with marret the black one), i don't expect circuit to work at all but i don't see that posing any risk to dimmer because circuit is current limited by bulb. just make sure that ground is always connected, and insulate any unused wire (red or black).