Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

Probably very simple wiring question...

Status
Not open for further replies.

Dr.EM

New Member
We are re-doing the kitchen shortly and will have new lights fitted. At the moment we have a striplight. It can be operated by either of 2 switches in the kitchen. It will be changed for a set of halogens, which we want dimmable. My question is, can we operate one set of halogens with 2 dimmer switches? I have a feeling if both are slightly/half way on, bad things will happen :eek: ?
 
You can get special dimmers that link to each other and they decide which is in control depending on which one was operated, but I haven't seen them in this country, they were made by Switchlinc. I used a couple of them when I was stateside and they seemed ok. I think Smart Switch made em as well for here, and sold them through B&Q, but it was years ago I looked for them. The biggest problem with them was that they required a neutral as well as the switch wires, so if your house is wired using loop-in neutral you're goosed unless you bring a neutral down from the light to each dimmer.
For normal run of the mill dimmers, only 1 is fitted, the other end must be a standard two way switch.
 
Generally you only need to be able to dim the light from one of the locations, so you only need one dimmer (that includes a SPDT switch) and a SPDT switch. I've got a dimmer at home which does exactly that - it were made by MK, it has a roller for the dimmer, and a rocker switch for ON and OFF, I use it for the light in my bedroom - with a two way cord pull switch over the bed so i can turn the light ON or OFF without getting out of bed.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top