dimmer for 3 light zones?

[IanJ]

I have a bedroom lighting system I would like to cable up as follows.

1) A set of 4 mains powered downlighters in the ceiling for general lighting 2) two mains powered bedside table lights to hang over bed side cabinets on each side of the bed.

I'd like a single dimmer switch on the wall near the door to control the ceiling lighting. A dimmer capable of controlling both bed side lights, and ceiling lights on each side of the bed.

If the switch near the wall was turned on upon entry to the room, could I turn the ceiling lights off from the bedside controls?

Does anybody know of a product to accomplish this?

thanks in adv.

[Martin Angove]

If I have understood you correctly what you want is:

1: ceiling lights, dimmable from the door and from each side of the bed.

2: bedside lights, dimmable from either side of the bed, presumably in case one occupant drops off with the light still on.

You *can* have a dimmer and (any number of) ordinary switches in a two or three or more-way setup so that you could have a dimmer switch by the door to switch on and dim the ceiling lights and an ordinary switch either side of the bed to switch them off, but the one thing you *can't* do is to have two or more dimmer switches controlling the same set of lights.

Likewise with the bedside lamps; if you have a dimmer on one side you could have an ordinary switch the other, but not two dimmers controling the same bedside lamp.

Now, there is a way you can accomplish all you have suggested, and a whole lot more, but it is very expensive. What you would need to do would be to install a system from someone like Dimtek

) or iLight, or possibly some X10 gear (there are others here who know more about X10).

Each set of lamps could then be on its own addressable dimmer and instead of fitting light switches you would fit control panels which communicate with the dimmer via a data network. It is up to you what facilities are available at the control panels, and you can have as many as you like, but as I said it is a very expensive option when compared with standard switches and dimmers.

Or prehaps I've misunderstood and it's not really as complicated as I thought.

Hwyl!

M.

[Frisket]

Or you could go for a remote controlled set-up. Don't know the manufacturers but I saw a set up in a customers house and they looked quite impressive. Richard

[IanJ]

Thanks for the reply. You understood correctly what I intended to do. I guessed I was going to have to go with Lutron or something similar but just wanted to check with the experts.

I've not heard of dimtek so will take a look into them later today.

best regards Ian

[Dave Plowman]

I've got a similar set up with one exception. I'll describe mine.

At the door, a single two way switch. At the bed two other switches, one either side, (one an intermediate) which control all the lights. 'Downstream' of this master circuit are dimmers for overhead lights and one either side of the bed for reading lights. The one snag would be that if all the lights were turned off on their dimmers, you couldn't turn any on at the door, but in practice this doesn't occur.

Now what you also want is two way dimmer control of the overhead lights? These do exist, but I can't remember who makes them. ;-)

[Owain]

"IanJ" wrote | If the switch near the wall was turned on upon entry to | the room, could I turn the ceiling lights off from the | bedside controls?

You can get dimmers that allow multi-point control, usually a central dimmer pack and then up/down buttons. Maplin used to have a touch dimmer project that allowed 2 touch pad locations, but seems to no more.

However they have a Velleman kit K8208 (Maplin N82AA) which is a microcontrolled multi-function dimmer, features include * 13 different functions eg slow on/off dimmer * operate from several locations, parallel connection of push buttons * suitabel for resistive and inductive loads, high-voltage halogen, low-voltage halogen with ferromagnetic transformer *

2.5A / 600W max load. Thirty squids.

You could also look at the cheaper K8007 (Maplin RE02C) which has pushbutton up/down control - don't know if there's a reason why you couldn't parallel up their pushbuttons.

Both on page 628 of Maplin catalogue or maplin.co.uk

Owain

[Jim]

Like the other poster said you could go for a remote control setup. 3 dimmer switches from TLC at about £17 each and any spare remote control you can find. Connect a single dimmer to each light and programme each one with a different button on the remote. The dimmers are pretty responsive and work even when pointing the remote away from the switch so don't let line of sight worry you. You may even be able to get a 3 gang remote dimmer, (I'm pretty sure you can get a 2 gang) which would mean you only need 1 switch plate on the wall.

[geoff]

In message , Frisket writes

CPC do a four channel remote lighting system. If you set both switches to the same channel, you could control both. Wall dimming switches are about £20 and the remote about £15. Of course if you got the two out of sync ...