Remote control light switch?

[Andy Burns]

that's an expensive system to buy into ...

[alan_m]

You may find that any remote facility is built into the light fitting or bulb rather than the wall switch.

[David Wade]

It is, but its very cheap to run, he doesn't need an app, it was easy to set up, no dependency on WiFi, especially faffing with 2g/5g WiFi an issue which seems to plauge many other devices

Dave

[Jethro_uk]

Haven't RTFT but a solution might be "smart " light *bulbs* ? It's how I made our lounge remote friendly.

[John Rumm]

How about:

No app required, no cloud, no internet or even network.

Just point a IR remote control at it. You can teach it a spare button from any remote, or they sell a specific one that also lets it play a few more tricks - like remembering specific lighting settings on presets:

[Bob Eager]

One of these (or two if you want on-off):

[alan_m]

You may have to be careful with the type of bulb or include another component in the lighting circuit. With just a (LED) bulb it relies on some current flowing between live and neutral to power the switch. With many LED bulbs a small current may/will cause the bulb to glow when the switch is in the off state.

[David]

That seems to be the way things are going. Minimal intervention.

Cheers

Dave R

[Andy Burns]

Depends if you have wife/kids around, but getting them to *NOT* turn off the existing switch maybe an issue ...

[John Rumm]

That is a known problem with some "active" switches that need to draw power without the benefit of a neutral connection. However those don't seem to cause a problem IME - and I have several, all driving LEDs and have not seen an issue.

[alan_m]

It is a manufacturer's warning in the fitting instructions for that device.

[John Rumm]

The instructions say "Some LED lamps are not designed for electronic dimmer switches and may remain illuminated even when a dimmer switch is turned off."

To which I would suggest "don't use LED lamps not designed for electronic dimming". However you can also fit one of these if it is a problem:

Personally I have never found the need since all my dimmed LEDs seem to work ok. (3 on remote controllable touch dimmers (one two way with master slave dimmers), one on normal rotary push to switch dimmer. All the dimmers are Varilight of various generations. Most of the lamp fittings have multiple LEDs.

Also worth noting that some brands of bulb dim better than others - either in dimming range and/or in controlling colour temperature.

[Mike Humphrey]

This should do what you want I think. Replace the wall switch with one of these:

"No neutral is required")

Then add extra wall switches:

fobs: It doesn't do dimming, but meets all your other requirements.

There are dimming modules in the same series, but these do need a neutral. You could install these next to the light, so you'd only need to lift one board in the loft, or if you don't mind a box on the ceiling install it on the ceiling next to the light.

Mike

[Jeff Layman]

Not sure I understand some of the info about that device: "The dimmers also feature soft start to improve lamp life and totally silent operation."

Does no "soft start" affect LED lamp life? Or perhaps it's dimmable CFLs they're referring to, as it apparently can work with those according to the dimmer selection info.

Also, on the downloadable datasheet, it states: Operating Voltage: 230v 50Hz Maximum Load Rating: LED; 100W (Max. 10 lamps) Maximum Current Rating: 1.3A

Where does that current rating come from? At 230V, it's 300W, so why the maximum load rating of 100W?

[David Wade]

Power factor. So whilst they take a what seems a high current for the power used, they only do so for a small part of a mains cycle, so the power consumed is small. This is the difference between VA and Watts.

if you are interested just stick

"whats the difference between VA and watts"

into your normal search engine, you will find lots of artivles.

Dave

[maus]

I liked the bit about "not for sale to Germany". Is the war not finally over. :)

(Yes, it is about commercial agreements, but still:) )

[Paul]

Some effort was made to do PFC (Power Factor Correction) on the earlier (more expensive) LED lamps.

The cheap ones now, the power factor is more consistent with a raw SMPS. I guess with no factors to control implementation, this is what we get.

PFC LED lamp (more likely sold years ago)

Plain LED lamp (what you can expect today)

The specs for the lamps we can buy at the store now, they have a "cycle count limit" for lifespan, in addition to the normal termination-of-life due to drop in intensity.

I had one of those cheap LEDs fail after only a few months, putting me well short of "10,000 hours", and I'm pretty sure the number of start cycles didn't kill it either. The more expensive LEDs in past years, had a 25,000 hour rating (based on expiry due to LED intensity dropping, and the bulb still kinda works).

Paul

[John Rumm]

Soft start was more of benefit for halogen lamps longevity. There might be some aesthetic benefit from the softer start on LED but it will probably not make any difference to life.

LEDs will present a reactive load, due to a combination of being capacitive, and also having a non sinusoidal current draw (i.e. they draw their current in short gulps near the centre of the peak of the mains waveform). So the real power in watts will be significantly lower than the apparent power you see in peak current draw multiplied by RMS voltage.

See the section on switched mode supplies: