[Ajones]

Hey guys, my first post for Help  I’m not an electrician. I work in Electronics but mostly in Sales lol  I replaced all of the lights in my coach to get it a little brighter   And the dimmers don’t dim very well so I bought a bunch of low side dimmers tried to hook them up in the AI stuff and everything I learned told me I needed high side dimmers so I’ve got them here and can’t seem to get them work either I can get the lights to come on. I can get them to go off, but I can’t get the dimmer to have any control in them whatsoever and I keep getting told all kinds of different things with the research. I’m doing so I’m hoping one of you might be able to give me a firm idea on what I am not doing. I have a brown red and black wire coming out of the wall and that seems to be the coloring scheme for all the other dimmers in the coach too, which I am trying to replace them all   The dimmers I have are a three wire as well and they have black, red and yellow coming out of them   Appreciate any help you might be able to provide
Alan

[Ajones]

I should add I changed them all to LED lights and the dimming was awful so I was told that these new dimmers with PWM would solve this

[Richard]

The LED lights themselves have to be capable of dimming. Some are, some are not.

[dannymarilyn]

Dear A,

I'd suggest you find a very inexpensive LED that advertises as being dimmable, check to see what dimmer that source sells, or recommends,
and determine if your units qualify. Especially if it is strip lights, check the specifications and what each color of wire controls or supplies what. Super Bright LEDs generally is a good source of information. As Rich stated, some LEDs just basically On or Off. Dimmable devices are a special breed of LED. Sometimes, dimmers are built for certain LED units and may not interchange. You may need to go back to the basics and compare specifications, circuit functions, and wire coding.

Also, sometimes Newel's wire color coding is not industry standard. For example on our #277, in the DC light wiring for the marker lights, the black is the positive, whereas, normal DC wiring, the black is always negative - look at your car's wiring to the battery. It didn't matter to the old incandescent lamps, but LEDs are polarity sensitive. Normal AC (120v) wiring has black, blue, or red hot (positive) wiring with white as the common (neutral) wiring and green as the ground.

Ensure with a VOM or DMM that your polarity is correct! Then compare specifications. Conact me if you wish more help.
deg 1991 # 277

[Jack Houpe]

I'll throw my 2 cents in and say the old halogen lights used pwm (pulse width modulation) to dim the old incandescent lights. There are two types of pwm dimmers one is a leading edge. The other is a trailing edge. LEDs require a different dimmer than what is currently in our coaches. I found these dimmers to work properly but you must replace the old ones. I suggest buying one and give it a try before taking out the old one. The old dimmers caused the led to have a strobe effect this dimmer solved the problem


https://a.co/d/0aMmKc3u

[Ajones]

Dear A,

I'd suggest you find a very inexpensive LED that advertises as being dimmable, check to see what dimmer that source sells, or recommends,
and determine if your units qualify.  Especially if it is strip lights, check the specifications and what each color of wire controls or supplies what.  Super Bright LEDs generally is a good source of information.  As Rich stated, some LEDs just basically On or Off.  Dimmable devices are a special breed of LED.  Sometimes, dimmers are built for certain LED units and may not interchange.  You may need to go back to the basics and compare specifications, circuit functions, and wire coding.

Also, sometimes Newel's wire color coding is not industry standard.  For example on our #277, in the DC light wiring for the marker lights, the black is the positive, whereas, normal DC wiring, the black is always negative - look at your car's wiring to the battery.  It didn't matter to the old incandescent lamps, but LEDs are polarity sensitive.  Normal AC (120v) wiring has black, blue, or red hot (positive) wiring with white as the common (neutral) wiring and green as the ground.

Ensure with a VOM or DMM that your polarity is correct!  Then compare specifications.  Conact me if you wish more help.
deg  1991 # 277

I have what is said to be dimmable and reviews of them state that as well

[dannymarilyn]

Dear A,

I'd suggest you find a very inexpensive LED that advertises as being dimmable, check to see what dimmer that source sells, or recommends,
and determine if your units qualify.  Especially if it is strip lights, check the specifications and what each color of wire controls or supplies what.  Super Bright LEDs generally is a good source of information.  As Rich stated, some LEDs just basically On or Off.  Dimmable devices are a special breed of LED.  Sometimes, dimmers are built for certain LED units and may not interchange.  You may need to go back to the basics and compare specifications, circuit functions, and wire coding.

Also, sometimes Newel's wire color coding is not industry standard.  For example on our #277, in the DC light wiring for the marker lights, the black is the positive, whereas, normal DC wiring, the black is always negative - look at your car's wiring to the battery.  It didn't matter to the old incandescent lamps, but LEDs are polarity sensitive.  Normal AC (120v) wiring has black, blue, or red hot (positive) wiring with white as the common (neutral) wiring and green as the ground.

Ensure with a VOM or DMM that your polarity is correct!  Then compare specifications.  Conact me if you wish more help.
deg  1991 # 277

I have what is said to be dimmable and reviews of them state that as well

Dear A, This url https://hitlights.com/blogs/premium-led-...tches-work

will take you to a reasonably well written website concerning dimmers. This portion of LED technology is a bit quirky. Certainly check everything together on a table before installation. Do you have the website for the components you are linking together? If so, forward and I'd be happy to review the specs. Did you buy the dimmers and LEDs from same source? Are the pieces the same brand?

Do you have any friends in ham radio? If you can find an oscilloscope, it will display the actual wave from feeding the LEDs. One picture is worth a thousand words. Please advise if I can help further. deg