ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Looking for Electronic LV Dimmer w/ remote

All-

Anyone know of an electronic low-voltage dimmer with IR remote, that dosen't cost more than $200? I see that Lutron makes one (SPSELV-600), but it's a bit pricey. X-10 not acceptable.

You want to play you got to pay.

I googled that model number and the first site I looked at had it for $180. They were 30% higher than I pay for other dimmers from our supply house, so you might find it cheaper.

You can get what you need here. But as I said it'll cost ya. http://www.hankselectric.com/productCat30250.ctlg

A little off topic - I'm curious why can't X-10 be used?

Northbayec-

I did a house with X-10 before, and had intermittent outages (sometimes modules would not respond), but most importantly, sometimes lights would turn on for no reason. It didn't happen often, but enough to be annoying. I want to use this dimmer in a media room, and IR will allow me to blend lights into a media remote macro.

So you guys don't find these dimmers a little on the high side, huh? I bought a MAELV-600 last week for about $120, and thought that was steep. For this remote dimmer, even if I could get it for $180 as Eagle suggests, I'm sure that dosen't include the remote. That's more expensive then the track & lighting fixtures I'm connecting it to. If it ever gets taken out in a surge, I will lose my lunch.

Chimo, are you sure you need an Electronic Low Voltage Dimmer? 99% of electronic transformers work fine with standard incandescent dimmers.

Curt

Do they only make the different flavors of dimmers to get them to work? I always assumed that if you mixed matched you might hurt the life of the dimmer and the transformer it feeds. Does an icandescent dimmer effect a transformer(either magnetic or electronic) at all?

Caselec-

To be honest, this is my first experience with LV lighting (except for outdoor). The track lighting & fixture mfg. recommended the ELV dimmers, though I forget why. My track is carrying 120V; each fixture has an electronic transformer to step down to 12V- the advantage is being able to mix-n-match fixtures. I didn't even think about researching dimmer info. Now if I do it, I may cry.
Anyone know the 'advantage' to using ELV dimmers? No buzzing? Energy efficiency? Bulb life?

Sometimes it will make a terible buzzing sound. Sometimes the light flickers. Iv'e seen times where a dimmer was not LV (installed by others) with no noticeable effects. We onece got the wrong LV dimmer magnetic not electronic and of coarse no returns.

You could use a dimming module like a HP-2 with most dimmers. It will allow you to run a lot more wattage but it wont save you $$.