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Electrical wizards--why do my LED Xmas lights do this?
I have some LED Xmas lights that I thought might look nice in the house. I have an in-line dimmer that plugs into the wall, then you plug a light into the dimmer which is controlled by a sliding switch. Works fine with an incandescent string of lights. The dimmer does brighten and dim the LED string, but will not shut it off entirely and the on/off indicator light on the dimmer doesn't light up when the LED string is plugged into the dimmer. Without getting too technical, can anyone explain why this happens? Will any harm come to the LED string if I use a dimmer with it?
Yeah, it's a very tricky one to explain without getting too technical. I started to try to explain it in detail but after about 10 or 15 minutes of composing an answer, I realised that any explanation I can give you would require a huge amount of prerequisite knowledge. I just don't think I can fully explain it to you in this medium. You may have to do some background reading first and then refer to my answer below.
Sorry I can't do better but there is just too much to explain...
To understand why the dimmer acts as described, you need to understand 3 things first...
1) How an Incandescent Light works - You probably know this already.
2) How a dimmer works - How an SCR (Silicon Controlled Rectifier) works & how it is used to limit an AC waveform in a dimmer. Specifically you need to understand how the threshold voltage is controlled and what this does to the waveform applied to the load (i.e. the lights).
3) How an LED works - It is not the same as an incandescent light or even a fluorescent. It is a semiconductor, a diode to be precise. An incandescent globe appears to the dimmer circuit as a purely inductive load but an LED appears as a diode (which it isn't designed to control), with a specific and immutable voltage drop (around 0.6 - 0.7v) in one direction and a complete current block in the other direction. It is a result of this phenomenon that is stopping the dimmer from completely turning the LEDs off.
I know that this probably doesn't answer your question very well but it's probably the best I can do without going into depth on the operation of SCRs, diodes, and semiconductors in general.
I am pretty sure that you won't damage the LEDs by using the dimmer on them but I'm not so sure about the opposite. It may be that the dimmer could be damaged. It is not designed to run LEDs. It'll probably be fine but I couldn't rule it out without more info on the specific dimmer circuit in use.
The following links may help you understand the background (if you can be bothered).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon-controlled_rectifier
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyristor
http://kitsrus.com/pdf/k19.pdf
Hope this helps (a bit at least),
TV
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