Reduced Dimming Range: What’s The Cause?

Reduced Dimming Range: What’s The Cause?

In this article the technical team at Zano explains how it helped one customer who was struggling to get full dimming from his Zano dimmer.

What was the problem?

The caller had three halogen lamps and he wasn’t getting full dimming range from his Zano dimmer. At first, we weren’t sure why.

Zano Smart Settings – the simple programme that ensures Zano dimmers work effectively – should work with both LED and halogen. 

How did you solve it?

The maximum setting is set at about 60% from the factory.

When contractors experiment with the smart settings, they sometimes set the minimum too high or the maximum too low, and it reduces the output: this was the case with this technical query.

We put the item back into programming mode by turning the power on and off at the mains.

To do this, you follow the first four or five steps of the smart settings guide then leave the dimmer to completely de-programme itself. It will flash a number of times before the programme is cleared of all settings.

So the caller had actually set the minimum level to full brightness?

Or, he had just not seen the first or second flash which means that he was getting more of the boost than the minimum. 

Right. In that instance, the reset meant that he could clearly reset the minimum level and the boost level?

Absolutely! He was able to start from the beginning as if he was doing it first time.

If the same problem occurred with an LED load, would smart settings be able to help?

It can help, but sometimes the problem isn’t the dimmer, but the load. As we’ve found in our testing room, not all LEDs are labelled correctly. If the actual wattage is higher, it can mess with the dimmer. Sometimes, the only solution is to take one lamp off the circuit at a time to see if the dimmer starts to perform better. Or, you can send it to us for testing.

For more information about the range of LED dimming controls from Zano visit: https://zanocontrols.co.uk/

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