2014 28BHBE Dometic Awning - Dimming LED lights

[Shmeek]

Originally Posted by troutslayer

Well, the good news is that it did not take a month to receive the RF controller (only about 10 days). All the controls work well...all, EXCEPT the dimmer control! RATS!!

How did you wire it in? I can't imagine the Eagle wiring is much different than my Flight's.

[edatlanta]

All LED lights are NOT designed to dim. You can't just put a cheap dimmer on these to dim them. LED's have a control circuit between them and the line voltage much like a ballast for fluorescent lighting which you can't dim either unless it is ballast designed to dim.

I would check with Jayco to see if the LED's used are able to be dimmed or not. Otherwise you won't do them any good.

[troutslayer]

Originally Posted by Shmeek

How did you wire it in? I can't imagine the Eagle wiring is much different than my Flight's.

Well, my set up is different cuz I have installed the LED light strip, rather than it coming already installed from the factory. Sorry if I mis-led you on that but I was mostly referring to the RF controller rather than the IR controller. An update though, the dimmer function on the remote DOES work. All the other buttons (functions) on the remote work with just a "click" but the dimmers only work if you hold the button down for a period. The RF controller on my set-up just plugs into the light strip on one end and the AC adapter on the other. I would think you could direct connect yours where the wire leads to the light strip. Not sure if your light strip is connected directly to the 12V system or if there is an AC adapter. I guess you need to call Jayco to get some more info and/or possibly a wiring diagram. Have fun!

[Crrod]

Originally Posted by Shmeek

I don't think you can do anything at the switch, as the switch controls both the step light (incandescent) and LED strip light. I suppose you could remove the bulb for the step light, effectively breaking that part of the circuit, so that the dimmer only had an affect on the strip lights.

Both the LED and the step light wire goes to the switch panel (at least on my 29RKS). That is the good news. The bad news is that it is only the hot wire and I'm told that you can't use a common ground on the PWM dimmers. I haven't proven that yet but since I don't want to get into a "project" before I leave for a week trip on Friday I'm going to leave it for another day. If anyone knows a spot to easily access both wires of the LED strip from the inside of the trailer that would be great info.

I bought the TorchStar dimmer from Amazon, if anyone has successfully used this or a similar PWM dimmer I'd appreciate your feedback.

Thanks in advance for any help!

rod

[Camper_bob]

Originally Posted by Crrod

Both the LED and the step light wire goes to the switch panel (at least on my 29RKS). That is the good news. The bad news is that it is only the hot wire and I'm told that you can't use a common ground on the PWM dimmers. I haven't proven that yet but since I don't want to get into a "project" before I leave for a week trip on Friday I'm going to leave it for another day. If anyone knows a spot to easily access both wires of the LED strip from the inside of the trailer that would be great info.

I bought the TorchStar dimmer from Amazon, if anyone has successfully used this or a similar PWM dimmer I'd appreciate your feedback.

Thanks in advance for any help!

rod

You are correct, LEDs use PWM for dimming, so the dimmer needs to be wired directly to the pos & neg on the light; wiring it into the switch panel doesn't work, I tried with a couple different dimmers. Apparently, not all LEDs are dimmable even with PWM, but I have not discovered one that did not dim with the dimmer in the discussion below (I tried with flood lamps, and the LED strip on my trailer and both worked).

There are a couple discussions on this, here's what I did; very similar to another user, and a couple different ideas in the thread...

http://www.jaycoowners.com/forums/f5...s-27671-3.html