"flashing" channels to strike "dimmable" tornados?

I have a few L5508 channels, each connected to a number of dimmable philips tornado cfls (multiple bulbs in a single fixture), which appear to need to be started without (or with a low level of) dimming for a second or so, for the tornados dimming function to then work correctly - is there any elegant ways to configure this to occur without using logic? Thanks.

 

I have used a couple of the Philips Tornado fittings on dimmers.
The particular fittings had 2 lamps.
I replaced one lamp which seemed to need a higher level to start.
Other than that I haven't had to do anything more than choose a suitable minimum level for starting with the min/max settings on the dimmer.
It would be a good idea to make sure they are "burned in" for their first 100hrs at full brightness as with other dimming fluros.

 

The first thing to check is that you actually have the dimmable versions of the Tornado bulbs. Not all tornado's are dimmable and they have dimmable and non-dimmable versions of some of the same wattages, such as 20W.

If you can move them over to a DIN Universal Dimmer channel then you can use the kickstart feature of that dimmer to kickstart the lamps.

The minimum turn-on brightness for the Tornados varies between about 30% and 50% (C-Bus level). There's significant variation from unit to unit so it pays to play mix-and-match a little to get ones with similar performance if you've got access to several of them.

On the Leading Edge dimmer you can adjust the minimum brightness setting upwards to 30 - 50%, i.e. until they just turn on. You'll lose a bit of the dimming range at the bottom end by doing this, but it will help ensure that the lamps light up. It's also worth noting that the minimum setting needs to be a bit conservative as they take a slightly higher minimum setting when cold to start.

If don't have a spare universal dimmer channel (and don't want to buy one) and simply must be able to dim down to minimum on the Leading Edge dimmer you have, then unfortunately your only options would be to either write some logic to implement a manual kick-start or replace the lamps with something else with better dimming performance.

 

Thanks for the suggestions... No universal dimmer channels, so it looks like I'll be writing some logic.

The minimum dimming level option doesn't work properly for me as the dimming curve for the bulbs appears to change based on the initial strike level (this doesn't seem logical - but I've about 12 (out of 18) of the things that all behave like this) - and have so for about a year.

I found that the leakage current through the dimmers was enough to make the non dimmable variants flash in the off state - so it is pretty easy to spot that mistake.

 

Hello Anthony
It may well be that I havent noticed that problem recently since the Tornados I used are on a toggle dimmer and when they start it is always 100% unless someone does a long press.

 

When I noticed the issue, I did set the minimum quite high as Newman suggested.