Original CBUS Dimmers and LED downlights

Hi All,

Newby to your forum so please be kind

Currently upgrading a home with LED downlights but the home is runnning circa 1998 black box Relays and Dimmers. Can any of you guys shed light on what type of dimming these old jiggas used and if you know of downlights that have worked well or otherwise with them?

There is 30+ dimmers and relays so upgrading is not favourable when its all working well already.

Thanks in advance.

 

G'day Nick and thanks very much for your response. We use Haneco vivas as our bread and butter offer because they dim well so that's good news. We will be trialling a few different offers next week and they were on the list.

I am familiar with CBUS installs but just learning the intricacies of this home as we go being such an old system. Aside from some power supply issues it's very stable it seems. Just these black dimmets with very little info available it seems except old school Cbus gurus

Thanks again.

 

They are leading edge dimmers

There are many that work. Both dedicated driver type and even some Osram dimmable GU10 lamps. But there are no hard & fast rules. some models variants work, others do not.
But personally I will not use Haneco as they are a dogdey company in my opinion.

 

Upgrading is always favourable. The idea is to be very selective.

 

Upgrading to LEDs from halogens

I was wondering about Haneco compatibility with the 5508/4 dimmer series. This series is also a leading edge dimmer with a 300 nF capacitance loading per channel. I only have one, two or three halogen lights per channel. Would the Haneco Aurora series be OK? This luminaire would be on a single channel. I'm looking to replace most other halogens with something like Haneco Viva90s, as suggested previously in this thread. The specification indicates that these will tolerate both leading and trailing, and C-Bus.

See specs for Aurora series: http://haneco.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/AURORA1000B3K-V2-DATA-SHEET.pdf
Specs for Viva90 series: http://haneco.com.au/prod/viva90/

Reference
Clipsal Integrated Systems 2005, C-Bus DIN Rail 4 and 8 channel dimmer installation instructions, Clipsal Australia Pty, Adelaide.

 

If you want to use Haneco product, suggest you ask them? they have a tech support guy in Adelaide (and he's a decent chap, regardless of what I think about the company).

The 5508/4 dimmer series are leading edge type.

But remember, dimming LED's with phase chop dimmer is not an exact science. It may work with a few but not one. or vice versa.

 

I decided to go with LEDs in the new bathroom. I talked to the electrician about the C-Bus issue. In lieu of trying the Haneco Aurora, I decided to by cautious and use the Haneco 110, which is meant to be C-Bus compatible. But typically, he arrived and forgot that I wanted Haneco. He asked me if it were OK to try his brand: SAL S9065TC WH (www.sal.net.au).

It has been installed since September. It displays reasonable dimming behaviour with Off being 0 detectable light. It has no hum that I can detect either. It operates using C-Bus scenes since I have it linked to an ‘All Off’ scene.

For the rest of the house, I’m in discussions with my non-C-bus sparky who trusts Haneco. I’m going to put some in the hallway firstly to see if they behave in dimmable and scene control.

 

The sparky that carried out the bathroom renovation wiring suggested that I consider LED light replacement in the MR16 fixture. I got an OSRAM LED Superstar warm light (500 lm) from Bunnings to try in the hallway. It certainly dimmed but dim to off produced a low level light and especially when dimmed to off using a scene. I doubt that this behaviour indicates a serious issue for either safety or power consumption. I haven’t tried mitigating this by using C-Bus Toolkit to control the bottom end of the dimming. The bulbs are not expensive but I’m considering simply replacing most with Haneco because these fittings have a better seal with the ceiling and are more inobtrusive. The sparky believes that the Haneco are reasonably priced ~ $20 per, so in comparison to ~$7 for a warm light Osram, I’d prefer the Haneco option.

Am looking forward to reducing the power consumption of the 50 W halogens.