I dont understand why these digital dimmer switches are so expensive.
I found them online for £25- £30 ($50-$60). According to the PDF:
Honestly I’m surprised they’re not going for more than $60, although I suppose I could find a higher price if I tried.
Your typical garden variety dimmer uses a simple Triac and R-C timing circuit controlled by a rheostat (the knob you turn to dim the light). All operating power is supplied by the AC line voltage without need for extra conditioning. That’s probably about $8 in parts, maybe another $2 for the enclosure. Tack on retail profit and you have dimmers selling for about $12-$20 depending on the brand name.
Digital dimmer circuits are much more complex and require their own internal clean power supply to run the 555 or 556 timer chips, shift registers and whatever else is needed to count button clicks and control load power.
It’s a designer product. Additionally, it’s not just the parts and features but the engineering that went into it. Miniaturization also increases cost, and I doubt they used discrete chips in a package that small.
They are not that complicated, and both the 555 and LM358 are available in either an SOIC or bare chip form factors. See a typical schematic here (PDF).
That circuit lacks the touch-sensitive input and memory features the Lutron Rania claims to have. Maybe the $60 still isn’t justified, but then again I can’t fathom why Ralph Lauren paint goes for $40 a gallon, either.
I’ll venture that a portion of the price is product quality. I’ve used Lutron in my own home and am completely satisfied, and have yet to hear from a customer who was dissatisfied with a Lutron product I’ve sold and installed for them.
Hell’s bells. I looked up the prices here, expecting them to be a bit higher than U.S.prices but this one seems a bit steep even if you do have a B&O stereo.
missed typo
I’m something of B&O collector, can’t afford the newer stuff, so I buy broken items and repair them, sometimes its handy to be in the elctronics maintenance game.
Lutron stuff completely integrates into B&O systems, you can integrate the whole lot, video, audio, lighting and environmental controls in the house under B&O/Lutron.
Also includes your broadband connection and web browsing.
You can imagine that its not going to be cheap.
Some Lutron stuff isn’t compatible, and not surprisingly it costs less.
I gotta agree with this. You do get what you pay for with these gizmos. Cheap dimmers are either going to be fidgety in overall operation, or they’ll make the bulbs flicker and “sing” when dimmed, and two years later, they go dead, requiring you to either call back an electrician (far more costly than anything you saved initially) or if you fix it yourself, there’s still the inconvenience of having to go out and buy a replacement.
Right. But as pointed out by Patty O’Furniture, it requires a DC power supply, more components, etc. This increases the price of the unit, and may reduce reliability.
The only reason I’d pay extra for a dimmer is if it included good EMI-suppression circuitry.