Advanced Dimming: Better Simulations of Circadian and Incandescent Lighting

This week we added 2 new “Advanced Dimming” options:

Incandescent (Warm) Dimming

It’s a common experience for consumers to buy an efficient LED bulb replacement for an incandescent bulb bring it home and feel something is wrong when they dim the bulb. The light looks too pale. It’s because the light hasn’t gotten warmer as it dimmed. “Warm Dimming” is a wonderful and natural quality of incandescent lights that LED’s don’t have. LED’s stay the same color as you dim them.

This graphic shows that at 100% an incandescent bulb is about 3000K (like onswitch’s halogen) but as you dim it it warms up to near candlelight color (like onswitch’s antique)

Nerdy Side Note: LED dimming is usually accomplished through Pulse Width Modulation (PWM), which means a circuit turns the LED on and off very fast at different intervals so that your eye sees more or less light. The LED, when it’s on, is the same brightness the whole time. So clearly that LED isn’t going to change its light’s color “warmth” with this circuit.

Philips Hue and other color smart bulbs simulate color temperature through a combination of Red, Green and Blue LED’s combined at different brightnesses. Often, as in the case of the Philips Hue Light Strip Plus, there are additional cool and warm white LED’s that are are also combined a different brightnesses to the same end.

OnSwitch’s new Incandescent Dimming option uses the smart bulbs powerful ability to simulate any color temperature and maps that to the brightness level in a way that creates the same effect.

Try using this option instead of switching between Halogen, Standard and Antique. See if this one scene actually covers everything you are using those three options for. Let us know in the comments!

Circadian Dimming

The circadian dimming option simulates the range of colors the sky displays throughout the day. And mirrors our biological need for brighter, cooler white light for alertness and dimmer warm light as the day ends to relax us.

Learn More!

The explanation for why both of these effects occurs turns out to require advanced quantum mechanics. This video is a full length science show but very worth it if you are curious. It explains the history and science in a very entertaining way.