I've got a 543 on order, the Firecracker give-away, and 3 lamp modules (the ones with fade up..splurge city). Anyway, am I going to need anything else besides this in order to make all three lamps dim in conjunction? I mean, I know I can simply make a macro via the Pronto to do one then the other etc..but I'm slightly concerened it's not going to fade all three lamps smoothly together but rather some sort of sick staggering thing. Is there a way to address more than one module consecutively rather than one at a time in a quick fire macro?
Also, since one of the three lamps is a halogen, it will surely have a different brightness setting than the others to get an "even" look. So I guess what I'm saying is I will need to be able to put lamp A at 40%, lamp B at 40% and lamp C at 25% fast enough that the room fades rather than flickers like a strobe light. Is there any other hardware I'm going to need?

Michael

The nice thing about using IR and an IR543 to control X-10 modules is that you can enter any sequence of devices (say lamps 1,2,and 4) then hit the command (ON,OFF/Dim/Bright). All devices selected will respond the same way to whatever comands follow. The macro you'll need would look simply like:

X10 device#1 (incandescent)
X10 device#2 (incandescent)
X10 device#4 (halogen)
X10 dim
...
(however many dims required to get to the level you want)
...
X10 dim
X10 device#4 (halogen ONLY)
X10 dim
X10 dim
(extra dims to get halogen down to relatively same dim level)



Dave

You can program a macro in the pronto to do the macro as follows:
unit 1
unit 2
unit 3
dim
unit 3
dim (for the brighter one to dim more)

This will choose all the units set to code 1,2, and 3 then dim them together.
The only other way would be to have a controller or use switches with scene modes. Did you purchase Smartlinc switches? If so, you will be able to do some nice scenes with the switches logic like what you want.

Chris Couture

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that halogen lamps should be used with an appliance module since they (most, anyway) have a dimmer built-in. The other option in that case, as I understood it, was to rewire the lamp to bypass the internal dimmer so you can use a normal lamp module.

Is this true?

My Halogen is 300w, and had a two step dimmer (3-way) switch. One switch position turns it 50% on, the next 100%. I simply leave the switch in 100% mode and am using an X-10 dimmable lamp module with it. The lamp module is rated for 300 watts. Works fine.

Do NOT use a 300w lamp module if your halogen is greater than 300w. Do NOT use a lamp module if your halogen uses a infinitely variable dimmer.

Dave

Yep, I have two 300W halogens, one that is infinately variable and one that has two levels. The lamp modules work fine on the two step version, but the dimmer circuit confuses X-10 controller, it ends up giving eratic brightness, and sometimes doesn't respond.

Not sure why, I suspect that they use the same type of chopping to dim the light, so the dimmer in the lamp doesn't function correctly.

If you turn the light on full the X-10 dimmer seem to work just fine (on my lamp anyway).

DK

Try using an inductive dimmer. This may work for you.