# Sunrise / Sunset



## bugs (23 Oct 2008)

Who would like a piece of this action for approx Â£120:



> Standard fluorescent tubes cannot be dimmed so this unit offers an automatic solution. You have one cable with fluorescents and one with lamps. When switched on the bulbs brighten over 30 seconds and then switch the fluorescents on; the bulbs then fade down until switch off time when they brighten to full and switch off the fluorescents; they then fade out over 30 minutes.



You can specify 30 minutes for sunrise too as a Â£5 option.


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## GreenNeedle (23 Oct 2008)

> Standard fluorescent tubes cannot be dimmed



I think this is incorrect.  As far as I know it is the ballast that determines this.  There are dimmable ballasts available for fluorescent tubes but they are very expensive.  If you search the internet you won't find 'dimmable' tubes so either they make 'dimmable' ballasts for a non existent tube or they are all dimmable with the correct ballast.

AC


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## LondonDragon (23 Oct 2008)

Speaking of this lol just have a look at the new post by AE  viewtopic.php?f=46&t=3414


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## bugs (23 Oct 2008)

Absolutely no way I'd spend that sorta money on tank lighting.


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## Ray (23 Oct 2008)

For 120 quid you could invest in a dimmable ballast or two - they start at around 40 quid, and start saving the rest for a lighting computer.  I love the idea of them, but it really is a nice to have...


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## zed (24 Oct 2008)

I've been searching high and low for such a system for the past few weeks.

http://www.climatecsystems.co.uk/projec ... es/12.html

This looks promising, but I cant find a 0-10v dimmable ballast.

I've found two types of dimmable fluorescent ballast; 1-10v, and DALI.

I bought a 1-10v dimmable ballast, but wouldn't work with this, that I also bought http://www.elkay.co.uk/product.asp?id=3&catid=2

This will work with incandescent lights though.

I telephoned them and got a call back from one of their tech guys because I wanted to know 
if it would work with any of the dimmable fluorescent ballasts. The answer was that they havn't tried it, and If I try it, they'd like to know how I get on.

I'm not sure I want to risk buying the DALI standard ballast to try it out.

It would be great it it did work - the elkay dimmer looks very neat. I've thought about using it with alternative (either incandescent or halogen) lighting and then have the fluorescents on a seperate timer to come on, then the dimmable ones to go off, as in the original post.


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## GreenNeedle (26 Oct 2008)

close but no banana. lol:
http://www.bltdirect.com/product.php?pid=6288&cat=


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