LED ceiling lights flickering

[JapanNextYear]

Help? Bought replacement light bulbs for recessed LED reflector light bulbs and they turned into disco lights when put them in. Any ideas?

[Ifailed]

are the replacement builds meant to be powered by a DC circuit but you have an AC circuit?

[Ifailed]

oh, and is there a dimmer?

[engineersthumb]

Hi,
If you have a dimmer and these were replacement of no led lamps it is likely one of three things. Either the lamps that you bought are not dimmable (usually the lamps convert the wpm signal from the dimmer on board) you have the wrong dimmer (trailing edge vs leading edge dimmer) or you have the correct lamps and dimmer type but the load is too small. If the latter you could tryto change tthe dimmer, Varilite vpro do one that operates down to a load of 10w, or add more lamps. Hope this helps.

[JapanNextYear]

Ta all. Not dimmer switch or dimmer bulbs. And it was proper flashing. How do you know if the bulbs are ac or do (ooh ah missus) ?

[PigletJohn]

do you mean they were flickering off, when turned on; or do you mean they were flickering on, when turned off?

How frequent are the flickers?

[JapanNextYear]

They were flickering when on, in a strobe way. Sorted though, apparently needed halogen bulbs not LED. (Oops). Shop swapped them and they are fine. But thank you all for the help.

[engineersthumb]

Just out of interest was the operating voltage of the bulb correct (220/230v or 12v)?
Replacing halogen with leds is usually a good idea because they consume about 10% the power.
The problem you describe could be caused on low voltage lighting by thetransformer unit. Many are actually switch mode power supplies or capacitive units and may malfunction with low wattage loads. Replacing these with modern transformer units is quite easy and reasonably cheap.

[JapanNextYear]

Would an electrician do that? Switch out the transformer? We've go halogen in both bathrooms. No idea if the opening voltage was correct...

[Ifailed]

How do you know if the bulbs are ac or dc
AC will be 240v, DC will be much lower, typically 12v or 24v.

[engineersthumb]

Typically the low voltage lamps won't fit mains fittings. GU10 (220/230) lamps have two pins with a small flange on the end of each. MR16 (12v ) have two thin plain pins. There are other types but these are the common type. I've never encountered D.C. only lamps or fittings.

[engineersthumb]

Just had a Google and it appears some of the led MR16 lamps do specify D.C. only, many will tolerate a.c. or dc. If you do have low voltage fittings try to look at the transformer unit check if a minimum load is specified and check if the output is a.c. or dc. If there is a minimum load that is less thsn the total load (leds) then either stay with the halogen bulbs or change the transformer, a sparky can do it. If there is no minimum load quoted its possible the bulbs were incompatible. Hope this helps a little.