LED Bulb Flickering in Ceiling Fan

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bill4d

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May 9, 2011
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I have a ceiling fan that I just installed an Aeon LED bulb in. The bulb will flicker on and off even when you turn off the light via the remote. The bulb is not intended to be dimmed, but it functions fine when full power is fed to it in the fan.

Now the ceiling fan does have a dimmer controller built into the remote sender unit in the top of the ceiling fan. Something about the dimmer is still feeding the bulb power even when you turn it off.

If you turn off the power to the ceiling fan via the wall switch, the bulb will no long flicker on and off. This of course, though, is cutting all the power going to the fan / light.

Does anyone know of a solution to this leaking power situation?

For some reason the light controller in the ceiling fan leaks power to the bulb causing it flicker.

Is there something like a resistor I could put in line with the power or ground feed that would prevent this issue?

Thanks for any help.
 
Iirc, a capacitor from input to output on the dimmers to reduce electrical noise as they operate also leaks some current though. This isnt enough to cause any problems on filiment lamps obviously, but it does slowly charge the input capacitors on the LED bulb and on CFLs too. Once they build enough voltage on the input capacitor, the bulb tries to turn on, giving you the flickering.

Given that youre talking about AC-line stuff, the only solution I'd suggest is to move the bulb to a non-dimmered fixture, ditch the dimmer/remote(for the light at least), or use a dimable bulb.
 
bill4d said:
I have a ceiling fan that I just installed an Aeon LED bulb in. The bulb will flicker on and off even when you turn off the light via the remote. The bulb is not intended to be dimmed, but it functions fine when full power is fed to it in the fan.

Now the ceiling fan does have a dimmer controller built into the remote sender unit in the top of the ceiling fan. Something about the dimmer is still feeding the bulb power even when you turn it off.

If you turn off the power to the ceiling fan via the wall switch, the bulb will no long flicker on and off. This of course, though, is cutting all the power going to the fan / light.

Does anyone know of a solution to this leaking power situation?

For some reason the light controller in the ceiling fan leaks power to the bulb causing it flicker.

Is there something like a resistor I could put in line with the power or ground feed that would prevent this issue?

Thanks for any help.
Click to expand...

As has been said you are using a non-dimmable bulb in a dimmer circuit- it won't work.
 
You have bad chi in your house. Redirect it through mediation and feng shui. IE - take the bulb out and stick it somewhere else.
 
CKOD said:
Iirc, a capacitor from input to output on the dimmers to reduce electrical noise as they operate also leaks some current though. This isnt enough to cause any problems on filiment lamps obviously, but it does slowly charge the input capacitors on the LED bulb and on CFLs too. Once they build enough voltage on the input capacitor, the bulb tries to turn on, giving you the flickering.

Given that youre talking about AC-line stuff, the only solution I'd suggest is to move the bulb to a non-dimmered fixture, ditch the dimmer/remote(for the light at least), or use a dimable bulb.
Click to expand...

Okay, so the question now is, does someone make a remote control for fan control and light control, that does NOT provide dimming ability?

I looked over Lutron's site pretty thoroughly and only saw remotes with fan speed and light dimmers.
 
The "bad chi" comment might have some truth. 😉

When I replaced PAR38s in the master bedroom with Cree LR6-DR1000s, I couldn't stop the flickering. Lutron dimmer. So I went to Home Depot and got a Lutron "CFL-LED Dimmer", which had a little plastic voltage adjustment wheel. No improvement. So I took that back, went to Lowe's and got a Pass & Seymour dimmer. This works fine.

Figure you're going down from maybe 600 watts to a tenth of that, so the wiring you've had may not always be up to snuff. In the case of "leakage" the simplest solution is just to use the bulb somewhere else ... until you get around to replacing the (semi) faulty fixture.
 
It's got nothing to do with the dimming function in this case. The problem is the remote control itself. The receiver on the fan isn't a hardware switch, it's a software switch, so it requires a tiny bit of power to stay "awake" to listen for incoming signals from the remote control. The better LED bulbs are built to "ignore" tiny amounts of current, instead of storing it and blinking the bulb every few seconds. The less-expensive bulbs don't have this feature.
 
fyrstormer said:
It's got nothing to do with the dimming function in this case. The problem is the remote control itself. The receiver on the fan isn't a hardware switch, it's a software switch, so it requires a tiny bit of power to stay "awake" to listen for incoming signals from the remote control. The better LED bulbs are built to "ignore" tiny amounts of current, instead of storing it and blinking the bulb every few seconds. The less-expensive bulbs don't have this feature.
Click to expand...

So is there a way to use something like a diode in line with, let's say, the ground wire feeding the bulb socket? Would this prevent a complete circuit when the bulb is turned off?

I'm not even sure if this is something that is done in residential wiring, I'm just thinking in terms of automotive wiring and techniques that would be used in that realm.
 
A diode would wreak havoc with the alternating current, and it's 120V anyway so it would have to be a pretty badass diode to withstand 120V pushing in the "wrong" direction 60 times a second. Anyway, the receiver relies on a small amount of power flowing through the socket at all times to keep its own electronics powered, so blocking that would probably render the remote control inoperable.

Can you try a different bulb? I'm busy singing the praises of the 12W Philips LED bulbs in another thread; I'd be interested to know if they behave themselves in an application like yours.
 
Okay, I see. So because the dimmer unit needs to have power at all times, short of going inside the dimmer unit and modifying it, there is no solution to use my current bulb?

I'll have to look for another bulb. The one this thread is about is a 7W Cree chip - PAR 16 - Medium base. Kind of an odd size.
 
I just installed Utilitech Pro LED bulbs 450 series dimmable A19 7.5W 490 lumens, in our wireless remote controlled Hunter ceiling fan. They won't work unless I replace one with an incandescent bulb. Is there a replacement remote system that will work with them or a wiring change I can do in the canopy?
 
The remote receiver on my new ceiling fan seems nicely modular. AC power goes in, and assorted fan/light wires come out. It ought to be possible to build a replacement that doesn't have this sort of LED/CFL incompatibility. Does anyone know of a drop-in off-the-shelf replacement?
 
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