NY wrote
Rod Speed wrote

One thing that I'm always surprised at with LED bulbs used as room
lights is how bright the dimmest setting is - it's probably too bright
to use as a night light so you can see your way to the loo at night
without the light keeping you awake as you try to get to sleep.

Thats not true of the Hue bulbs.

Actually I have seen this with Hue bulbs - both the fixed-colour and the
colour bulbs.

Just done it with a color bulb and a white bulb, 1% is fine for a night
light.

With the LED strip, 1% is so faint that you cant see a lot even
with dark adapted eyes. 5% is a better night light IMO.

I do have a GU10 and white ambience bulbs, but havent
got around to adding them to the system yet but I bet
the GU10 would be even dimmer given its full brightness
is much lower in lumens. I was planning to have it under
the monitor where the keyboard is, as a sort of night
light there because it was pretty dark under there
even in the daytime but I reorganised the monitors
so I could read that one better and that exposed the
keyboard to more light so I didnt need the GU10 anymore.

I suppose it's a matter of personal preference how dim you like the
dimmest setting to be, but the dimmest that I have seen with Hue is still
fairly bright.

I cant see that the 1% setting is too bright, in fact it would be
a bit dangerous walking to the dunny for a **** if it was any
dimmer. Too easy to trip over something someone had left.

Given that LEDs are usually dimmed by altering the mark:space ratio of a
constant-frequency square wave, so the light is turned on for a
progressively shorter proportion of each cycler,

Thats not true of all dimmers.

Ah, do some of them simply reduce the current, as you would with tungsten

Yes, particularly led dimmers. Thats
how the Hue lighting strips do it.

- though with more complicated electronics?

Yeah, to allow for the very non linear current to lumens chart with leds.