Q: We’d like to make a standing lamp wireless.

The lamp will be emulating a traditional warm white incandescent bulb. The plan is to build a false base to hide a 12V battery and a DMX4dim.

Is the DMX4dim appropriate for this purpose, and does the 12 or 24V LED lamps with Edison or Bayonet bases exist in the standard light bulb shape.

A: This kind of prop is very common — people have been making them for decades — and this response applies to all Edison/Bayonet bases. Back before LEDs were commonplace everyone used 12V incandescent lamps made for the RV (recreational vehicle) market. They look exactly like mains-voltage lamps, with the same standard base. You can still go that route if you can find the lamps, and it’s certainly the most visually realistic. If the lamp shade ever has to come off, exposing the bulb, that’s the way to go.

There is probably an LED equivalent to those lamps, but it’s unlikely to dim smoothly. If they dim at all, they are not designed for the quality of dimming we expect for entertainment applications. Our RC4 dimmers are super smooth, but if the lamp can’t do it, then it won’t look good.

The best workaround, provided the lamp shade stays in place, is to use 12V LED tape wrapped around a cylinder. Place this where the bulb normally is, and it will look great. LED tape dims very very nicely, super smooth.

And this approach opens up a whole new exciting world of flexibility. It’s easy to find warm-white/cool-white LED tape. It uses two dimmer circuits, so you could use a DMX2dim, or half of a DMX4dim. Then you can dial the exact white color temperature you want by mixing the two channels. And you can emulate the yellow-shift of an incandescent lamp by fading the cool white faster than the warm white when you dim the lamp down.

Here is a photo of a crude example of the technique we recommend. Put the dimmer inside the cylinder, or put it somewhere else, like in the base of the prop. This example uses RGB LED tape, so it’s full color changing. Stay with true white LEDs for the best look.