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[dcuste]

I'm sure somebody has come up with a solution here but I searched and can't find it. I have seven two-wire dimmers. In two rooms, I have replaced all but one bulb with LEDs. I am happy with their performance. I have not changed over the other five rooms because I don't want to leave in the one incandescent bulb that would be required to supply the voltage for the dimmers. I'm thinking that if I put a resistor from the output of the dimmer to neutral that it would supply the needed voltage for the dimmer to function and allow all the build to be changed to LEDs. If I keep the resistor size to 1 watt, my math says that a 15k ohm will work even at full brilliance without burning up.
Will a 1 watt 15k ohm do the trick? How about 2 watt 7.5k?
Is there another better solution or will I have to just change out all my dimmers to three wire?

[dcuste]

My bad. I hadn't played with this in years and made some bad assumptions. I decided to answer my own question by replacing the incandescent bulb with a string of Christmas lights and then unscrewing them until I found the minimum number. The two rooms are probably 3-wire dimmer and I left the incandescent just so I could dim them more. The two wire dimmer rooms I need at least two incandescent bulbs to prevent problems.

[dave w]

My bad. I hadn't played with this in years and made some bad assumptions. I decided to answer my own question by replacing the incandescent bulb with a string of Christmas lights and then unscrewing them until I found the minimum number. The two rooms are probably 3-wire dimmer and I left the incandescent just so I could dim them more. The two wire dimmer rooms I need at least two incandescent bulbs to prevent problems.

So what is the wattage of the Christmas bulbs? I'm guessing 4 watts, as I get the two wire WS465s to work well with a 7 watt night light in circuit with the 13 watt (dimmable) LED bulb. BTW using the string of Christmas lights to determine minimum load needed, was pretty smart. 

[JeffVolp]

I developed a small wire-in module that allows 2-wire X10 dimmer switches to work with CFL or LED bulbs.  I handed off the design to X10 with the hope of their manufacturing it, but it looks like the factory has declined just like it did with the XTB-IIR and XTB-ANR I offered them several years ago.  I do have a few prototypes available.  Just contact me privately for more info.

Jeff

[dave w]

Looks very nice! If you ever decide to go into production, I will buy at least two. Let's see if other members response will convince you start a production line 

[brobin]

I developed a small wire-in module that allows 2-wire X10 dimmer switches to work with CFL or LED bulbs.  I handed off the design to X10 with the hope of their manufacturing it, but it looks like the factory has declined just like it did with the XTB-IIR and XTB-ANR I offered them several years ago.  I do have a few prototypes available.  Just contact me privately for more info.

Jeff

They probably didn't want it cause it's only aimed at 'power users.' 

[the other steve]

Me, too, Jeff!

The Other Steve (though, maybe now, the Only Steve)

[JeffVolp]

If you ever decide to go into production, I will buy at least two.

Sorry.  While it was feasible to produce a handful of prototypes, assembling a bunch of these by hand with surface mount devices is not something I want to do.  I haven't heard a peep from X10 about it since I gave them the design and PCB layout months ago.

Jeff

[dcuste]

It does look very nice Jeff.
I just spent most of the day on work arounds for this problem.
I had a bunch of x10 stuff that I moved to my new house 10 years ago and have pretty much ignored it since then. What got me interested again was this deal on par30, 11w LEDs for 17 cents each. I bought 50 and installed them in all the easy places. Today I decided to try them on the dimmer circuits. It turned out that most of my dimmers are WS12a. This was a big job because most lights are in 15 foot ceilings. After much trial, I found that if I have 6 bulbs on each dimmer, there are no issues. In the process of combining circuits,  I eliminated the need for two dimmers. I now only have two circuits with an incandescent bulb and they are not conspicuous so I'm pretty happy. I've replaced about 50, mostly 65w and 75w bulbs with 11w bulbs.

[JeffVolp]

If you ever decide to go into production, I will buy at least two.

If you would like one of the prototypes just contact me privately.

Jeff