Trouble with lighting controller

JMiller22

Member
Location
China
Occupation
Electronics Engineer
Hey everyone,

I’ve been building a small lighting controller that mixes dimmers and LED drivers, but I’ve been running into some weird flickering issues. Everything seems wired right, so I’m starting to suspect the 4N33M optocoupler might be the culprit. It works fine at first, but after a few minutes, the lights start to act up, kind of like the signal isn’t staying stable. Has anyone used this opto in lighting control before? Could it be too slow or sensitive for this kind of setup? Just trying to figure out if I picked the wrong part or if there’s something else I’m missing.

Thanks
 
Hal is right that this is not the appropriate forum for such hardware design issues.
That being said, is the optocoupler handling duty cycle control of 50 or 60Hz waveforms where speed should not be a concern? Or is it handling PWM at several kHz rates?
Renesas make some optocouplers with significantly higher speeds such as the one at the link below:


They also make others with different electrical characteristics and packages.
 
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