so i was just letting my brain wonder but i thought about this...you dont necessarily need a driver thats dimmable for your leds becuase you can by external type dimmers, almost anything would work...think of it like this, the ballast puts out just 48v dc with 1 amp, u just need a dimmer that can handle that, so anything would work. your could acually save money and just use a wall type plug and connect it straight to the dimmer and it would work. idk i was just playing around with this idea, maybe once i get my main led working again, ill get some cheap ebay bulbs and see what i can do.
This is asking for trouble. Most of these so called "LED dimmers" you see on ebay are simple pwm choppers. This can wreak havok on the driver as it expects to get current feedback from the string of LEDs connected to it. As soon as you start to alter what the driver sees, it tries to over compensate, and can lead to some very odd results, if not damage to the driver, or the LEDs. These types of dimmers are for constant voltage situations, not constant current. They make dimmable drivers for a reason.
At that point, you aren't driving the LEDs by constant current. You would have to very closely match the power supply voltage to the total LED forward voltage, and pick a power resistor of the right size to limit current. It's not very efficient at that point, and a little cumbersome in setting things up. A constant current LED driver doesn't have to be that picky when it comes to choosing a power supply based on the array size. For the most part, if you are using an AC driver, all you need is to make sure that you have the LEDs within the limits of the driver. With what you are proposing, you don't get that kind of flexibility. You also lose any protection that the driver would offer.
dimming
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