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I have used the IKEA LED driver (30W) to drive ordinary G4 LEDs. But I haven’t been able to dim them, just on/off. My assumption is that the IKEA driver uses PWM to dim, and I haven’t been able to find any 24V PWM dimmable G4 LEDs - so far.
Has anyone been more successful than me in finding G4 LEDs that is compatible with the IKEA LED driver?
I think there’s no such thing as “ordinary G4 LED” bulbs. Yours likely include electronics to be backward compatible to halogen pins, but most of these electronics offer on/off only.
What you need to work with your PWM driver is a pure LED.
The pins are the reason why it´s named G4 (the pins state the socket of the bulb/halogen/LED), like GU3.5 and simular sockets. They can be either non.dimmable or dimmable.
Which G4 LED´s are you using? Are they dimmable?
There are plenty of G4´s LEDs which work on 24v AC, (or suppose to, I have never tried myself. I use 12volt LED´s). Ask Google and you´ll find 
I assume the driver you are using is the traadfri one? In that case, I dont think it´s the driver itself, but most probably the dimmer. It is a real pain finding a light source (bulb/LED) which work with a specific dimmer. And it makes the whole process even worse, when you add a driver/transformer inbetween.
Don’t understand what you mean by “halogen pins” ? Pins are made of metal, not halogen. And I know why it’s named G4. “Ordinary G4 LED” means the cheap type that can only do on/off, like this one: https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/ryet-led-bulb-g4-100-lumen-opal-white-40393109/
The IKEA driver is a combined transformer/driver/dimmer. IKEA does no disclose much technical info, but it is for sure 24VDC out. I suspect it is designed to use Pulse-Width-Modulation for dimming.
And I have not been able to find any G4 LEDs which are compatible with this. Yes, there are plenty of 24V G4 LEDs out there, but most of them are CC (Constant Current) or in some cases (mostly industrial applications) CV (Constant Voltage) LEDs. These are not dimmable by the IKEA driver.
That’s why I am asking. So that I do not have to buy and test zillions of variuos LED until I find one that works. I was hoping someone had already done that.
Halogen bulbs with a G4 socket (“pins”) .
That’s what all LED drivers do.
Point is what you’re looking for is bulbs to contain electronics to include dimming capability as a drop-in replacement for a halogen bulb.
But they don’t exist because it is pointless building such a thing in 12 or 24VDC.
It is pointless because LED drivers do PWM so you don’t need the electronics in the bulbs.
What you need is a pure LED. You can get them as stripes but not as single units, probably because there’s no market for ‘modular’ multi-LED-bulb lamps yet like there is for halogen bulbs…
You seem very certain (?)
I found these LEDs; https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1027552932.html which are clearly marked as being PWM compatible. I cannot see why that would be necessary if all LEDs are PWM compatible! My own experience is contrary; I’ve connected several different G4 LED’s to the IKEA driver/dimmer, and found that it is not able to dim them, only switch them on/off.
Same reason: most bulbs (or LED arrays like this) are made for and sold as a drop-in replacement for halogen bulb, so they need to contain electronics, and if they do they are not PWM compatible any more (well the pure LEDs inside of course are)
This LED is clearly marked as being PWM compatible!
What sellers state applies to the module because that’s what they sell.
All LEDs are PWM compatible, but not all modules are. This module does not have the full control electronics (just a capacitor and resistors), that’s why it’s compatible.
Let’s define something; You use the word “Module” and I now understand that you by that word mean the whole thing (as pictured), while I refer to the same “Module” but I call it LED. I know that this is incorrect, as the term LED essentially means the yellow light emitting diodes themselves. However, all my arguments and references were meant to be the whole thing (the module). I have no interest in each diode as such. What I want is to find a product (module) that can be pushed into the G4 pin holes in my existing sockets, and work as intended; Dimmable!
G4 IS the socket… G4 is a standard socket, just like GU5.3, E14, E27 etc are standard sockets…
What you need is a G4 led, which is compatible with the Ikea traadfri driver (or the dimmerpart of the driver).
Unfortunatly I cant help with this Ikea driver. I wouldnt trust it as a standard LED driver, I suspect its a special driver in someway, which only support special bulbs as well. It´s sounds like trying to use an ordinary dimmer with a Hue bulb. It wont work. Ikea would be the most obvious place to ask.
I have no experience with 24volt LED´s. But I have experience with 12volt drivers and G4 LED´s. I use Hilux S9 G4 LED´s which is a dimmable LED with very high Ra (CRI). And I use Tridonic dimmable drivers. The actual dimmer behind is IHC UNI250 dimmer (or IHC UNI dimmer ø80). I have also tested other dimmers such as Fibraro 212, Velbus dimmer etc.
Btw about the link to the aliexpress G4 LED´s. Text says 24volt, but notice the last picture… It says 12 volt on the package
I agree completely.
Properly dimmable mains replacement LED lamps are the bain of my life.
Phase chopping mains and feeding that into a tiny power supply to drive LED elements that actually run at about 1.2Vdc is never going to end well.
The VERY best results for LED dimming happen when the 12Vdc or 24Vdc power is “dimmed” (PWM) and then fed into LED ‘lamps’ or strips that have little more than a resistor and an LED elements.
I’ve found 12Vdc LED lamps, in Par16 housings, which have MR15, MR11, GU5.3 connections which have far too many electronics in the base, so they are trying to smooth out the supply, which utterly defeats the dimming.
As a way to resolve this, I’ve built some individually addressable Par16 lamps based on SK6812 GRBW chips, that openHAB2 can drive with the DMX binding.
The second batch is about to be sent to a customer next week.
They are only 1Watt per lamps, so you’ll need more lamps to get a really bright area, but the point of them is that the dim curve is incredibly smooth and the low level truly low.
Whilst the colour temperature is completely tunable.
These videos show them in action -
Hello all. New here, but I was searching and found the thread.
I have a similar problem. We are building a new house and will have a Loxone smart home system installed (it’s a choice, for now). The Loxone tree runs at 24V DC and I have been trying to work out how to do PWM dimmable lighting. I have done some research and a little coffee table experimenting, so here is what I know so far.
Firstly, PWM would seem (to me) to be the perfect technology for dimming LEDs as it preserves colour temperature and (depending on the PWM controller itself) allows for very low light levels and smooth dimming.
Secondly, Loxone offer their own range of luminaires (quite pricey), which are all CoB (non-replaceable bulbs) and all full colour RGBW. The most expensive ones have the dimmer and tree smarts built in. The slightly cheaper ones have a 5 wire input - power, R, G, B and W - and are intended for use with their tree-connected dimmer. This is where it got interesting for me!
Rather than buy lots of Loxone lamps I wanted to see if I could find something else that could be PWM dimmed at 24V and I came across VAXMYRA from IKEA. These are neat little CoB pucks with (as far as I can tell) nothing but 18 LEDs and some chip resistors inside, so I bought a few. I also bought a cheap 24V power supply and PWM controller from ebay, plugged it all together, switched it on and braced myself for fireworks. It all worked like a charm though and the pucks dimmed smoothly from full brightness down to about 10% - it was a VERY cheap PWM controller.
In principle then these IKEA lamps could be used on a 24V DC system with an external PWM controller, which I guess could be from anywhere.
The only problem I have with this setup is that the bit that emits light is non-replaceable. If one of the pucks should fail at some point I would have to extract all the wiring and replace the entire fitting, which I think is not ideal.
All this leads me to where I am now, which is trying to separate the bulb from the fitting (easy in principle) with the caveat that the bulb MUST be just LEDs and resistors with no active components, so that it can be PWM dimmed, and would probably have either a G4 or a GX5.3 base. Such bulbs seem to be like unicorn tears. Any suggestions where to find stockists would be greatly appreciated.
thanks, Greg
Edit: two months later? Hope you’re still looking 
If you’re looking for G4 bulbs that can be PWM dimmed, I can actually recommend some, because I ordered and tested lots of different ones.
These small ones are DC 12V only and contain a diode bridge and resistors:
These bigger ones are sold as AC DC 12V only but they actually contain a switching power supply and run fine on 24V, and consume half the current on 24V as they do on 12! (I turned the voltage up very slowly and carefully the first time as you can imagine.) They work beautifully with PWM, somehow. G4 LED COB Lamp 6W 10W Bulb AC DC12V 220V Candle Silicone Lights Replace 30W 40W Halogen for Chandelier Spotlight 360 Beam Angle|LED Bulbs & Tubes| - AliExpress
But, I do not know a puck style fixture that takes G4 bulbs.
If you like the IKEA fixture… you know what resistors are, how do you feel about soldering? If something fails in a few years it would be an interesting project to repair it.
Also, if you turn the voltage down to where you have 60% of the brightness, and install 40% more lights, they might just last forever.
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