I need some advice from fellow stripheads here. Putting together a strip assembly that I would like to control with a switch the turns half the strips on, or all of the strips on. I believe the electrical nomenclature for the functionality I'm looking for is Off/A/A+B. I can find lots of Off/A/B switches, but nothing that's A+B (except a bunch off audio switches). Can anybody point me in the right direction, or help me better define what I need so I can refine my search?
-b420
You need either 2 separate drivers or you need a dimmable driver to set the 2 stages via resistors in the dimmer circuit.
With a rotary switch like this one below and a few resistors, you could also set more than 2 levels, eg. 4 positions, 25k, 50k, 75k, 100k for 25%, 50%, .... (up to 11 levels with the one below)
But if you take the dimmable version you can also be dimmed steplessly over a 100k potentiometer.
Or you use an arduino with 0-10v extension card and control everything via pwm.
In any case, you need a dimmable driver.
With separate drivers, it's very easy to design, you just need a simple I-O-II switch for that.