Inside a Sainsbury's dimmable LED bulb

The circuitry in dimmable LED bulbs is much more complex than non dimmable ones, because they have to interpret the chopped up sinewave as an intensity.
The modern bulbs like this one do it by using a current regulator to charge the main capacitor, so that the duty cycle of the sinewave affects the voltage the capacitor charges to.

In this case, an extra auto adjusting component has been added that then scales the LED current down to match the reduced charging of the main capacitor by detecting excessive ripple current.

I'm not sure what the chip in this circuit actually is. It has a code that suggests it is batch marked for a bulb manufacturer.

My apologies for the sound and filming background. I'm trying to make content in different work-accommodation that has no good "studio" area.


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