The Story Behind the PT100: Building a Better Plug-Top Dimmer

Some products evolve because technology changes.

Others evolve because customers' needs change.

The PT100 was a combination of both.

Starting With Tungsten

Before the PT100 existed, EMP Designs had already developed a highly successful plug-top dimmer designed specifically for tungsten lighting.

The original design focused on doing one job exceptionally well. By optimising the electronics around traditional tungsten lamps, we were able to create a compact, reliable and extremely efficient dimmer that quickly became popular for film, television and theatre applications.

At the time, that was exactly what the industry needed.

The Industry Began to Change

As LED lighting became more common, we started hearing the same request from more and more customers.

While many productions still relied on tungsten fixtures, an increasing number were mixing them with dimmable LED lamps. That introduced a new challenge.

Unlike tungsten lamps, LED drivers behave very differently depending on their design. Some perform best with leading-edge dimming, others require trailing-edge dimming, and unfortunately many products don't always behave exactly as their specifications suggest.

Customers needed one dimmer that could cope with all of these different scenarios.

Finding the Right Balance

Rather than simply adding extra functionality to the existing design, we approached the PT100 as a new engineering challenge.

Our goal was to retain everything users appreciated about the original plug-top dimmer — its reliability, rugged construction and straightforward operation — while introducing both leading-edge and trailing-edge diming.

Real-World Testing

Once the hardware had been developed, we began extensive testing with a wide range of commercially available dimmable LED lamps.

The results were revealing.

Some lamps advertised as dimmable performed poorly across parts of the dimming curve. Others claimed compatibility with trailing-edge dimmers but actually produced smoother results when operated in leading-edge mode.

Rather than expecting users to work around these inconsistencies, we refined the firmware to provide additional operating modes that could better accommodate challenging lamps.

This flexibility allows the PT100 to achieve reliable performance across a much wider range of LED fixtures than would otherwise be possible.

The PT100, A Practical Tool for Modern Lighting

The PT100 combines the proven reliability of our original plug-top dimmer with the flexibility needed for today's mixed lighting environments.

Whether controlling traditional tungsten fixtures or modern dimmable LEDs, it gives lighting professionals a compact, dependable solution that can adapt to the varying behaviour of different lamps without requiring multiple dimmers or complex setup.

Like many EMP Designs products, the PT100 wasn't developed because we wanted to create another dimmer.

It was developed because our customers had a real problem, and we wanted to solve it.