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I have an illuminated switch (made by Viko, a Panasonic brand).

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The switch controls a fan with a LED bulb. The bulb flickers when it is off and the switch is off: video

To avoid this, I have to turn off the bulb using its pull cord on the fan itself.

I realize that the switch cannot be used with LED bulbs. But is there any way to make it function correctly? (I.e. by adding a resistor to it, or some other, but safe way.)

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  • This question seems related: diy.stackexchange.com/questions/133558/… – IronEagle Jun 10 '19 at 14:34
  • @IronEagle Thank you! Much appreciated. – Sabuncu Jun 10 '19 at 14:59
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    One thing that may work is to use a low wattage incandescent bulb in the fixture as well. This is not always possible, but if one bulb can be swapped out it will provide a low resistance path for the few watts required by the switch. – JPhi1618 Jun 10 '19 at 15:00
  • @JPhi1618 Good point. Unfortunately, in my case, it's a small fan with only one bulb. It used to have a CFR bulb, but had the typical drawbacks associated w/ them. – Sabuncu Jun 10 '19 at 15:04
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A dimmer-compatible LED bulb might work. A higher wattage LED bulb could also work better, but most likely you will need a series pass element like the referenced Lutron LUT-MLC in parallel with the bulb. This is 'like' adding a resistor, but it should not get as hot. If you use a suitably rated component, it should be designed to fail safe (i.e. open circuit).

To add a bit more context... The neon indicator passes a pretty small current when it is operating, and has a fairly high but dynamic series resistance. It is quite possible for an LED power supply to extract enough voltage to just light the LEDs (maybe 30v, depending on the design). A shunt bypass element needs to pass most of the indicator current in order to ensure that the LED can't light (and the internal LED discharge resistor should help). Since all LEDs are different, there is no 'simple' answer.

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