I got that idea, but since I'm completely green when it comes to AC I'd like to hear your opinions instead of electrocuting someone accidentially...

This is about driving the dimmer circuit like described here - and saving on zero-crossing hardware by implementing a soft voltage increase in software.


Assume we want to switch on power.
We want to prevent high EMI
We want to save money on zero-cross circuit.



Thin lines are the driving signal. Thick lines are the AC output voltage.
The graph shows "default" high-EMI switch on in red, a zero-crossing in green, my ramping idea in blue.

So: Attach a DAC or a smoothed (low-pass filtered?) PWM output to a triac and drive the voltage up slowly. Normal house equipment introduces way worse distortions to the wave than just keeping the -first- one lower than the specs (usually the current surge does just the same...)
I hope this is a good idea...?