Patent ID: 7560677

Claim:
A lighting system, comprising: a first solid state light emitting element for emitting a color of light; a second solid state light emitting element for emitting the color of light; an optical processing element coupled to receive light emitted from the first and second solid state light emitting elements, for processing the received light to produce a virtual source of light of said color at a luminous output area of the lighting system; a control circuit connected to the first and second solid state light emitting elements, wherein the control circuit is configured for: (a) driving each of the first and second solid state light emitting elements to operate at a respective predetermined level whenever each respective one of the first and second solid state light emitting elements is activated; and (b) selectively activating and deactivating the first and second solid state light emitting elements at the respective predetermined levels, in such a manner as to provide a plurality of discrete intensity levels for the virtual source of light of said color at the luminous output area of the lighting system; a dimmer circuit for receiving an AC power signal and modifying a characteristic of the AC power signal in response to a user setting of the dimmer circuit; and a discriminator for discriminating a plurality of discrete states of the modified characteristic of the AC power signal from the dimmer circuit; wherein the control circuit is responsive to the discrete states detected by the discriminator to implement the selective activation and deactivation of the first and second solid state light emitting elements, in such a manner as to provide a selected one of the discrete intensity levels for the virtual source of light of said color at the luminous output area of the lighting system responsive to the user setting of the dimmer circuit.