A system for dimming a solid state illumination source, such as a light emitting diode, including a low pass analog filter operative to extract a direct current (DC) voltage component from an incoming alternating current (AC) waveform. A microprocessor is structured to digitally filter the DC voltage resulting from the analog filter and extract dimming data associated with a dimming operation of the LED. The microprocessor includes monitoring capabilities operative to detect predetermined characteristics of the dimming data associated with the dimming operation. The predetermined characteristics are determinative of manual control of the dimming operation or non-manual activation of a dimming signal. The predetermined characteristics which are determinative of manual control may include, but not be limited to, speed of voltage change, direction of voltage change and amount of voltage change associated with the dimming signal delivered to the LED.