wkearney99
Senior Member
I purchased an Amazon Echo for my 80 year old mother-in-law and it's been working quite well for her.
She's mentioned having trouble with the sensors in her outdoor lamp posts failing. Basically they're 35 year old fixtures, no longer made and she's not had success finding anyone local to do repairs to them. Fixing them is not my question.
I'm debating whether it'd be workable to replace the bulbs in them with some z-wave units.
They're fed by AC voltage, of course, but I don't know if there's a neutral in the fixtures or if they're just switch legs. I'm assuming they're going to be switch legs. And, yes, I understand the whole 'powered through a wall switch' complication. That's not one of my questions here. But they are classic toggle-style switches with some in 3-way configurations. Again, not an immediate issue, the assumption would be she'd leave 'em switched live and she's still savvy enough to get that right. If need be I'd have a local electrician join me there to handle replacing switches.
To complicate matters her house is several hundred miles away in Buffalo, NY. This is normally a 'good thing' but not when it comes to my being in the area for a limited amount of time and finding repair items. I'd very much like to have a box of parts to be taking there with me to make it a 2-day job.
My concerns are two-fold, one is distance and the other is temperature.
Buffalo, as you can imagine, gets pretty danged cold for extended periods of time. The fixtures have glass enclosures, so I'm not talking about bare bulbs here. Inside of outdoor sconces, either on the wall or on yard posts. But I have no idea whose lights are reliable enough for the job. Any suggestions or warnings?
Then there's the distance issue. Wi-Fi was a bit of an adventure finding effective coverage locations in her single-level rancher-style house. So I'm assuming some number of devices for repeating signals is going to be necessary. The longest distance is a lamp post that's about 40' from the main building.
I may well prove to be more effective to make the change at the wall switches instead of the bulbs. But I have no idea how the wiring circuits are run and nobody up there able to figure it out for me.
So my questions here are what z-wave bulbs are known not to be a problem in cold climates and able to communicate over 40' distances?
She's mentioned having trouble with the sensors in her outdoor lamp posts failing. Basically they're 35 year old fixtures, no longer made and she's not had success finding anyone local to do repairs to them. Fixing them is not my question.
I'm debating whether it'd be workable to replace the bulbs in them with some z-wave units.
They're fed by AC voltage, of course, but I don't know if there's a neutral in the fixtures or if they're just switch legs. I'm assuming they're going to be switch legs. And, yes, I understand the whole 'powered through a wall switch' complication. That's not one of my questions here. But they are classic toggle-style switches with some in 3-way configurations. Again, not an immediate issue, the assumption would be she'd leave 'em switched live and she's still savvy enough to get that right. If need be I'd have a local electrician join me there to handle replacing switches.
To complicate matters her house is several hundred miles away in Buffalo, NY. This is normally a 'good thing' but not when it comes to my being in the area for a limited amount of time and finding repair items. I'd very much like to have a box of parts to be taking there with me to make it a 2-day job.
My concerns are two-fold, one is distance and the other is temperature.
Buffalo, as you can imagine, gets pretty danged cold for extended periods of time. The fixtures have glass enclosures, so I'm not talking about bare bulbs here. Inside of outdoor sconces, either on the wall or on yard posts. But I have no idea whose lights are reliable enough for the job. Any suggestions or warnings?
Then there's the distance issue. Wi-Fi was a bit of an adventure finding effective coverage locations in her single-level rancher-style house. So I'm assuming some number of devices for repeating signals is going to be necessary. The longest distance is a lamp post that's about 40' from the main building.
I may well prove to be more effective to make the change at the wall switches instead of the bulbs. But I have no idea how the wiring circuits are run and nobody up there able to figure it out for me.
So my questions here are what z-wave bulbs are known not to be a problem in cold climates and able to communicate over 40' distances?