Automation control of lights over 600ft

I have been researching for a solution to remotely control lights on my boathouse.  Physical distance is around 450 ft through a wooded area.  If I hardware, the distance is closer to 600 ft.   My plans are to run CAT5E to the boathouse.   I have conduit in the ground already and plan to put a router in a junction box about half way.   I have looked at both Insteon and x10.   Instead technical support told me their system would not work over that distance.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.

How about a fiber run?  Do you need any other functionality in the boat house?  How much do you want to spend?  If it's only to control lights, can you can run a UTP cable, but just use a relay to control the lights.  One of the RIB relay modules would work...  Just need one LV wire pair. 

I have considered fiber.   I do need Internet access so I plan to put a wireless access point at the boathouse.  I need something easy to use and reliable for my wife.  Regardless of whether I run Fiber or Cat5e,  what is the best way to control the lights from inside the house.

Are they on the same meter/transformer? You should be able to get UPB to go that far. I've seen 1000' before.

ASIHome said:

ASIHome, on 24 Jun 2016 - 11:55, said:
Are they on the same meter/transformer? You should be able to get UPB to go that far. I've seen 1000' before.

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+1 UPB will not have any problem in this case as long as you take some precautions to protect the signal strength. Depending on how your boat house is wired into your regular house, you will likely benefit from a repeater or possibly a coupler, but the good news is, no extra wires are needed.

Running Ethernet over a power line works as well, up to about 500 Mbps. The standard works up to distances of 984 ft. Again, no extra wires needed. Just search for Powerline Ethernet. And this technology does work with UPB fine.

Wouldn't do the router. Adding an item that is unnecessary at a midspan.
 
Either pull fiber and put a switch in the remote building/cascade from the main house switch or run a copper link with an ethernet extender, but be aware of the caveats of a copper link between buildings.
 
http://veracityglobal.com/products/ethernet-and-poe-devices/longspan.aspx

You could run your Ethernet and feed an ISY994i to control Insteon lighting and other protocol devices it supports.
You would need  primary unit in your house (second ISY994i) to send out packets to the ISY994i unit for conversion to HA protocol. Most HA softwares can talk to the ISY994i REST interface.
 
Some have reported Insteon powerline protocol working that far to boat houses, but any noise on the lines could easily make it troublesome. I would get a main ISY and try it with Insteon and then add a second over Ethernet if necessary. Gets expensive.
 
 
You may have to watch your grounding techniques or run Ethernet fibre to ground isolate, if you are in a lightning area, especially with a well grounded lake at one end.

I was also focusing on the distance;  again I wouldn't do the router... DEL's option may be better but ironically I was thinking of something very similar, from the same company even... 
http://veracityglobal.com/products/ethernet-and-poe-devices/outreach-max.aspx
 
I have a nearly 700' run to a Point to Point radio (had to reach the top of a hill) and have a midspan repeater - all this has been running a POE radio for 4 years now flawlessly.  You could do the same to just run an access point - even POE like Engenius or Ubiquity (UniFi is great).
 
At that point, if you have wifi anyway, a Plum switch would work.  Or I really think UBP has a good chance of success as well.  There's probably a lot of ways to handle this...

I agree with Ano relating to ...
 
.....but the good news is, no extra wires are needed.
 
The powerline is there; might as well use it.
 
It would be inexpensive to test it out.

Work2Play said:

I was also focusing on the distance;  again I wouldn't do the router... DEL's option may be better but ironically I was thinking of something very similar, from the same company even... 
http://veracityglobal.com/products/ethernet-and-poe-devices/outreach-max.aspx
 
I have a nearly 700' run to a Point to Point radio (had to reach the top of a hill) and have a midspan repeater - all this has been running a POE radio for 4 years now flawlessly.  You could do the same to just run an access point - even POE like Engenius or Ubiquity (UniFi is great).
 
At that point, if you have wifi anyway, a Plum switch would work.  Or I really think UBP has a good chance of success as well.  There's probably a lot of ways to handle this...

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100M max distance between the units, assuming POE going out there. If no POE, you're still going to have to figure a repeater, which defeats the purpose of going all one way.

Best to run a quickie inexpensive test on the UPB.  Purchase one UPB serial PIM and one light module.  Install the UPB software called Upstart on a laptop.  Configure the switch in the same room as the UPB PIM.  Move the UPB switch to the boathouse and check out the signals to it from the house / laptop / Upstart software.  All of the testing will take maybe 30 minutes and cost will be around $150 or less to test it.  This will probably be your most cost effective testing. 
 
As stated above 600ft (~200 meters) of cat5e will not work for ethernet out of the box as the limitations are 100m (300ft).  Fiber would work.

pete_c said:

Best to run a quickie inexpensive test on the UPB.  Purchase one UPB serial PIM and one light module.  Install the UPB software called Upstart on a laptop.  Configure the switch in the same room as the UPB PIM.  Move the UPB switch to the boathouse and check out the signals to it from the house / laptop / Upstart software.  All of the testing will take maybe 30 minutes and cost will be around $150 or less to test it.  This will probably be your most cost effective testing. 
 
As stated above 600ft (~200 meters) of cat5e will not work for ethernet out of the box as the limitations are 100m (300ft).  Fiber would work.

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He could toss in an extender, but not a copper plug to copper plug. Overall cost would need to be considered compared to fiber.

Or run (most cost effective - sure bet) more HV electrical and put an automated switch by the door of the house that leads to the 600 ft walk to the boathouse and  light switch pairing that switch up to a second switch at the boathouse (old fashion legacy style way of automation).

LakeFork said:

I have been researching for a solution to remotely control lights on my boathouse.  Physical distance is around 450 ft through a wooded area.  If I hardware, the distance is closer to 600 ft.   My plans are to run CAT5E to the boathouse.   I have conduit in the ground already and plan to put a router in a junction box about half way.   I have looked at both Insteon and x10.   Instead technical support told me their system would not work over that distance.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Click to expand...

If you use HomeSeer, you can do this pretty easily with Z-wave. Just install one of our Z-NET units in the boathouse (connected to your CAT5 cable). The Z-NET can support up to 232 devices and will communicate with your HomeSeer system in the primary residence.... where you have another Z-NET (or SmartStick+) installed.

Fiber is cheap and the converters to go from Optical to wired ethernet are likewise reasonably inexpensive. That and ethernet is limited to 330 feet. Add to that the risk of lightning and other electrical disturbances and it really does turn out to be a better plan to use fiber for that kind of situation. Then it's just another set of notes on your network and you don't have to worry about anything corroding over time. Well, at least not the in ground parts.