I really need some advice for my lighting plan now

[bucko]

I am at the lighting control design of my HA project now. My blog here describes my project to date for you all. That being said, I need to integrate lighting control into my plan.

My home will have 20 lights and 9 wall sockets I need to control. I will use 10 occupancy sensors that I have reporting to separate zones on the M1. My goal is to use the M1 only for control, using rules to create a few scenes and also some lighting events. I want to avoid using home control software for now (Elve, Premise, HAI,etc) since my lighting needs are basically simple functions. On, off, dim, status, theater scene only. I will use an iPad, iPhone for a controller for LAN and WAN. I do have the XEP and the SP for the Elk, as well as all the other goodies. Again, my blog shows my set up pretty well.

With that in mind, I have spend a lot of hours trying to figure out my best options for lighting control. It just confuses me the more I read here. I was originally going to go with a company here using PLC, but I can't get enough info to know this is compatible with the ELK or not. II am hoping someone here with PLC experience can help me with this. The company is http://www.plcbus.com.cn/Html/edu/Index.html. They don't know ELK and the Elk people don't know about them, so if it works....who knows. I guess my proplem is I don;t know enough about PLC protocol to ask the right questions, so I can't expect to get the right answers.

In a nutshell, how can I go about knowing this stuff will play nice with the M1? Should I abandon this and go with another protocol all together? How would you all go about determining if the lighting commands are compatible and PLC-Bus products will indeed work?

Remember, I am limited to Chinese technology here, but they do seem to have several companies that offer automated lighting systems.I found another one that here http://www.hdlchina.com

I'm appealing to all your collective lighting knowledge to get me going in the right direction. Years ago, I had experience with X-10 in my US home, but that is the extent of my experience with lighting control.

 

[tmbrown97]

Just a short answer... I'm too tired to search for you right now, but search for compatible UPB or Z-Wave protocol devices that are compatible with your power system.

A quick search does show that your power supply is 220V/50Hz, which I believe is close enough to european standards to be compatible (most won't care about the 10V difference) and it looks like you guys use a common enough plug style... I know there are compatible UPB devices, and there's likely to be even more compatible Z-Wave devices.

I know that one weakness of 100% Elk control of lights, at least via UPB, is keeping track of status after scenes. Hopefully someone else that knows Elk w/Z-Wave can comment on status reliability

 

[bucko]

I found out from Brad that the VRCOP is only usable in the US. I am thinking using Z-Wave at this point, but the Chinese versions may or may not talk with the M1. I am finding it very hard to get any information from here. How does Z-Wave systems in Europe integrate with M1 systems? There must be a way.

 

[wuench]

The options that are available to the Elk are mostly documented in the M1XSP manual. If it isn't in there, and it isn't X10, ISY/Insteon, or ZWave via the Zwave module then you will need to resort to having the M1XSP send custom serial commands via rules. So the lighting platform must use RS232 and you will be limited to how the M1 sends commands and to a limited number of them.

 

[N49atv]

As search doesn't work on tapatalk for me. I can say for sure, that the 220 will be fine (I'm a sparky). But I would be concerned with 50hz. Many consumer that come in EU/NA versions separately could have issues.

Without getting to far in depth, Some power supplies (brick plugs, or power supplies, on cords, like a laptop, may not like 50hz) they may heat up. Also anything with a built in clock, may be affected. Such as alarm clock. AC clocks keep track of time off the frequency of the AC. I ran into this alot in work camps. Where the generator didn't auto compensate for load. So they run it a little faster, so during peak hours it was 60hz, but at night when everyone was sleeping, or when power draw was down, the added speed would make it run at 61/62hz. The effect was clicks speeding up. I'd gain sometimes 15-20mins a night.

So when picking your devices, ensure they are dual rated 50/60hz (most are going that way to save on manufacturing costs).h