Lighting Control For Fully Gutted House

[jon102034050]

I have 23 individually controlled light sets in my one Gathering room. Good luck with that copper heap.
 
Oh yeah.... 21 of those lights can do 256 colours and all levels of brilliance with them for various moods and festive themes. How many more 14/2 cables would that take?

 
Wow!  Picture of this room?  I have some pretty elaborate lighting in a few rooms of my home, but I can't even imagine what this looks like...

 

[jeditekunum]

Looks pretty expensive, on par with HAI systems, similar configuration and likely a good quality. DMX extension is unique, if you are into LED lights. For regular loads, I would recommend Elegance.

As I said, not cheap. But far cheaper than Lutron or other high-end wired systems. To some extent you get what you pay for.

DMX is not limited to LED. In fact, its probably the most widespread "open" protocol for lighting. Most control systems can speak it. The other link I referred to is one possible dimmer unit that can do either leading or trailing edge dimming. It is limited to 100W per channel. The same manufacturer has triac based models as well that can handle larger loads.

Elegance is a similar design - centralized dimming panel with low voltage switches and a control center. But it is just lighting. No automation. Of course it can be driven by automation. It would be my second choice after Loxone.

The beauty of home run wiring is that there are multiple options available and replacement is relatively easy.

 

[LarrylLix]

 
Wow!  Picture of this room?  I have some pretty elaborate lighting in a few rooms of my home, but I can't even imagine what this looks like...

4 pot lights on 3 Insteon Switchlinc wall switches
Dining area chandelier with 5 bulbs on 1 Insteon SwitchLinc wall switch.
2 pot lights for specific area hobby work areas on 2 Insteon SwitchLincs
2 Philips Hue pot lights on back wall
3 Philips Hue multi-colour bulbs in two corner lamps and one behind TV
5 MiLight RGBWW bulbs in lamps, desk, and cabinet lamp
5 LEDenet RGBWW strips. Four on cabinet tops, One under kitchen bar counter
8 LEDenet RGBWW strips on a pinwheel test board for animation testing and development.
Three ceiling pot lights over kitchen bar counter on one Insteon Switchlinc

A few under counter white LED strips and 4 x fluorescent kitchen ceiling lights, uncontrolled by HA

All controlled by ISY994 with Alexa control as scenes and individual. One large room. Nothing really excessive.

Many nice coloured shemes available for reading, festive, movie watching, etc., but when I use
...Alexa. Turn On Full Lights
it is like a hospital operating room. Very nice control and dimming.

 

[oldchachie]

I have to say, since Jedi suggested Loxone, I've "fallen in love" with that system, it seems like a very robust "prosumer" home automation system. All of the features of industrial automation, friendly ui for programming, solid apps (android and ios). I'd have to say it's a winner, with the exception of three points which I still need to work through. first would be cost. While I don't think the cost is terribly ( I think it is within my "doable" price range) bad it still seems a bit steep. I gathered up a couple of the core modules and my shopping cart was already at $1200. their backbone is the "miniserver" in at $549 USD. While this isn't terrible, it seems it could be in the $250 range just as easily. The second is UL issue, they have an NRTL program certification which they say is similar to UL, but I don't know enough about it to know if it would be "allowed by code" to use this type of controller. The last one is still the "homerun wiring" discussion. If a person has the walls open (new or remodel) and wants flexibility, it really seems like i'd need to wire in a 14/3 romex and cat 6 120v rated Ethernet  to each switch location and light location back to a central panel. While again this is doable, it seems overkill to put in (3 romex conductors plus ground, plus 8 Ethernet conductors) 12 total conductors to each switch and light (not to mention outlets). Looks like most of the Loxone products are 24vdc and operate the signaling over catx.
The Loxone wiring literature talks about a "branch" and "tree" I don't fully understand it yet but I think that might be able to cut down on cabling but I'd be "locked" into the loxone sweet at that point if I just ran the minimum cabling.
Sorry for the rambling.

 

[picta]

I don't know much about Loxone, I have Elegance, but from looking at the website it seems very similar to most hard wired systems. If I were to build another house, I would definitely take a closer look at Loxone, but for sure would go with a hard wired design, which means home run from each controllable load to the central panel and either home run or daisy chain for the switches. You do not need to run romex to LV switches in any such system, only cat5. UL listing is required to pass the code in the US (at least where we are). Elegance has that. There are other alternatives like HAI omni-bus and C-bus.

 

[jeditekunum]

gumbudah, I agree with your concerns and I have a plan for my installation.
 
For price, the Mini Server is high for the hardware itself. In my mind I'm buying a "package" of hardware - and software. They claim software updates are free for "life" (of course that doesn't mean forever as the hardware will eventually be replaced and then the updates will end). I've owned mine for a few months and have already seen a couple of new releases come out. To some extent one is buying into their ecosystem. Which, of course, is a double-edged blade.
 
The highest risk area is lighting in my opinion. I am reluctant to invest in a lot of their Dimmer Extensions and propriety switches. My strategy is to use more generic technology. For dimming I'm going to home-run romex from the fixtures and use Doug Fleenor DMX dimmers (http://www.dfd.com/pdf/dmx12dimELV-JBOX-data.pdf [I checked with them and it is now UL Listed] and/or http://www.dfd.com/pdf/dmx8dim-data.pdf). This provides two levels of "protection" in that DMX can be controlled from many systems and secondly the entire dimmer panel can be replaced. For switches I'm going to use simple low-voltage switches (there are several sources for these but Loxone themselves - in the US at least - sells Wattstopper LVSW 100 series). I will home-run cat5e shielded with ground wire. That will provide 9 conductors - one for ground, 4 for up to 4 switches, and 4 for up to 4 LEDs. I will connect the switches to http://www.elexol.com/IO_Modules/Ether_IO72_TCP.php which will send switch actions to the MiniServer over ethernet. The only additional Loxone component needed for this setup is the DMX Extension.
 
You may want to check out https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/loxone-english where there is some good info on this kind of stuff.
 
The Wattstopper switches are made to support Legrand dimmer panels and will probably work with others. So worst-case scenario I've got a bundle of romex and another bundle of simple low-voltage switches hanging at my panel that can be hooked up to many possible systems.
 
That's my plan anyway. I'm entering bidding process now so who knows.

 

[picta]

So you plan to use Loxone as a hardware controller, that's interesting. What are your plans to control HV relays, not dimmers, like high power motors or appliances?

 

[dontheo]

Whatever you decide on, I would run control wiring to all the switches and all outlets. Category wire is cheap. Don't forget to test and label the wire for future use

 

[jeditekunum]

So you plan to use Loxone as a hardware controller, that's interesting. What are your plans to control HV relays, not dimmers, like high power motors or appliances?

 
There will be relatively few of that kind of thing and I will use Loxone directly. Actually, it will drive separate "high power" relays if needed - the internal ones aren't made for heavy loads.
 
I've designed my own fan controller that will be controlled directly by Loxone. http://www.jeditekunum.com/Articles/2017/Automating-Ceiling-Fans/
 
I'm not going to use Loxone for security - alarms and access - either. I haven't decided on what I will integrate with yet. Nor will I use the HVAC features.
 
So yes, Loxone will be the "master controller" over a hierarchy of systems. If it ever loses its luster for me I'll probably just write my own.
 
I wish there was a better way. I've looked for a long time and there are so many good partial solutions but there are literally none that are great across the wide spectrum of functionality needed. At least in the realm of moderately affordable. No doubt a Crestron or Savant or ... or ... could be good at everything. And if I was building a $1M+ home I might consider them. But I'd still be unhappy with the idea that some contractor has control over everything.

 

[jeditekunum]

Whatever you decide on, I would run control wiring to all the switches and all outlets. Category wire is cheap. Don't forget to test and label the wire for future use

 
I'm building a rambler and using suspended ceiling in the basement. I'm going to use lots of smurf (blue & orange) including empty boxes/smurf anyplace I think I might need it later. It will still be relatively easy to add locations later if I miss them. The empty boxes won't even need to have plates on them - just attach a magnet in them and rock over.
 
If I've learned anything, one simply cannot predict the future. I've had several houses over some 30 years. This will be our "last" and I am specifically planning for not being able to predict what I'll need in 10, 20, or 30 years.