beelzerob
Senior Member
Not that I'm a veteran of this lighting system, or any other lighting system....but I've now installed all the switches that are slated for this first round, and I was asked to post my thoughts on the system so far, so here it goes. Take it for what it's worth.
My overall impression:
The main reason I chose OnQ/ALC was because it was one of the very few lighting systems I knew of that:
1) Was hardwired, not wireless and did not operate across the power wires
2) Did not require any up-front commitment to a particular, non-standard type of HV wiring configuration.
That last reason was the biggest one. I had recently written a CQC driver for Centralite, and while I was impressed with the overall system, I was horrified at the idea of having to homerun every HV load in the house. THAT was what I wanted to avoid. I didn't want to do anything to the house that would result in greater costs from the electrician, and could potentially be a liability come re-sale time. I wanted to have a completely conventional electrical install, but have the ability to put in my controlled lighting at my own pace, at my own time, and most importantly...when I could afford it!
Those criteria led me to either OnQ's ALC, or EDT's iLine. Tony here in the forums helped convince me that ALC was the way to go, and when EDT disappeared altogether, it made the choice even easier. So I committed to ALC...which only involved running Cat5 to all the switch boxes I would one day want to control. That investment in wire was practically zero compared to the wire I spent on other things. No up-front costs, and no strange instructions to the electrician. Win win.
A recent sale at SetNetPro.com on the switches was enough to prompt me to get the approval of the Finance Ministress for an initial lot of dimmers and relays for our more crucial loads. However, as is often the case, even when the switches arrived, they sat on a shelf for several months, until I could finally get to them. Again, it was nice to be able to get around to it whenever I wanted.
I'll spare you the gory details of the install. I wrote a thread detailing how to install the switches, and I can say quite confidentally that if I can do it, anyone can. The install was very easy.
The switches look just fine....just like your standard rocker switch, except they stay in an on/off position, instead they have a "centered" look. If I were to have any criticism of the switches, it would be that the feel of pressing the switch is juuuuuust a little soft. It'd be a nicer if they had just a tad more of a "click" to them when pressed....something more firm perhaps. It makes you afraid that it will somehow miss the fact that you've pressed it...or that it won't return back to center after you let it go. However, that is not the case. They have responded perfectly every time, and return to center just like you'd expect.
The relays are pretty much what you'd expect...hit on, it comes on, hit off it goes off. Not much to say there, so I'll discuss the dimmers instead.
When I installed my first dimmer, it was for the garage lights. When I then dimmed the lights, I heard what sounded like a very high pitched hum. I could not tell where it was coming from...but I thought it was coming from the lights themselves. At the time, the ALC switch was hanging out of the gang box. Once I put everything back together, and tried it again...I could not hear any noise at all. Definitely no buzzing, and no high pitched hum either. So it was either coming from the switch, and being in the gang box cleared it up...or something else was going on. Either way, I can say with certainty that none of our currently controlled lights make any noise when dimmed all the way down to zero.
The dimmers do have another "feature", and this being my first experience with these kind of dimmers, I don't know it's normal or not. It just takes getting used to. Pressing and holding the button On will raise the light level until it reaches full. Pressing and holding the button Off will lower the light level until it's off. Whatever point in-between the light reaches, that is its preset level. And when the light is off and you hit "On" once, it will bring the light up to its preset level. If you hit "On" again, it will take the light to full. So, the easiest way to turn the light to full is to just hit "On" twice quickly. That always works. Your other option is to set the preset to Full, and then hitting the switch On once will take it to full.
Going from Off to its preset value, the dimmer does a "soft" on. In other words, the light transitions from Off to On. It is a quick transition, but it is still clearly different from using a Relay switch, where there is no transition. However...when you hit Off on the dimmer switch, the light goes instantly to Off. I wouldn't classify that as disappointing at all...but it WOULD be nice I think if it did a Soft Off also. In fact, a much softer off...a much slower transition. Now, this capability is available as part of the protocol control (which I won't go into great detail about). So using CQC, if I set the level to 0, the light will very slowly dim until off. It's quite cool. However, using the physical switch, it just goes straight to Off. Again, not a disappointment....but something I wish was selectable.
Correction: Thanks to Steve's investigation, it appears there is a soft-off option built in. If you hit the Off position twice quickly, then the lights will dim very slowly until off. It's a little counter-intuitive, because double-On makes the light go straight to bright, and a single-On makes it go to the dim level. It'd make more sense if single Off was ramp down, and double Off was jump. We're still trying to see if that is software-settable in the switch.
Now I'll also admit that I have NOT tried using any of the software that might be used to control these yet. I use the CQC driver for various things, but other than that, this is primarily an overview of the switches and how they control the lighting, WITHOUT any discussion on the controller. It might be possible that the soft on/off feature is user selectable via software. I'll attempt to find that out.
There's a lot of discussion about the LED's in the switches....I guess there are various configurations of that. The dimmers I got do have an LED in them. It only comes on when the load is Off, and it is in-between the light and the bezel...so far back that I honestly can't say that the point is. It's simply too dim to be of any real use (such as finding the switch in the dark). *shrug* The LED really doesn't matter to me, but I figured I'd mention it.
I think that may just about cover my impression so far of the system. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.
My overall impression:
The main reason I chose OnQ/ALC was because it was one of the very few lighting systems I knew of that:
1) Was hardwired, not wireless and did not operate across the power wires
2) Did not require any up-front commitment to a particular, non-standard type of HV wiring configuration.
That last reason was the biggest one. I had recently written a CQC driver for Centralite, and while I was impressed with the overall system, I was horrified at the idea of having to homerun every HV load in the house. THAT was what I wanted to avoid. I didn't want to do anything to the house that would result in greater costs from the electrician, and could potentially be a liability come re-sale time. I wanted to have a completely conventional electrical install, but have the ability to put in my controlled lighting at my own pace, at my own time, and most importantly...when I could afford it!
Those criteria led me to either OnQ's ALC, or EDT's iLine. Tony here in the forums helped convince me that ALC was the way to go, and when EDT disappeared altogether, it made the choice even easier. So I committed to ALC...which only involved running Cat5 to all the switch boxes I would one day want to control. That investment in wire was practically zero compared to the wire I spent on other things. No up-front costs, and no strange instructions to the electrician. Win win.
A recent sale at SetNetPro.com on the switches was enough to prompt me to get the approval of the Finance Ministress for an initial lot of dimmers and relays for our more crucial loads. However, as is often the case, even when the switches arrived, they sat on a shelf for several months, until I could finally get to them. Again, it was nice to be able to get around to it whenever I wanted.
I'll spare you the gory details of the install. I wrote a thread detailing how to install the switches, and I can say quite confidentally that if I can do it, anyone can. The install was very easy.
The switches look just fine....just like your standard rocker switch, except they stay in an on/off position, instead they have a "centered" look. If I were to have any criticism of the switches, it would be that the feel of pressing the switch is juuuuuust a little soft. It'd be a nicer if they had just a tad more of a "click" to them when pressed....something more firm perhaps. It makes you afraid that it will somehow miss the fact that you've pressed it...or that it won't return back to center after you let it go. However, that is not the case. They have responded perfectly every time, and return to center just like you'd expect.
The relays are pretty much what you'd expect...hit on, it comes on, hit off it goes off. Not much to say there, so I'll discuss the dimmers instead.
When I installed my first dimmer, it was for the garage lights. When I then dimmed the lights, I heard what sounded like a very high pitched hum. I could not tell where it was coming from...but I thought it was coming from the lights themselves. At the time, the ALC switch was hanging out of the gang box. Once I put everything back together, and tried it again...I could not hear any noise at all. Definitely no buzzing, and no high pitched hum either. So it was either coming from the switch, and being in the gang box cleared it up...or something else was going on. Either way, I can say with certainty that none of our currently controlled lights make any noise when dimmed all the way down to zero.
The dimmers do have another "feature", and this being my first experience with these kind of dimmers, I don't know it's normal or not. It just takes getting used to. Pressing and holding the button On will raise the light level until it reaches full. Pressing and holding the button Off will lower the light level until it's off. Whatever point in-between the light reaches, that is its preset level. And when the light is off and you hit "On" once, it will bring the light up to its preset level. If you hit "On" again, it will take the light to full. So, the easiest way to turn the light to full is to just hit "On" twice quickly. That always works. Your other option is to set the preset to Full, and then hitting the switch On once will take it to full.
Going from Off to its preset value, the dimmer does a "soft" on. In other words, the light transitions from Off to On. It is a quick transition, but it is still clearly different from using a Relay switch, where there is no transition. However...when you hit Off on the dimmer switch, the light goes instantly to Off. I wouldn't classify that as disappointing at all...but it WOULD be nice I think if it did a Soft Off also. In fact, a much softer off...a much slower transition. Now, this capability is available as part of the protocol control (which I won't go into great detail about). So using CQC, if I set the level to 0, the light will very slowly dim until off. It's quite cool. However, using the physical switch, it just goes straight to Off. Again, not a disappointment....but something I wish was selectable.
Correction: Thanks to Steve's investigation, it appears there is a soft-off option built in. If you hit the Off position twice quickly, then the lights will dim very slowly until off. It's a little counter-intuitive, because double-On makes the light go straight to bright, and a single-On makes it go to the dim level. It'd make more sense if single Off was ramp down, and double Off was jump. We're still trying to see if that is software-settable in the switch.
Now I'll also admit that I have NOT tried using any of the software that might be used to control these yet. I use the CQC driver for various things, but other than that, this is primarily an overview of the switches and how they control the lighting, WITHOUT any discussion on the controller. It might be possible that the soft on/off feature is user selectable via software. I'll attempt to find that out.
There's a lot of discussion about the LED's in the switches....I guess there are various configurations of that. The dimmers I got do have an LED in them. It only comes on when the load is Off, and it is in-between the light and the bezel...so far back that I honestly can't say that the point is. It's simply too dim to be of any real use (such as finding the switch in the dark). *shrug* The LED really doesn't matter to me, but I figured I'd mention it.
I think that may just about cover my impression so far of the system. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.
