Just to be sure, you mean the non-hot wire in the romex? My house is wired with all romex including a ground. All the switches just switch the black hot, but the other wire & ground are also in the box.
Which system for me? Lighting for today, with the potential for further HA.
- Thread starter Deephaven
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upstatemike
Senior Member
Normally the Black Hot wire is connected to one side of the switch. If the the other side of the switch is connected to the black wire in a second romex run and the two white wires from each romex run are tied together but not connected to the switch then the whites are probably neutral. If there is only one romex run where the black wire feeds the switch and the white wire is connected to the other side of the switch to pass the switched power back to the load, then you do NOT have a neutral in the box.
My $0.02:
Insteon has worked great for me in two houses. Everyone who says you NEED a controller is 100% correct, setting up links without one is just irritating. I use an always on Mac Cube running Indigo (and iRed/IRtrans for infrared).
Please note that I don't use the dodgier Insteon hardware (Motion Detector, Remotes, irLincs). With my W800whatever it is called to pass X10 wireless on to Indigo, it is easier and much cheaper to use the X10 motion sensors and remotes.
Best piece of home automation hardware? The humble DS10a door/window sensor. Pretty much everything cool about my HA setup involves a DS10a somewhere.
Brian
Insteon has worked great for me in two houses. Everyone who says you NEED a controller is 100% correct, setting up links without one is just irritating. I use an always on Mac Cube running Indigo (and iRed/IRtrans for infrared).
Please note that I don't use the dodgier Insteon hardware (Motion Detector, Remotes, irLincs). With my W800whatever it is called to pass X10 wireless on to Indigo, it is easier and much cheaper to use the X10 motion sensors and remotes.
Best piece of home automation hardware? The humble DS10a door/window sensor. Pretty much everything cool about my HA setup involves a DS10a somewhere.
Brian
forgets
Member
Can't speak for Z-wave, but i've got radioRA in my house which is all emt tubing / metal boxes and thick plaster lathe walls (2" thick, built in the 50's), and it hasn't been a problem. My furthest switch is 70ft from any others and it's never missed a command.
A lot of people are going to give you great advice here.. all i can offer is remember to do your research, cause as with all Home automation, there's compromise.. no one solution does it all. It's like you could say all solutions have features, a good price and are reliable, the real catch is you only get to pick 2 of the 3.
I went with radioRA since it's reliable, wireless (no extra wiring if you've got the neutrals already) and the only thing it doesn't do via the rs-232 controller is report back the dim level the lights are set to.. oh well, can't win 'em all.
Another tip i have is to remember to work in the dead of night, cause if it's installed by the morning you can always tell the wife it's been there for a while and she just never noticed it.
Oh, and don't keep a running tab of how much you've spent.. i'm sure most of our significan't others would blow a gasket if they knew how much we spend on this hobby.
BraveSirRobbin
Moderator
As others have mentioned above, check your switch boxes for a presence of a neutral and more importantly size. I would actually purchase a sample of a switch under consideration and try to mount it in a couple of boxes before spending a large amount of money.
nightwalker
Active Member
If the box size is the only impediment to automated lighting at least it's the easiest of the problems to solve, and if you're careful you won't even have to patch any walls. :lol:
I agree about the controller. If it were me, I would find a good versatile controller that gives me the most capabilities to integrate different technologies. I've attended the Elk M1 factory training and boy does this thing do it all! I've heard alot about the HAI controller too and it should give you alot of capability. The M1 can integrate X-10, Z-wave, and UPB, so if you find out later that one is better than the other for your particular application, you won't have to get a different controller. I'm new to home automation and still learning.
Good Luck and Have Fun!!
Good Luck and Have Fun!!
I am a little confused by the posts above, is there an easy way to tell if I have a neutral?
You have me curious as to how I can replace a box without needing to patch the walls. Is there a trick?
BraveSirRobbin
Moderator
In the back of your (light switch) box you should see a bundle of white wires 'nutted' together without anything else (like a switch) connected to them.
nightwalker
Active Member
It's fairly easy.
Make sure you cut the power to the circuit when you do this.
disconnect all the wires in the box
Cut the box away from the stud with a sawzall
Pull the box out of the hole being careful to get the wires out without nicking them all up.
insert a deep "old work" box in it's place while feeding the old wires through the holes.
Tighten up the "ears" on the old work box
Reconnect the wires and install your switches.
Generally it goes pretty easy, metal boxes can be a bit harder than the plastic or fiber ones, but go slow and it should be fine. Out of the 30 or so boxes I had to replace I only screwed up one that had to have a little patching afterward.
Thank you all for the information so far, it has been enlightening.
I have shifted my focus to controllers. I am currently researching the HomeTroller, Elk, or OmniPro. My pre-requisites are that it be DIY’er friendly and has strong $/value. Is there anything else I should look?
At the moment I’ve eliminated the ISY. It seems the only security system that it interfaces with is the Elk, in which case it defeats its usefulness to me as I’d like to integrate security.
The good news is that I have neutral but here is an example of a crowded box. In this room I’d like a motion controller for one of these switches. Are there any styles that won’t fit?
I have shifted my focus to controllers. I am currently researching the HomeTroller, Elk, or OmniPro. My pre-requisites are that it be DIY’er friendly and has strong $/value. Is there anything else I should look?
At the moment I’ve eliminated the ISY. It seems the only security system that it interfaces with is the Elk, in which case it defeats its usefulness to me as I’d like to integrate security.
The good news is that I have neutral but here is an example of a crowded box. In this room I’d like a motion controller for one of these switches. Are there any styles that won’t fit?
If your focus is home automation controller, I think I would go with the HomeTroller. You can't beat the huge amount of features it offers, as it focuses on home automation. The M1 and Omni are great panels, but their primary focus is (and should be) home security. I am working on a review of the HomeTroller, I am hoping to have it up within a few weeks (have been sick and working on finishing the CT2 update). While I do have some issues with the way the HS forums are run (but that's for another thread), Hometroller is a nice package.
upstatemike
Senior Member
One thing to remember about the Hometroller is that it is a PC and even though ruggedized a bit it still has some PC vulnerabilities. Mine currently has a driver error when it boots that prevents my Eltima serial driver from running. Unfortunately I don't think I can fix it without blasting away the whole system and rebuilding it from scratch due to the locked down XPe OS. I'm not sure how this happened but it is a big deal since all of the apps that require registry entries or drivers in the Windows directory will have to be re-installed once the OS is put back. This is a project that will take a full day or more to accomplish (The AT&T voices alone required 3 hours to install the first time) so I just have to live with a partial system until I can get to it - which probably won't be for for several months.
I also was planning to use the Squeezebox plugin to control my music but it apparently won't work with the version of .Net installed on the Hometroller and there is no way to update it. The Hometroller is a very nice box with very low power consumption but I am seriously thinking of selling mine and switching to an Eee Box running regular XP so I can use the plugins I want and more easily fix OS issues when they occur.
I also was planning to use the Squeezebox plugin to control my music but it apparently won't work with the version of .Net installed on the Hometroller and there is no way to update it. The Hometroller is a very nice box with very low power consumption but I am seriously thinking of selling mine and switching to an Eee Box running regular XP so I can use the plugins I want and more easily fix OS issues when they occur.
