app controlled lighting; residential

[brantmacga]

I've been away from residential completely for quite some time now and i'm not up to speed on whats available.


I was at lowe's tonight with my friend, and we saw some devices that can be controlled via a network.

Anyway, she mentioned that one of her friends has lighting and temp controls that are operated via the iphone, and she would also like to have something like this.

What are the basic options now for simple lighting and temperature controls that can be operated via an iphone? Its worth noting that she doesn't have home internet or wifi networking; she just uses the phone for everything and makes it a hotspot when needed for the laptop, and i'm thinking this will be an issue. Setting up a wifi network to simply connect devices wouldn't be a problem, but idk how the iphone behaves on a network with no internet access. Does it remain connected for local use and fall back to cellular for internet access?


thanks for any help

 

[Smart $]

Haven't been involved with any of these systems, but I believe there are several to many home automation via smartphone systems already on the market... likely some more well known than others. Additionally, there are likely variations in set up and how they operate... so unless you narrow it down to one in particular it is difficult to provide specific information.

I can tell you if she relies on her iPhone for home networking, she will not be able to operate her system when she is away from home.

 

[Smart $]

... Does it remain connected for local use and fall back to cellular for internet access?

Using the iPhone as a hotspot (wireless router), connected devices use the iPhone for internet access over the cellular connection of the iPhone.

 

[brantmacga]

Narrowing it down was my intentions with this thread.

To clarify on the networking; what I'm trying to ask is will the iPhone operate on cellular and wifi networking at the same time ? I've had phones in the past that would not fail over to cellular when no internet was available on wifi. For this to work, the iPhone would need to be able to operate on both networks simultaneously . I suppose I really need to get that answered first before moving on. I have an iPhone that I use only for the exaktime software ... I'll see if I can figure out how to work the thing and use it to test this.


Thanks though. I'll report back when I've come up with some options to discuss.

 

[Smart $]

Narrowing it down was my intentions with this thread.

To clarify on the networking; what I'm trying to ask is will the iPhone operate on cellular and wifi networking at the same time ? I've had phones in the past that would not fail over to cellular when no internet was available on wifi. For this to work, the iPhone would need to be able to operate on both networks simultaneously . I suppose I really need to get that answered first before moving on. I have an iPhone that I use only for the exaktime software ... I'll see if I can figure out how to work the thing and use it to test this.


Thanks though. I'll report back when I've come up with some options to discuss.

I don't have an iPhone to know... but all smart phones pretty much work the same way AFAIK when it comes to networking.

You have phones that'll use wifi to access the internet for data, then fault to cellular when no wifi can be accessed.

When the phone is being used as a hot spot, it performs the function of a wireless router... dubbed mifi for mobile wifi. When used as hotspot, connected devices use whatever mode the phone uses to access the internet.

In the case of your friend, if she uses her iPhone as her home router ...with no other internet access, be it wifi, mifi, wired, etc... then all internet access is over cellular through the iPhone.... and nothing stationary at home can be accessed when she is outside wifi range.

 

[mike-brunt]

theres quite a few options available now

theres quite a few options available now

Phillips have their Hue range, and there is the Mi-Light series from china. however they tend to operate as standalone lighting systems without temp integrations
all current systems with connect to a wireless network by themselves after initial setup - so you will only need to open the app to control. Most require a "bridge" type system to stand between the bulb and the network.

common systems on the market are either bulb only - or can be integrated with 4/5 wire zone interfaces that can control strips / 4/5 wire bulbs

 

[DTLight]

I'd suggest your friend take a hard look at whether they want their lights controlled by their phone. When I come home at night and have my hands full of stuff, I wouldn't want to have to set everything down to fiddle with the phone to turn the lights on. I can control my lights at my house with my phone, one of several touchscreens or the smart switches on the wall, but probably about 80% of the time I use the wall switches. Since the other person doesn't have continuous internet service at their house, the benefit of being able to turn lights on remotely and monitor a camera from their phone isn't available.

 

[sparkycoog]

I have been working with lighting control systems for about 10 years (factory certified and everything) now and our company is one of the few purely electrical contractors that does this (as opposed to the drive by night audio/video companies who often do these systems) so I say this with some authority on the subject. My suggestion would be to use high end products, even if it's a small job. There are tons of Home Depot/Radio Shack quality "automation" systems that work through the house's wiring or some other BS and every single one I've seen has failed and acted erratically. Wifi only devices also are unreliable because home networks go down all the time and you'd be at the mercy of the dreaded audio/video guy.

Because of that, I suggest Lutron's systems because they have FCC approval for their wireless systems and their stuff works for years. I still see Radio Ra Classic systems that were installed 15 years ago and they still work (though mechanically they look like crap after 15 years). Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it), the fancier systems require factory training in order to be certified and be allowed to use the software to program them and you do need some basic computer skills and especially some networking basics.

It's funny that now days mainstream technology media are calling these "the internet of things" and acting as if home automation is new because these have been around for 20 years or even longer, but it used to be that only the wealthiest of customers (living in $5 million houses) could afford them and they were somewhat crude and required a lot of hard work customizing and programming. Some history:

The biggest names back then were Lutron's Homeworks and Litetouch and later Vantage Controls (which is one of my favorite systems) all of which required running low voltage cables to each keypad and dimmer (or dimming panel). Later Lutron came out with their Radio Ra system which was pretty much the first reliable automation system that was perfect for retrofit given that it was wireless. They also updated their Homeworks System to include wireless in addition to the panels. Later on, Audio/Video systems like Crestron got into the game too and have their own lighting system, but for sparkies I think that's the wrong path.

Anyway, I think if you're going to stick with one system, Lutron still offers the most bang for the buck because now they have their flagship Homeworks QS system (for very large installations in fancy homes) along with the new Radio-Ra2 system (for someone wanting to spend $2000-$30,000), and now they've come up with a gateway drug system called Caseta Wireless which doesn't have keypads for the wall, but lets you hook up much cheaper devices to an app and control things with timers or the app or little Pico switches. For less than $1000, you can do quite a lot and it's all very straight forward. You can even put the thermostat and shades on there too and you do the programming on the app which is free.

Personally, for anything more than 5 loads to 80 loads, I would recommend radio-ra2 and for bigger systems Homeworks QS or Vantage Infusion (man I love that system). For you, you can try Caseta and see how you like it and if it works out, get certified in Radio-ra.

I've been away from residential completely for quite some time now and i'm not up to speed on whats available.


I was at lowe's tonight with my friend, and we saw some devices that can be controlled via a network.

Anyway, she mentioned that one of her friends has lighting and temp controls that are operated via the iphone, and she would also like to have something like this.

What are the basic options now for simple lighting and temperature controls that can be operated via an iphone? Its worth noting that she doesn't have home internet or wifi networking; she just uses the phone for everything and makes it a hotspot when needed for the laptop, and i'm thinking this will be an issue. Setting up a wifi network to simply connect devices wouldn't be a problem, but idk how the iphone behaves on a network with no internet access. Does it remain connected for local use and fall back to cellular for internet access?


thanks for any help

 

[sparkycoog]

I'd suggest your friend take a hard look at whether they want their lights controlled by their phone. When I come home at night and have my hands full of stuff, I wouldn't want to have to set everything down to fiddle with the phone to turn the lights on. I can control my lights at my house with my phone, one of several touchscreens or the smart switches on the wall, but probably about 80% of the time I use the wall switches. Since the other person doesn't have continuous internet service at their house, the benefit of being able to turn lights on remotely and monitor a camera from their phone isn't available.

Most systems require that they replace their existing switches with special switches but the space on the wall is still there so if they walk into the kitchen, they can still just hit that at night. It's more of an addition rather than a zero sum choice. I do agree with you however that physical keypads that always work are far more effective and the phone thing is more of a novelty and convenience. That's why even when we work with an audio-video company who wants to integrate their touch panels to our Lutron or Vantage system, we still insist on having physical keypads - touchscreens come and go out of style, networks fail, and audio/video companies go out of business so we want to make sure that when the customer pushes the "Welcome" button, the lights come on every single time.

 

[Rampage_Rick]

what I'm trying to ask is will the iPhone operate on cellular and wifi networking at the same time ? I've had phones in the past that would not fail over to cellular when no internet was available on wifi.

I don't have an Iphone to test, but here's my take...

Most phones will prioritize a WiFi connection over Cellular (usually faster and cheaper that way) One possible way to circumvent this is to change the Default Gateway on the WiFi connection (also known as Next Hop Router) Basically the Default Gateway setting tells a device where it needs to send it's data to get from this network to the next network (and eventually the Internet) Most WiFi routers are configured such that they are the Default Gateway for all connected devices.

If you wanted to install a WiFi router in the given scenario, I see two options: You could leave the Default Gateway blank (or 0.0.0.0) This means all the devices would only be able to talk to each other, not the internet. The Iphone would presumably continue to use it's Cellular connection for internet (at least this is how my Android does it)

The second option would be to configure the WiFi router to always give the Iphone the same IP address (DHCP Reservation) and set the Default Gateway to the Iphone's IP address. This way all the devices on the network will send all their internet traffic to the Iphone. I'm not sure if this would cooperate with the Iphone hotspot functionality though (again, I can do it on Android, but I've never tried Iphone)

 

[sparkycoog]

Depending on what system you're using, you may not even need the internet to access the lights if you happen to be in the house as it only needs the local IP address. Going with my Lutron example above, all you need to do with the app is to point it to the address of the Lutron processor (like 192.168.1.50) and it will work on the wifi whether or not it has the internet. Now if you signed up for their remote access feature, it will "phone home" to set it up as you have to make an account and in that case you will need internet access whether it's wifi or the cell connection so if for some reason the local network is not having the internet, you either have to disconnect your wifi and use the cell or you don't get the app to work. In real life cases however, as long as you have a wifi connection, you have internet access too and when that drops, you get switched to cell anyway so it might be better to just use the remote feature all the time even if you're 2 feet away from the router.