i have customer who wants to control his out door lights from one llocation. the home is exisiting and his outdoor lighting that has 3/4 switches at different locations that he wants to control from one location. He basically wants to be able to go to any of those locations and control lighting. The circuits are obviously ran independent from each so other than opening walls and getting in attic, i was wondering if there was something in lighting control world that could make this happen
lighting controls
- Thread starter mannyb
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Electric-Light
Senior Member
There are ones that use dedicated slave switches that are RF remotes that look like a regular switch or connect via WiFi and controlled with a smart phone.
oscarcolumbo
Member
- Location
- Florida
what about replacing the existing switches with lutron caseta switches and placing a lutron pico remote wherever he wants? I think you can program the remote to control up to 4 caseta switches. He can also download the app and control them from his phone.
- Location
- Windsor, CO NEC: 2017
- Occupation
- Service Manager
Actually, you can control the whole house with a Pico if you want. There's also a good selection of different Picos for different needs. I have Caseta, Picos, and the app on my phone, it works great. It drives the wife nuts when I start playing with the lights while I'm at work. 
- Location
- Massachusetts
Actually, you can control the whole house with a Pico if you want. There's also a good selection of different Picos for different needs. I have Caseta, Picos, and the app on my phone, it works great. It drives the wife nuts when I start playing with the lights while I'm at work.
To each their own for sure but for the life of me I cannot find any reason at all to replace a simple reliable single pole switch with a module that will fail, that relies on an app, that relies on communication etc.
I can drive my wife nuts from work other ways.
oscarcolumbo
Member
- Location
- Florida
Actually, you can control the whole house with a Pico if you want. There's also a good selection of different Picos for different needs. I have Caseta, Picos, and the app on my phone, it works great. It drives the wife nuts when I start playing with the lights while I'm at work.
My grandma opened the door and left the house because I turned the lights on in the kitchen from the phone while I was in the bedroom! She said she thought it was a ghost. I told her I won't do it again.
- Location
- Windsor, CO NEC: 2017
- Occupation
- Service Manager
I had a couple reasons; I wanted to have some real world experience with the system so that I could determine the strengths and weaknesses. If it is buggy, I don't want to recommend it to anyone.
I wanted to correct mistakes the original electrician made, where obvious three ways we're wired as single poles. Cutting down on the traffic on the carpet alone probably paid for the system.
I enjoy being able to set just about anything in the house to an astronomic timer, including the heating systems. Every weekday stumble lighting comes on at 4:45am, and I hit a button on my visor on the way out of the driveway and I know all the lights are off.
Every day the heaters in the bedrooms shut off a couple hours after sunrise and turn back on around sundown, saving energy. If we get a really cold snap where that doesn't work, a swipe and a poke on my phone manually overrides the automation for the day.
Schedules for multiple items are easy to change, I don't have to walk from point to point and do anything, a minute on the app is all it takes.
In 20 years if it is obsolete and causing problems, the house has conventional wiring, just put it back.
- Location
- Massachusetts
I can understand that, my buddy does security work and his home and his 'man town' are loaded with cameras, DVRs and routers. He practices funky programming with them, it's all via Ethernet and he can watch the cams on his phone away from the house.
The other reasons are more on the to each their own and if it makes the home owner happy and they are still getting loving from the real boss all is good.
- Location
- Windsor, CO NEC: 2017
- Occupation
- Service Manager
Indeed; some of the best advice I can give in regards to the system is how a husband can best avoid marital strife by its careful implementation.
- Location
- Massachusetts
Indeed; some of the best advice I can give in regards to the system is how a husband can best avoid marital strife by its careful implementation.
A wise man.
- Location
- Windsor, CO NEC: 2017
- Occupation
- Service Manager
Kidding aside, one of the most valuable things electricians can do for their customers is talk them out of bad ideas they come up with, usually due to their own OCD. Convention matters to some extent, and they can take our advice or leave it; I take a hard line when it comes to controls that do not retro to conventional wiring, and the use of excessive switching. I imagine there has been a time when all of us have heard something to the tune of "Well, I just can't decide. Can we put every can in this room on a switch, so we can decide how we want it later?" Resi or commercial.
Edit: that was not a reply to the previous post, but to
Bob's. :lol:
Edit: that was not a reply to the previous post, but to
Bob's. :lol:
Last edited:
Electric-Light
Senior Member
Actually, you can control the whole house with a Pico if you want. There's also a good selection of different Picos for different needs. I have Caseta, Picos, and the app on my phone, it works great. It drives the wife nuts when I start playing with the lights while I'm at work.
I can see both you and iwire's view. I tend to agree with objections to making major integration of fad technology that can become obsolete anytime depending on market response. WiFi light bulbs or a module to go into an existing wall box and a matching surface mount transponder made to look like a regular switch to give a switch and dimming control at second location improves functionality for occupant without making expensive alterations.
Tread carefully with smartphone/web managed stuff. These are usually dependent on a service hosted by the manufacturer. They may offer the service as a package included in buying the device but when they decide to phase it out, you can't use the device anymore. This can be a real problem, because buildings have much longer life cycle than consumer electronics. VCRs from 1990s that allowed remote management like an answering machine is still usable today, because it's not dependent on hosted service provided by another.
I had a couple reasons; I wanted to have some real world experience with the system so that I could determine the strengths and weaknesses. If it is buggy, I don't want to recommend it to anyone.
I wanted to correct mistakes the original electrician made, where obvious three ways we're wired as single poles. Cutting down on the traffic on the carpet alone probably paid for the system.
I enjoy being able to set just about anything in the house to an astronomic timer, including the heating systems. Every weekday stumble lighting comes on at 4:45am, and I hit a button on my visor on the way out of the driveway and I know all the lights are off.
Every day the heaters in the bedrooms shut off a couple hours after sunrise and turn back on around sundown, saving energy. If we get a really cold snap where that doesn't work, a swipe and a poke on my phone manually overrides the automation for the day.
Schedules for multiple items are easy to change, I don't have to walk from point to point and do anything, a minute on the app is all it takes.
In 20 years if it is obsolete and causing problems, the house has conventional wiring, just put it back.
These technologies often require granting trusted access to your network and it could used as a backdoor to get into your network if the hosting provider gets hacked or a vulnerability in the smart device's software is used.
That's not unreasonable for space that sees frequent usage change. Many are just getting their feet wet with 0-10v system now and there's been dimming ballasts going back to 1990s. It caught mainstream interest with the desire to control LED ballasts. 0-10v is quite limiting and DALI was introduced to give finer granularity to lighting control. DALI uses same wiring techniques and materials but the segmenting is not determined by how they hook up. They just need to be connected. The controller still announce to every device but the instructions or device grouping is personalized. (A section of cafeteria converted to classroom. One of the switches already in the newly sectioned area or new switch is assigned to the new classroom group and removed from cafeteria group) (raise default output of LED ballasts in group E two notches to compensate for LED decay)
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