I don't get it. What's the point in these systems? Genuinely. Why would I ever need this? Just like a "smart" doorbell, fridge, meter. I would love for someone to be able to explain the benefits to me over the normal, cheap, completely working "dump" version. The only "smart" device I own is a TV and it is crap, worse thing I've ever bought.
I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
61–70 of 317 posts
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#62Spend a whole post writing about the mistake it was to invest in an overly complex solution in search of a problem and conclude by doubling down and redoing it all over again but with Wifi instead. Perhaps the problem wasn't with the protocol, but with the fact that something that just works became a months long project worth thousands. What a rabbithole.
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#63I installed an automatic sprinkler system with several "regions". I struggled with that thing for years. Programming it required reading a hefty manual. The user interface was near the worst I'd ever seen (the worst is on my automated cat feeder). I was constantly repairing the lines, the heads, the valves, the control box. I'd winterize it, de-winterize it. The coyotes would chew on it.
Finally I simply turned it off and let whatever would grow without constant watering grow, and the rest died. Makes me a much happier man.
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#64When people have more money than good sense.
I can't imagine how large a house or must be, to require 150 lighting circuits.
My house had a kitchen extension built by previous owners. I count 27 lights in total, mostly in-ceiling spotlights.
At least they're controlled with a normal switch. With decent quality, high powered LED bulbs like we have in the living room, 2 or 3 would do.
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#65I don't get it. What's the point in these systems? Genuinely. Why would I ever need this? Just like a "smart" doorbell, fridge, meter. I would love for someone to be able to explain the benefits to me over the normal, cheap, completely working "dump" version. The only "smart" device I own is a TV and it is crap, worse thing I've ever bought.
[deleted]
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#66I use Shelly devices with Tamota, they talk to my Home assistant setup with MQTT.
When I can get power (with a neutral wire...) to something then WiFi is the best, but uses too much power compared to Zigbee and Zwave for running off batteries.
I have some climate sensors in each room to control heating, they're too awkwardly placed to get power to, so I use Zwave for these - they were just as big of a pain to setup as TFA describes, but at least I only have to replace the batteries once a year
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#67Good grief... who would sign up for such a thing? The biggest lighting system I worked on was Philips Dynalite. It's a gigantic RS-485 bus - you just make sure all the dimmers and light switch panels are on the segment. It can be over a kilometre long and you can control/reprogram everything from everywhere on that bus. The protocol is simple enough that you can bit-bang subsets of it from dumb devices. Do recommend.
Simple engineering rule applies here... “if you can run a wire, run a wire”. Notice over the whole article he talks about the how, but not really the why?
I have a wifi access point in the house to supplement the lan, and so I don't have to use the data plan for my phone.
The durned thing needs to be power cycled now and then. No way I'm putting the lights on wifi. The wired lan is 10x more reliable, but even it needs the router rebooted. (I've had lots of routers. All needed rebooting.) Never had to reboot the lights or the power sockets.
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#68> there are actually at least three units lost in the walls somewhere which respond to Z-Wave commands but don’t seem to control anything I can find! Reminds me of http://bash.org/?5273 haha
There's a better version of it - https://www.theregister.com/2001/04/12/missing_novell_server...
Is different. Bash guy cannot find it. Other guys didn't know it was missing. If it was missing for four years and then found it would be a better version.
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#69Stuff like this is the reason the only smart devices I have got so far are a Chromecast Audio, a Chromecast TV and a 2nd gen Google Home Mini (free from Spotify Premium). Those things are low impact if they don't work properly, and they do stop working with alarming regularity. I have spent less than £80 on the set up.
The Home mini has trouble with my regional British accent. The Chromecasts are within 2m of my router, and still manage to get disconnected randomly.
I'm not anti-smart home, but the stuff has to be 99.9% reliable for me to consider going forward with it. I've never had a light switch fail on me...
Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System
#70I bought one of the philips wireless lights working on wifi or bluetooth, can't remember. It worked fine after 2 minutes of set-up, and then stopped working about 1-2 months in. The light still works with the regular switch, but I can't get the connection back whatever I try, to turn it on/off with my phone.
Definitely won't be coming back to this until 5 or 10 years to see if the tech has reliably moved.