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I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

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Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#171

Post by mindslight »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #162
bhickey wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conduit isn't very common in US residential construction. Electricians will generally cut a hole in the drywall, drill a hole in the floor plate and tack the cabling to the framing.

I think that is very location dependent. Here in the Midwest, Romex still isn’t a thing and most residential construction still requires (effectively or otherwise) 1/2” electrical conduits for all high voltage wiring. Older construction might be the horrible BX/AC instead.

You said Midwest, but are you sure you don't just mean Chicago? Chicagoland is the single place I've heard about residential work requiring conduit.

I had a house with mostly Armored Cable and came to appreciate it. Especially after I opened up a floor and found an exposed conductor on some Non-Metallic that had been chewed by a squirrel.

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#172

Post by stinos »

ur-whale wrote: post #139
stinos wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry should have been more clear; I'm an eletronics engineer so I know what crosstalk is, it's just that I didn't understand how this would be an actual problem with CAT5. Phone line, that's something else though. If an electrician had done it, it likely would have been 10 or 20x more. Hmm, that is like twice the amount one would typcially pay here. Still, don't froget the working hours you put in there :) plus the…

They're maybe getting it for cheaper than you do, but if you think that's what they're actually charging you, you're deluded. The typical electrician gets it indeed for cheaper than market rate, then charges it to you retail rate plus 20% to account for the "trouble" of sourcing and purchasing it.

if you think that's what they're actually charging you,

I never claimed that.

The typical electrician

Maybe you rather mean 'the typical electrician I met' or so because I know for a fact the rest of that sentence does not apply to the ones I met myself.

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#173

Post by petre »

stinos wrote: post #113
WalterBright wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crosstalk is when two wires are close together, one induces a voltage in the other (it's how transformers work). The trouble with house wiring is if you run a phone line parallel and close to an A/C line, it will induce a 60 cycle hum in the phone line, which will drive you utterly mad. The electrician was installing the cat3 phone wires in the same holes as the A/C wires. It was guaranteed to induce a hum. The corre…

Sorry should have been more clear; I'm an eletronics engineer so I know what crosstalk is, it's just that I didn't understand how this would be an actual problem with CAT5. Phone line, that's something else though. If an electrician had done it, it likely would have been 10 or 20x more. Hmm, that is like twice the amount one would typcially pay here. Still, don't froget the working hours you put in there :) plus the…

That's an easy one. Switch on the light, network disconnects. We had this happen at our office. There's obviously much more happening on an electrical network other than 50/60 Hz, like transient response to switching loads on and off, RF noise from spark loads, dimmers etc.

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#174

Post by sp332 »

ornornor wrote: post #149
t0mas88 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easy solution is to have the intelligence in the lightbulbs the way Philips, Osram and IKEA did on their Zigbee based systems. I have all lights (100+) in the house on Zigbee but without changing any wiring. Only non standard is that I replaced all the wall switches with a variant that's electrically "always on" and sends a Zigbee command when pressed (and can be pulled out to access a traditional physical switch…

> I have all lights (100+) Your house is massive or your castle is very tiny. Either way, that’s an usual amount of lightbulbs.

Well, the Hue bulbs and most of the competition are not very bright.

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#175

Post by gh02t »

Maha-pudma wrote: post #154
Maha-pudma wrote: post #61

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'm replying to myself in an effort to reply generally to everyone who replied to me, thanks for your use cases. I can see some of the reasons and benefits and to me, no offence meant, the seem pretty trivial, especially when you take into account the privacy issues. I have dumb timers for lights I want on at certain times, dumb movement sensors for outside lights that only turn on at night, my boiler has a timer whi…

Regarding privacy issues, IMO if that's a problem you've screwed up big time. Stuff like lights should only use local control and not be tied into the cloud or at least it should be optional, and any lights should fall back to working like normal dumb lights if they lose contact with the hub.

When it comes to rolling your own devices with an Arduino or similar, this is much harder to do safely and in a code-compliant manner than you would imagine. Making your own sensors is fun and harmless, but making stuff that is hard wired into mains is a bad idea. It's not totally impossible to engineer a properly safe device if you really know what you're doing, but it'll probably end up costing more than a commercial device and won't come with the compliance testing marks.

I agree, however... even though I have a lot of effort sunk into my own home automation setup it's not for everybody and there are plenty of downsides.

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#176

Post by NoOneNew »

Maha-pudma wrote: post #61

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.

Over engineering or buying over engineered devices makes people feel good even though it's ultimately useless and unproductive. Like masturbation. Sure it's fun. But pretending you achieved something is the real problem. Ultimately, it's just ego tripping.

It's fun to visit friends who get these devices. I have yet to see one setup that doesn't have some fuck up. Needing constant reboots, lag, some other type of delay or even best, that one device that just doesn't work no matter what.

Yes, I wish dumb TVs would be normal again. Had a friend mention that he doesn't need a tv bigger than 32in, thus he got a good quality monitor and sound system. Hes single and doesn't watch much tv anyways. Most monitors are telemetry-less, which is what we want. It's a bit more expensive of a setup, but he's had it for years and is happy. At least happier than I am with my stupid ass samsung smart tv. Tossing that idea out there, especially as monitors are getting bigger these days.

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#177

Post by shawnz »

hondadriver wrote: post #100
WalterBright wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crosstalk is when two wires are close together, one induces a voltage in the other (it's how transformers work). The trouble with house wiring is if you run a phone line parallel and close to an A/C line, it will induce a 60 cycle hum in the phone line, which will drive you utterly mad. The electrician was installing the cat3 phone wires in the same holes as the A/C wires. It was guaranteed to induce a hum. The corre…

Here in The Netherlands and probably other parts of Europe, you are not allowed to run electricity and network or phone cables through the same tubes. Also the number of wires allowed in a single tube is limited. Many houses have concrete walls, floors and ceilings, so you don't run extra tubes easily... Reconfiguring switches is next to impossible and via existing switch wires you can dim/switch the lights but not c…

> Here in The Netherlands and probably other parts of Europe, you are not allowed to run electricity and network or phone cables through the same tubes.

Presumably that is not because of interference concerns but because of the danger of mixing high voltage and low voltage circuits in the same conduit, right?

As others have noted, conduit isn't usually used in houses in the west.

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#178

Post by detaro »

Maha-pudma wrote: post #154
Maha-pudma wrote: post #61

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'm replying to myself in an effort to reply generally to everyone who replied to me, thanks for your use cases. I can see some of the reasons and benefits and to me, no offence meant, the seem pretty trivial, especially when you take into account the privacy issues. I have dumb timers for lights I want on at certain times, dumb movement sensors for outside lights that only turn on at night, my boiler has a timer whi…

There's plenty of this stuff that's entirely local and has no "privacy issues".

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#179

Post by noelsusman »

Maha-pudma wrote: post #154
Maha-pudma wrote: post #61

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'm replying to myself in an effort to reply generally to everyone who replied to me, thanks for your use cases. I can see some of the reasons and benefits and to me, no offence meant, the seem pretty trivial, especially when you take into account the privacy issues. I have dumb timers for lights I want on at certain times, dumb movement sensors for outside lights that only turn on at night, my boiler has a timer whi…

I roll my own version on a NUC with some ESP8266 based sensors, but frankly I don't think many people care if multi-national tech companies know when their lights are on. I don't really, I roll my own more as a hobby.

I've found it to be pretty useful. My partner and I tend to go to bed at different times. I put pressure sensors under the mattress, and whenever one of us goes to bed the subwoofer in the living room turns off. Little things like that are pretty nifty.

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#180

Post by vonnieda »

I use Insteon dimmers and switches in my house. These replace the wall switch but look basically like a normal wall switch. They use a combination of power line networking and RF mesh networking for automation. This is the second house I've had entirely outfitted with them and I love it.

IMHO it's critical to maintain control at the wall switch - if I am walking into the kitchen and want to turn the lights on, I just hit the switch like any other house. But when I'm in bed and ready to go to sleep I can press one button in the app and all the lights turn off.

Anyone with basic electrical skills can replace a switch in about 15 minutes. I did them all myself in my first house over the course of a few months, and when I moved I hired an electrician for a few hours to just do them all.

The switches and dimmers are about $50 each, but they are highly reliable. I've had one failure out of about 40 total installed over the course of the 12 years I've been using it.

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