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I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

robdobson.com

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Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#291

Post by stoobs »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #38

I stayed clear of smart appliances for a long time for the reasons I'm sure we're all well aware of. However, recently we had our central heating boiler changed and my partner was very keen on having Hive. It's almost useless. I can't believe how incompetently it seems to have been designed. Essentially there are three parts, a receiver connected to the boiler, a network bride connected to the router and the thermost…

Not all smart systems are terrible, I've the Honeywell evohome system and it has been flawless for the 18 months or so that it's been installed, bit it looks like a different strategy was used - the main thermostat/bridge/controller is linked via wifi, but everything else is run over a different RF standard, so all the TRV's, thermostats and the boiler controller talk to the main controller directly (iirc it's in the 900MHz range)

The main controller runs the scheduler and is the only device which reaches out to the internet (to sync with honeywell's cloud systems so you can control heating etc from an app remotely when away from home).

Other than the interface on the controller being a bit clunky, I've no complaints, even the batteries in the TRVs seem to be lasting well.

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#292

Post by stinos »

petre wrote: post #173
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…

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.

Never had this myself for network, but I can imagine if the wires are close enough together and the light switch sparks enough (or draws enough power) it could happen. Actually this is our 'standard' way of intentionally messing up serial or USB communication: place wire next to the serial line, then try to generate as much transients as possible to induce errors in the bit stream. Still doesn't always work.

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#293

Post by dusted »

I'm glad to see that he chose to do it himself, I'm building a house and am also leaning toward a DIY solution, because then I am in control of component quality, and I can have a fully documented system which I know I will be able to hack as I see fit, and for instance, design in such a way that even if the controller is down, the wall mounted switches still work as expected. So, great, comforting article!

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#294

Post by andrewaylett »

rkangel wrote: post #140
andrewaylett wrote: post #135

Since lockdown started, we've gradually converted most of our house to Hue. A key feature is that _all the light switches still work_. We just don't use them all that much, unless something's failed. From reading Matthew Garrett's exploits, I'm pretty sure we don't want WiFi IoT devices. We have Hue switches next to the physical switches, which don't depend on WiFi being up; Smart control works with only local networ…

My issue with Hue is brightness. I have swapped all the living room bulbs (3 lamps, 2 ceiling lights) for a mix of Hue Colour ambience and White Ambience, but it's only just about bright enough for when I want the room well lit. I'd love to put my office and some other rooms on Hue so I can tweak the colour temperature, but I've only got one ceiling pendant and it wouldn't be bright enough during the day.

We have multiple lamps in our living room. For the bedroom, which is also my WFH office, I've added a 100W LED that's intended for warehouse lighting but fits nicely on top of our Ikea uplighter. It's controlled by a Zigbee power socket, which means I can connect it to Hue as a "light" or SmartThings as a "switch" depending on which behaviour I want.

It's not quite as smooth a transition as pure Hue, but it means I can add a _lot_ of brightness when I want it.

The ceiling panel is really nice, and bright enough for the small area directly under it (which is my desk) but the rest of the room still seems a bit dim in comparison.

Unfortunately the Hue app doesn't really know about lamp brightness -- if you ask for all lamps on really dim, and one lamp's not dimmable, it'll switch that one on anyway.

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#295

Post by hondadriver »

wmeredith wrote: post #144
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…

What Zigbee switches are you using?

Maybe this is used? US (and Canada?) only though...

https://www.lutron.com/en-US/products/pages/standalonecontro...

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#296

Post by apexalpha »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #38

I stayed clear of smart appliances for a long time for the reasons I'm sure we're all well aware of. However, recently we had our central heating boiler changed and my partner was very keen on having Hive. It's almost useless. I can't believe how incompetently it seems to have been designed. Essentially there are three parts, a receiver connected to the boiler, a network bride connected to the router and the thermost…

I have installed a Tado smart thermostat and it's nothing short of phenomenal.

I've done a setup once and now it just runs automatically. Can't remember the last time I've even touched the thermostat.

It shuts down when I leave home, it heats up when I'm on my way home. When it's a sunny day it let's the sun heat up the house in stead of using the heating.

It's almost recouped it's costs in the first year by just gas savings (as opposed to my time based thermostat).

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#297

Post by vinceguidry »

spicybright wrote: post #274
dkdk8283 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electricians are bad at low voltage wiring. There’s a different contractor license for low voltage work in many states. Electricians also almost always use the wrong colors when wiring speakers with something like a 16/4. I have ran into this a lot.

Spot on with the colors. Why don't they pay more attention to that?

My dad’s an electrician. I worked for him once upon a time and later I did low voltage electrical construction. He says that the standards change too often, and it’s different enough to be considered a totally different field.

When I went to do low voltage later I realized what he meant. Stereo and security installations just isn’t something you want your electrician, whose knowledge mostly revolves around huge, 1000+ amp panels, to be doing. There’s way more money in commercial installs, so most electricians only do residential work to tide them over.

My dad doesn’t even want to terminate anything more complicated than 4 conductor phone wire, and would pull me into a job just for that reason.

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#298

Post by t0mas88 »

stordoff wrote: post #160
t0mas88 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same experience here, Philips (and other Zigbee lights like IKEA) did a great job. Only problem I had with the Philips hub is that it's memory limited and can't handle more than about 50 devices. Above that you need to replace the hub with something like Home Assistant, but can keep the rest of the system.

You can also use multiple hubs (HomeKit and various third party apps support this - the Hue app does, but IIRC you have to manually switch between them).

Yes I considered that, but it made some use cases that had buttons control lights that were on different hubs impossible.

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#299

Post by t0mas88 »

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.

Pretty normal house, just under 200 square meter. But for example the kitchen alone has 2 ceiling lamps with 4 spots each, 6 lamps for countertop lighting and 2 in a wall of cabinets. So that's already 16 lamps in only the kitchen. It's more in the living room.

Even a bathroom easily has 6 or 8 in the ceiling, a few near the mirror etc.

Re: I Ripped Out a £6k Lighting System

#300

Post by lostlogin »

snapetom wrote: post #208
rootusrootus wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you have a similar setup to me. I'm running HA with mostly Jasco switches. It's been okay, but there have been hiccups. Z-Wave devices can be annoying -- ESPECIALLY door locks. I've gotten them all working, but the setup was finicky, mostly due to the security requirements. The only way I deal with HA breaking changes is that I don't update often. About once every couple years I've gone in, dedicated a co…

Yeah, I'm probably sticking with HA for the time being mainly because I don't have the time to redo the whole thing right now. It's just frustrating to hear people recommend HA to complete home automation noobs with little or no linux experience. Related to that, I keep the HA configs routinely backed up. I should probably switch to nightly backups because HA now manipulates those config files when setting changes ar…

Consider their multiplugs too. The plugs are individually addressable.
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