Lighting controls

I wrote another post in which I asked this question, but not well, and I mixed it with a lot of others. I didn't get a lot of detailed responses. So, I'll try again, but keep it focused.

I'm building a house and want to automate the lighting, but I'm having a hard time finding switches that do what I think I want. All of the lighting automation switches I can find are RF, which makes sense if you're remodeling and don't want to take down the walls, but this is new construction so I have the opportunity to wire them.

I've also watched a bit of SuperHouseTV, which takes the approach of making all of the house wiring a "home run" system, and then controlling everything with relays from a circuit box, and replacing all of the switches with custom-built controllers operated via ethernet. That seems expensive and would leave me working with high voltage relays. If I'm going to build custom switches and relays, I figure it will be easier to put the relays in the switches and use a standard house wiring plan, anyway.

I'd rather not build custom switches at all, but I can't seem to find any off the shelf switches wired for remote control.

Any suggestion? Other options I haven't considered? Should I just go RF, since that seems to be where the hardware is?

These are just my thoughts and experiences, so don't take them as gospel. You never, ever have enough light switches. There's always a need to turn off the light on the front porch from out in the barn, or vice versa. I built my house, and after it was totally done, started adding switches in places I didn't think I needed them. Life has a way of sneaking up on you like that. So, the home run idea is pretty good from the aspect of being able to put a battery operated switch anywhere it happens to be needed that sends a command to a central location.

I wouldn't go ethernet, I'd go with RF, but that's because I realize that I may want to put a bookcase where the light switch is and add a switch somewhere else. It's nice to be able to control a ceiling fan without getting out of the bed; RF controls can be on the table next to you in instances like that. Little RF controls of various kinds are available, batteries are cheap on the web, and a control can be constructed that will tell you when the battery is getting low.

So, if I were to do it over, I'd home run the lights, hook them to relays that are controlled from a processor of some ilk and plant RF switches all over the house to control them. Rig up a cheap tablet that can send to a processor and control stuff as well; this will become your 'home remote control'. If you use a web interface to control the house, you can have several of these little tablets that can even be placed on the wall to tell you the time, temperature, if the oven was left on, etc.

Don't limit yourself to wires. Wires are for things that can only be done that way. Controls should be placed wherever you want them today, and moved to where you want them tomorrow, or be in your pocket wherever you are.

Don't worry about high voltage relays, that technology is the oldest there is and is really easy to learn. There are really cool solid state relays that don't make any noise, take a tiny amount of power to activate, and last almost forever. These things can take care of a myriad of problems for you. My hot water heater (one of those cool solar things) has its helper element controlled by a solid state relay that is controlled by an arduino, which in turn, is controlled by an XBee that I can send to from anywhere in the world via a web interface running on a Raspberry Pi. Sure, there's a lot of technology there, but what the heck? It's the 21st century.

Thanks for the reply draythomp.

I'm actually not too worried about relocating switches. I plan to run cat 5 pretty much everywhere... to all of the places I know I want switches, all of the places I think I might want switches, and then I plan to have a cat 5 cable run to every pair of studs, just sitting loose inside the wall waiting for me to poke a hole and fish it out. So far I'm planning to home-run all of those cables, though I may decide instead to have a couple of (easily-accessible) concentration points on each floor, with a few runs from each concentration point to the final system in the basement.

So I think a normal house wiring approach should be just fine. Worse comes to worst, maybe I replace a human-operable high-voltage switch with a relay and wall it up, then put a low-voltage control switch somewhere else.

Perhaps I shouldn't be so opposed to RF, though. I've had bad experiences with the reliability of RF in the past, which makes me prefer wires. However, what I'm finding is that all of the off-the-shelf smart switches are RF.

Thanks for the comment about the relay. I think I'll buy a couple and play with them. If I die, it'll be your fault but you'll probably never know :stuck_out_tongue:

As far as the lighting switches at each switching location I found some nice ones at adafruit.com. These are 16mm momentary push buttons with multiple led colors to choose.
On a second note I too am looking to semi-automate my basement with much the same ideas in mind. I'm also wanting to add to all water locations a humidistat or something to detect a water leak, then later add solenoid valves to isolate to minimize problems.
I'm looking to control 32 relays (DPDT) with many of these from as much as 4 locations (hard wired). I'm having trouble finding an arduino board with the number of inputs needed or mabe just misreading many specifications. I realize I may be able to parallel these to 1 input. Any help and of course ideas, sugestions or links would be great. I might add that your original post of "wife's approval comment" is on of my biggest concerns.

Thanks

Hi there ppl,
Im new on arduino support forums, by the way, this is my first post.:slight_smile:
So, I am also in phase of building my own house and designing electrical circuits all over, from scratch.
My idea is that I want to have option to switch on/off lights wheather with my smartphone
or pushing the button on wall. First idea that I had was just like written above in first post.
But after doing some research, I decided to do wiring using bistable relays.
So I will run the wire from lights directly to main switchboard, and pushbutton wiring directly to switchboard.
Right behind switchboard will be arduino with ethernet shield and 8 relay board, which will receive
http request from smartphone and give one pulse to bistable relay which will change active state, on or off.
Anyway, I will post schematic in evening (ce+1 :slight_smile: ) so it will be clear what was my idea.

Only cons in this system that I find is no possibility to integrate dimmer (for now)

Best regards,

mae1985, I don't what the laws and such are in your area, but you can get yourself in trouble with custom wiring. The problem is that the people that approve building don't understand what you're doing and they will drive you nuts with requirements. Another problem is insurance once you get it built. Insurance companies want to blame anything they can to keep from paying if you have a problem.

But, that aside, if you get a home run for the items that you want to control, and some way of getting the state of a switch there too, you can do anything you want. At first a simple on-off would be good, then expand the processing to dim, remember state, color, whatever. I'm not a fan of wires for control points; wires are fine for getting power to something, but the control should be mobile. I want control of whatever it is wherever I am.

That's why I opt for radio control. To me that means an XBee (I understand them) hooked to a switch and some kind of power so I can flip the switch and a light turns on somewhere. Where is determined by code running on a processor that I can change on a whim. Control also means a web interface so a cheap tablet or expensive cell phone can turn something on while I'm at the store or reading a book in bed.

Try not to limit your thinking.

draythomp,
I think you did not understand me 100%, so here is sketch.

this what I wrote is not custom wiring, it is classical wiring when you use multiple switching, etc. in room entrance and above bed, on bottom and on top of stairs. Nothing weird about wiring there.
There is also no breaking any law.
This is bistable relay I intend to use: http://www.schrack.hr/trgovina/bistabilni-relej-230vac-1-n-o-montaza-na-din-nosac-lq611230.html

For control, you said same thing as I did; controling with any device that can send http request,
so this is also mobile controling.