Home automation/lighting

[Alex]

Dear all,

I would like to add something 'a little special' to the main living area in my house during it's renovation.

What I want is something that will appear to the end user as a wall switch with 4 buttons - 1 for each 'mood'.

I will have around 4 sets of lights that I want to be able to set dimming levels for individually. So for example:

Button 1 - Circuit 1: 50% Circuit 2: 75% Circuit 3: 0% Circuit 4: 100%

Button 2 - Circuit 1: 100% Circuit 2: 50% Circuit 3: 25% Circuit 4: 50%

and so on..

I also want the lights to slowly change to their selected settings - if anyone has ever seen 'The Shingle Cottage' featured on Hometime on H&L a few years back they'll know what I mean.

I've looked around the web a fair bit, but these things seem to be hugely overpriced, some even approaching £1000!!! I just need single room control, not the whole house, and any amount of wiring specific to this installation is no problem as I am rewiring the house anyway.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks

Alex

[Craig Graham]

has this kind of stuff, including a multichannel programmable light switch with fading between programmes that does what you want. But it costs.

[Rick Dipper]

Remember the BBC model-b computer, its an ideal machine to use as a base for making your own system, you can then have all your own programs to have you own moods and sequences.

for a grand you could even afford to use a PC, but being billy-ware programming is more difficult.

That mad guy with the "wing" roof on Grand Designs has set up a business with this sort of stuff .........

A student form the local tec would build you the bees knees system for a grand.

I would start with a look through the maplin catalogue, all sorts of weird stuff in there.

Rick

[Alex]

installation

Cheers, I'll be scouring through the Maplin catalogue then! I used to be 'a student from the local tec' and now am an engineering student (albiet rather a poor one by the looks of it!) so I suppose I should be able to eventually work something out for myself (with the help of you trusty lot of course).

The guy with the wing roof. Now that wasn't the prat that wouldn't tell him how much it cost was he? With the finished plywood faces before the roof got to site? If so, I ain't buying anything from him!!

I can't really justify spending more than £200 on this, for me it's just not worth the extra over a 4 gang light switch, with carefully thought out lighting to allow adjustable moods.

I'll let you know if I make any progress on this (after I finish this year's exams, finish the heating, finish the plumbing, finish the chimney, oh the list does go on!!).

Cheers

Alex

[Andrew Gabriel]

I use a Comfort alarm system, which also includes home automation capability and X10 commands and responses. This could easily handle the task, and wouldn't come to £1000. Really you just want a programmable X10 microcontroller, which can probably be found for conderably less than a Comfort alarm system, but I don't know of one. The X10 DIN rail dimmer modules do ramp up and down slowly anyway. ISTR they are around £40 each though. They also include provision for connecting a momentary contact switch to control them directly. I think they also include some support for X10 scene selection (got some name like X10 Professional) but I don't have anything else which can generate those X10 signals so I haven't played with that feature.

[usenet]

An old PC running Linux could be a cheap option. PC controller cards can be obtained from such as Maplin for not too much money.

[Alex]

If I understand you correctly, I would have to have a PC permenantly running, just to control the lights for one big room? Or have I misunderstood?

Whilst I can see that being a useful & adpatable way to control a whole house, for just controlling the lights it's, unfortunately, way too much hassle for me. Thanks for the suggestions though, at least I can know what to plan for in my next house.

Cheers

Alex

[Alex]

'You can also use more sophisticated controllers that can be programmed via macros or a scripting language. Typically, these connect to a PC via a serial link, and are programmed via software that runs on Windows, DOS, UNIX (especially Linux), or the Macintosh OS. Once the program is written, it is downloaded to the controller, so that the controller (and the house!) works even when the PC is off. '

Ahh, I see I misunderstood :)

Alex

[usenet]

No, permanently running PCs are a way of life as far as I'm concerned.

Why is it a hassle to have something turned on all the time? You don't have to nurture it like a Windows PC you know, until the hardware dies Linux boxes tend to run very reliably, especially if doing simple/single tasks like this.

[Craig Graham]

Complete waste. A scrap 486 based PC is more than capable and dirt cheap. The dimming is more difficult (unless it's simply fixed rate between on and off) but no more so than for a modern PC. A soundcard could perhaps be used with some buffering as the basis of a two chanel dimmer, in addition to the

12-ish digital lines of the parallel port. Or a proper analogue output card but then you're getting expensive.

The programming is the difficult bit; with the means, you could use Windows

3.1 and an old version of Labview. Otherwise, Linux may be the simplest way to go since there tend to be more people in that camp who home-grow this kind of thing.

[anthony james]

Have a look at the Futronix range. Their 4 channel switch sounds like what you need and i think it's £350.

Available direct or from letsautomate.