Affordable Lighting Control - Yes, It Really Exists.

The iPhone has been a game changer in just about every business out there, and now lighting control is no exception.  Several years ago when I ran a home technology business, our lighting control packages could run several thousand dollars just in programming, never mind the actual lighting controls.  A touch screen remote could be $9,000 without any programming at all.  Now you can use a $199 iPod Touch with WiFi to do the same thing, or a $299 tablet.

Today with an iPhone or Android, you can upgrade your house with complete lighting control for less than the cost of programming some of the lighting systems from the big names like Crestron or Lutron.  Best of all you can do the programming yourself from your couch with your iPhone or Android phone or tablet.  Just sit back and make the magic happen.

My current home has the lowest cost lighting control I have ever installed, and so far it has proven just as reliable.  Don’t bother with X-10, they are basically gone anyway, and  this is far easier to program and surprisingly less expensive overall.  You don't need fancy testers or electrical bridges for this lighting control.  About the only thing I can’t do with my current system is set triggers, and I can do that if I get a smart alarm system or leave a computer running to be the “brains” of the house.

A trigger is something like "if night and party, then lights stay on, else lights off at 11:30 pm"  Where "party" is the trigger that prevents the night lights from going out.  Another example might be if "Driveway motion" and "dark" then lights on.  Some of these can be done other ways though.  You just need to be a little creative.

There isn’t a need to pay ADT or any big alarm company $20, $30 or even $49 a month to have remote access to your home.  This little system includes it for free.  WiFi cameras are as little as $99 for indoor and $119 for outdoor.  

I picked up a Lamp and Appliance Control Kit by Insteon at Costco since it was less expensive than going to SmartHome and I didn’t have to wait for shipping.  This gave me control of my landscape lights, one appliance and three table lamps for $199.  The house looks lived in and I used the appliance control to turn off my wife's watch winder before I go to bed.  Yes I bought her the cheap one and it is very loud.

At $49 per dimmer or switch at Smarthome.com, the Insteon system is also the lowest priced replacement switch I know of.  My entire house is now done except for the closets and bathrooms.  Those are on commercial grade motion sensors from Leviton.  You only need to go to bed once and hit "all off" while your wife is in the closet to realize why those rooms don’t belong on the system.

Unlike the old X-10 switches, these will work just fine with dimming CFL or LED lights too.

So how easy is it really? 

Installation:

1. Turn off the breaker for the lights where you are going to change the switch.  
2. Replace the switch.  
3. You flip the breaker back on. 
   Installation complete.

Programming.

1. Download iPhone or Android Ap
2. Click Add Device
3. Following instructions on screen, push little button on bottom of switch
4. Set Lights
5. Create a “scene” like “night”
6. Add devices to scene by checking on the list.

I don't recommend more than 5 scenes.  After a dozen years of analyzing my clients, I learned that the same five scenes are used in just about every house.  After those five, they are to confusing or not used.  They are "Morning", "Night", "Night Light", "Party" and "Movie Time"  which in most houses is just "TV Time".  Anything else can be done one switch at a time.

That’s it.  Yes, that is really it.  Save energy, never come home to a dark house, control your lights with your smart phone or tablet all that fast.  My wife even programmed some lights just for fun.  Affordable lighting control that makes sense is finally here.

Cool Nerdy or Tech Nerdy

My wife and I are generally of the nerd set.  Not having kids, we have a few more tech toys than most people.  We are tech savvy, but not social software saavy..  My wife is more social software savvy than I am especially when it comes to really social things like emoji.  

Emoji is a cool little app that changes the keyboard on an iPhone so you can send graphics characters instead of lame smiley's like :) or :-) like we used to do in the 90's with email.  As cool as emoji is, the engineer geek in me say that emoji needs memory and processor power, that slows down my iPhone.  I don't want to slow down my iPhone to send pictures.  Because of this I fall into the "lame" tech nerdy category according to my niece.

Obviously the solution is to get a newer faster iPhone that can handle the apps.  That of course is Apple's plan to take over my wallet.

Some people can't see the difference between a Cool Nerdy guy and a Tech Nerdy guy so they expect that I have it all.  My dad was a little older than most of my friends parents, so I was instilled with depression era rules on things like clothes, lights and toys.  Clothes you wear until they wear out, not until they are out of style.  Lights, if you aren't in the room, you turn them off.  Toys, if you might out grow it, you don't get it.  Lucky for me that rule didn't apply to cars.

My wife is a little different than I am in this way.  She is more Cool Nerdy and Fahionista type.  She likes new clothes daily, and works at a retail store part time just for the discount.  She of course has emoji and sends me texts with happy faces instead of :) like I send her.   On things like lights, we compromised.  I converted the house to LED lighting, and added Insteon lighting control.  When I go to bed, I hit all off, and I feel better knowing I am not wasting any energy, she feels better because she can leave on all the lights she wants until bedtime for under $1.00 a day.

Like the lights in the house, if it wastes energy or processing power, I probably don't use it.  That makes me a Tech Nerdy guy. If I were a Cool Nerdy guy I would have the latest of everything.  Are you Tech Nerdy or Cool Nerdy or Neither and don't even have a smart phone?

Are you ready for LED Lights?

If you have been following my blog, you know that I have gone to the fringes on saving energy.  As humans we are clearly smart enough to do better.  Over the last two years I have finally found a dimmable Compact Florescent Light or CFL that works like a champ.  The only thing we haven't found is one that is in a daylight or natural color.  The bulbs that we found in the daylight range reacted very poorly to dimmers.

For the sections of my house without dimmers, we found that the Lights of American PAR 38 bulbs with 60 LED's worked nicely and provided a semi-focused spot light.  Every other LED bulb that we tried failed within a couple of days.  This week I installed three Four Seasons 120 LED 8 watt bulbs next to the 3 60LED 5 Watt bulbs in my car port.  The Four Seasons 120 LED lights put off a very nice slightly blue daylight color light.  Additionally they have a fluted lens so they have a smoother transition of light closer to a flood light instead of a semi-focused spot.


We have just started testing these, and so far they are working great.  Keep up and I will let you know how they do over the next three or four weeks.  Past history has shown that LED either fails quickly or doesn't fail for a long time.

I also noted that LOA now has a candelabra base LED that is just 3 watts.  Since all of my candelabra fixtures dim, I will wait for a CFL to fail before we try these.  There are two lights in my bedroom that don't dim I may try them in.