Post by sbsmarthomes on May 4, 2013 11:23:28 GMT -5
I don't want to hijack this thread, but I do wonder whether you've been using many lighting controls in the extensive outdoor environment. For example, if someone is on the back patio or on the tennis court and wants to make an adjustment, do they have to go to an enclosed building? Thanks!
The main goal of this installation was to replace mechanical timers that were located all around the property. The problem with the mechanical timers is that they couldn't account for the change in sunset/sunrise time or daylight savings and the time often varied so lights were on at the wrong times.
The homeowner also didn't have any way to manually turn the lights on or off except for walking around the property to 9 different locations where 40+ timers were located. In the past when they've had events, the electrical contractor that works on the property would be called onsite to turn the lights on & off.
Now with RA2 in place several time clock events have been created to turn lights on and an "All Off" event runs every morning at sunrise to make sure lights aren't left on during the day. Most importantly, the homeowner can now manually turn groups of lights on and off easily from the house using two wall keypads and two table top keypads. The table top keypads have good range around the entire yard because the aux repeaters are spread around the property, but because of the two main repeaters, one tabletop works on one side of the yard and the other on the other side.
Homeowner also has the Lutron iPhone app installed, but this property doesn’t have full wifi coverage. Once the remote access is re-established from Lutron (hopefully this month) I’ll set this up and he’ll be able to use his phone to control lights around the property.
Electricity here is $0.35 kWH so it costs this client approx. $12.25hr to run the outdoor lights. Now that he can manually control the lights, he’s saving about $40-$60 a day after the RA2 installation by only turning on lights when he’s home in the areas he’s using.
To better answer your original question, I do have exterior lighting control at a number of other large properties and a combination of time clock events for commonly used lights, keypads in adjacent structures and the iPhone/iPad app has met or exceeded the client expectations.
This job is already expanding to control some addition lighting (and maybe water features) so I still haven’t put the finishing touches on it. Below are a few photos showing how the Aux repeaters are installed in the PVC enclosures with the switches and relays. One Aux repeater had to be raised up to get good signal, so it’s placed in a smaller 8x8 PVC box raised up with some unistrut.