"All Off" buttons

[jweitzman]

In my L1 training, the instructor strongly recommended always setting up scenes for various lighting requirements and providing an "All Off" or similar button to turn the lights off.

Makes sense, but my question is for the "off" buttons. If you use Scene mode for the "All Off" button, its LED lights up when all programmed devices are off, so it is always lit when the lights in that room are off, which seems a little counterintuitive since an active LED usually means something is on.

If you use a Toggle for "All Off", you can still turn all the lights off if you set them all for 0%, but then the "All Off" button would light up when any of those lights are on, and I'm not quite sure what the lights toggle between when you push that button...0% and Off?

What do the pros recommend for turning the lights in a room off from a dedicated keypad button?

[Bailey]

Be wary of a toggle "all off". Use a "all lights" or "house". Having a toggle on an "off" button will have the off button turn lights on (counter-intuitive). Set to toggle control/room monitoring and set the light levels to 100%. When you turn all the lights off via the toggle, the LED read-out will turn off as well.

[jweitzman]

So if I understand correctly, you're saying use the Toggle mode, but don't label the button "Off". Label it something that reflects the zone being controlled, e.g. "Room" and if you press it while everything is off, it will turn all lights on, but if you had pressed a scene button and turned some lights on, pressing the "room" button will turn any lights in the zone that were on, off. Am I restating that correctly?

[Bailey]

Yes, you have it correct. I use toggles and paths of light (toggle with scene logic for the LED) extensively when the users are new to lighting control. Most new users expect a toggle type action as opposed to scene based controls.

[jweitzman]

I appreciate the advice and I think you're right about people not understanding scenes and expecting the same button to turn a set of lights on and off. There are some drawbacks to that, though, because if levels are altered the logic starts to break down. So if a Path setting is altered, the LED goes off, and now it's not clear what the user should press to turn the lights off.

Been thinking about it a lot, though, and despite the LED, I think having scenes with an "off" scene is easy enough for people to understand. Lutron's literature consistently shows an "All Off" button as well. I think it won't take much getting used to to think of an LED next to All Off (or Room Off) as indicating all of the lights are, in fact, off.

Still makes sense to have room toggles when you really want to monitor. So I will use "Upstairs" and "Downstairs" to make sure no lights were left on and "Outside" to make sure the overnight outside lights are, in fact, on.

I think the most important thing is consistency, though.