Landscape Lighting Advice

[ScottAvery]

Looking for advice on how to control landscape lighting with INSTEON and ISY.  I am planning to use low voltage with multiple transformers and groupings.  I would prefer to be able to dim through the ISY, whereas most "dimmable" transformers I see have internal dimming and timers.  I have a pile of switchlincs, inline-linc dimmers, and even micro dimmers I could put to use if I knew what was an appropriate transformer to purchase and pair with any of those dimmers.

 

I would probably be looking in the 200 to 400 watt range for each transformer.  I would be fine with purchasing an enclosure to hold everything if the transformers were not in outdoor rated enclosures themselves.

 

Any suggestions?

[blueman2]

I looked into this a year ago and decided it was not worth dimming.  It was going to be way too expensive and complicated.  So I just have a relay switchlinc controlling each transformer.  

 

Another piece of advice: go LED for all your lights.  This has many benefits, including being able to use much lower watt transformers.  You can buy regular 12V system, then replace the bulbs with ones from eBay.  It was about 1/2 the price doing it that way.  For some reason, if you buy lights with LED bulbs already in them, they double the price of the entire set.  Crazy.  

Edited December 18, 2014 by blueman2

[oberkc]

Like bluesman2, I am a fan of LED, for a variety of reasons, including a simplification of the wiring. I have four zones, each powered by a 50w power supply. Each of those is controlled via appliancelinc.

 

I cannot help with dimming.

[builderb]

Yeah dimming seemed like a pretty tall order when I looked into it too.

 

My thought was to use multiple layers of lights to increase light levels. Accent lights only would be the first layer on one (likely pretty small) xformer, and brighter general lighting available on a separate xformer.

 

But this project hasn't moved beyond concept yet. That was just my thought after digging into landscape lighting controls

[ScottAvery]

I have seen some users describe their dimming landscape lights but am unable to find the threads with search.  Last I recall mentioned using magnetic transformer, and that there was a concern about the triac dimmer type.  Are there in fact readily available transformers that are compatible with one of the INSTEON dimmer device types?

[ergodic]

I have dimmers on all my landscape lighting. The newer Insteon dimmers seem to be reasonably symmetric and don't put out much DC bias. So for the incandescent stuff I just used regular landscape transformers (admittedly somewhat oversized just to be extra-cautious). In 6 years I've never had a problem with any of it.

 

When I built a BBQ area on my patio a couple of years ago I put in all 12V LED, and for that I put a couple of Foster 16192 transformers which allow LED dimming with standard triac dimmers and it works great. At the time that was the only unit like it available, but there may be others now. If you scope the output waveform of the thing it's really weird, but it does work well.

 

I like having dimming on the landscape, it looks really nice. I keep the lighting low (about 50%) and use a motion sense to bring it up full when there's activity.

 

FWIW, if you're looking for LED and incandescent landscape fixtures, I can highly recommend the Volt stuff from landscapelightingworld.com. The stuff is all solid bronze, very high-quality, they have a huge variety with modular stems, and at about 1/3 the price of the equivalent from a fixture store. (I'm not associated with them in any way, just my 2 cents.)

[ScottAvery]

ergodic, I appreciate the tip on source of lights.  I googled the transformer you mentioned and found that it was YOUR thread where I read about the leading edge/triac dimmer concerns.  What are the specs on the transformers driving your incandescent lights?

 

I am not completely enamored with LEDs due to the way they dim in the first 15% or so.  If I did LEDs I would want to use the ISY to control the dimming.  My thought was I could set the local on level and have a scene set for brining the lights up to 15-20% with the fastest ramp rate, then invoke a second scene by program, listening for the on command, with slower ramp rate up to maximum.  Does that scheme work?

[ergodic]

For incandescent lighting I just use the Malibu magnetic transformers you find at Home Depot, etc. I oversized them about 50% and feed them off Switchlincs. (Although I don't think the SLs are officially spec'ed to be balanced, they're fine for this.)

 

If you use the Foster transformer you won't find any noticable hysteresis at the low end of dimming curve. The output waveform from it is a sort of weird, spiky PWM, so it dims LEDs uniformly, which of course is what it is designed to do. I use the warm white LEDs and honestly you can't tell any difference between them and a regular incandescent bulb on a dimmer. I've done nothing special as far as dimming programs etc.

[stusviews]

Most commonly, there are two levels of illumination, dim and bright. If that meets your needs, install two sets of lights. No dimming needed. Simpler control and installation. And you actually end up with three levels of brightness

Edited December 20, 2014 by stusviews

[ScottAvery]

I'm really looking for the effect of the ramp up if it is not excessively difficult.  It seems as though Ergodic's solution will work.

[ergodic]

It works for Ergodic 

 

Double fixtures is an option I suppose, but it increases the visible 'clutter,' and with high-quality fixtures would get quite costly. I'm not sure I see how it simplifies installation since you have double the number of connects to stake.

[arw01]

Check some Meanwell power supplies, they have a line of products intended for 12v dimming with a 120 track upstream of the dimmer. I believe it was Jameson I got mine from.

 

 

Also I use heavy duty semi truck license plate bulbs and have only needed to replace 1 since and most likely it was my dogs smacking the fixture that did!

 

Sent from my Sony Tablet S using Tapatalk

[ScottAvery]

I just got some indoor LED bulbs and tried on both a dual band lamplinc and an old powerline only lamplinc, and both jump from off to about 15% when bringing up the scene with brighten.  I will try to find the newest switchlinc dimmer I have on a hardwired fixture and see if it is any different.

[stusviews]

Some dimmable LEDs have a minimum starting point but can be dimmed from there. Actually 15% is not so bad.

[Brian H]

I have found the same thing with many of the dimmable LED bulb models I have tried.

They don't start until maybe 20% and may go off at maybe 15%. Many also do not dim linearly.

I have also seen one flicker at one dim level but be fine above and below the one level.

It is how the bulbs electronics act with the dimmers electronics.

[ergodic]

LEDs and the dimming electronics that drive them require a minimum voltage and available net energy to be operational. So until the 120V dimmer gets up to at least that point on the A/C curve, an LED is going to stay dark. So dimming for LEDs represents something of a compromise to the existing deployed technology of 120V edge triac dimmers.

 

One way you could work around this is to "bottom-set" a dimmer. Something that's done all the time in theatrical lighting. Unfortunately Insteon dimmers offer a top-set ("on" level), but no bottom-set ("off" level), though you emulate something along those lines with an ISY program - not sure how successful that would really be.

 

The hysterisis and non-linear dimming of dimmable LEDs is a somewhat different issue and seems to vary a lot from model to model.

 

What's needed are pulse-width dimmers. These would work for both incandescent and (non-dimmable) LEDs. But you also then run into a problem that the electronics imbedded in most "dimmable" LEDs are not compatible with PWM dimming.

 

It's a complicated situation. It will take a few years to sort out I suspect.