grahamk Posted January 16, 2016 Share Posted January 16, 2016 I would like to link 4 z-wave bulbs so that if one is dimmed they all are, etc. Basically so all 4 are always doing exactly the same thing. I'm feeling a bit stupid about this as I don't really see an elegant way to do this other than to put all 4 into a "scene" and then only use the scene and not the bulbs directly. Is that pretty much how this is done, or are there other ways? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guitartexan Posted January 16, 2016 Share Posted January 16, 2016 Are they all on the same switch and circuit? Standard switch, correct? Not 3-way? Zwave bulbs are a little different than standard bulbs controlled by a a zwave switch. The problem arises when you turn the switch off. For a program to function correctly, power has to be present at all times, then the zwave signal would call the light on and off or some level of dim. I think one way is to name each bulb and write a program such that if the main bulb (bulb A, bulb 1, etc.) does something then the other bulbs do that same thing, as long as you are operating the bulbs via the main controller and not the switch. I'll have to defer to someone with zwave bulb experience to say for certain. GT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stusviews Posted January 16, 2016 Share Posted January 16, 2016 A scene is the usual method if you want the bulbs to act in unison. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guitartexan Posted January 16, 2016 Share Posted January 16, 2016 Would the OP use the wall switch or would he have to use the controller? GT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stusviews Posted January 17, 2016 Share Posted January 17, 2016 That depends on the type of wall switch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grahamk Posted January 17, 2016 Author Share Posted January 17, 2016 There would be no wall switch . The bulbs would be in a hardwired recessed lighting can. I can't find a way to write in a program the logic to have all bulbs dim to the same percentage if one is adjusted. I'm guessing I'm missing something there. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guitartexan Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 So these lights are powered at all times with no switch except a breaker in the panel? If that's correct, you'll have to create a separate program for each bulb- a primary bulb program and then a separate program for each of the other three that 'run' the 'then' part of the primary bulb program. GT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stusviews Posted January 18, 2016 Share Posted January 18, 2016 One scene including all bulbs is adequate. The difficulty is controlling the intensity, a scene is not continuously variable as is a controller. How do you intend to turn the bulbs on/off? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guitartexan Posted January 19, 2016 Share Posted January 19, 2016 That's why I asked about switches. It is not clear exactly what the OP wants to do here. I was assuming he is controlling them through isy. I'm afraid that in order to do what you wish to do will require a zwave dimmer switch. You could then achieve your desired result via standard dim able LED bulbs. GT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grahamk Posted January 19, 2016 Author Share Posted January 19, 2016 No switch at all. The lights would be turned on and off using zwave. The installation will be hardwired and always on. This solves a problem for me installing lights where I have power but routing wire for a light switch would be extremely difficult. I'm starting to think that zwave bulbs aren't the answer and I should use regular bulbs and an in wall micro switch. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larryllix Posted January 19, 2016 Share Posted January 19, 2016 No switch at all. The lights would be turned on and off using zwave. The installation will be hardwired and always on. This solves a problem for me installing lights where I have power but routing wire for a light switch would be extremely difficult. I'm starting to think that zwave bulbs aren't the answer and I should use regular bulbs and an in wall micro switch. Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk zwave is a signal medium, not a controlling element. You still need a controlling element and that is why you were asked about the switch. Disconnecting switches are required for people to change bulbs, with their bare hands, standing in water in their bare feet on a concrete floor in the dark. Ever seen a new bulb explode, when first powered up 'cause it was actually a 12v camper bulb mislabelled? Yes, the Smart Bulbs are a PITA for most people and mostly for a lot of newbies that think finding their mobile phone, running an app, selecting a picture, and turning the bulbs on, is cool until grandma comes over and lights candles. To make it a little more workable most manufacturers got smart and allowed them to come on full brightness when you flick the power switch to them found connected to all light sockets. Wait until the middle of the night when a storm blows branches across the high-voltage lines and the reclosers flash the power off and on to clear the faults, all night, and wake you up staring at bulbs that are full on. ISY to the rescue....! I have, in my boot up program, to turn off all the stupid bulbs so I don't have to get up and do this myself or come home from a months holidays to find all the lights turned on.. Having ranted about that, most can be operated by your friendly ISY HA miracle and make controlling them very easy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwester Posted January 19, 2016 Share Posted January 19, 2016 ... Having ranted about that, most can be operated by your friendly ISY HA miracle and make controlling them very easy. But even your friendly ISY doesn't obviate the need for a switch, somewhere, to turn the durn lights on and off! 'Cause as Larry notes, your cell phone is really a pretty sucky way to turn lights on and off, once the "gee whiz" factor wears off... I'm building out a shop area in my pole barn - I need lighting above each of the important stations, but I don't where exactly they will be, nor how much light each will need, and I don't want to pay a fortune to permanently install and then uninstall and move lighting. So, I'll be installing a pull-chain light fixture over each station to start with (with the bulb enclosed in a wire cage, of course, for safety!). The pull-chain provides the "air gap" on/off that's required, as Larry noted. However, because I happen to have picked up a bunch of Insteon bulbs when the local wally-mart was clearancing them out at outrageous discounts, I'll just leave them permanently powered on. That leaves the issue of how to turn them on/off using my ISY -- and that will come from a combination of things. I have an 8-button KPL that will have a few buttons assigned to the commonly-needed bulbs. An "all-off" button will ensure that everything is off when I leave. And I have an extra syncrolinc that may be used to turn on a bulb when, for example, the dust collector (a modified shop-vac for right now) is turned on. But you need something to turn them on, and I know that when I enter that pole barn in the dark, Murphy's law pretty guarantees that I left my cell phone in the house... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larryllix Posted January 19, 2016 Share Posted January 19, 2016 ... That leaves the issue of how to turn them on/off using my ISY -- and that will come from a combination of things. I have an 8-button KPL that will have a few buttons assigned to the commonly-needed bulbs. An "all-off" button will ensure that everything is off when I leave. And I have an extra syncrolinc that may be used to turn on a bulb when, for example, the dust collector (a modified shop-vac for right now) is turned on. But you need something to turn them on, and I know that when I enter that pole barn in the dark, Murphy's law pretty guarantees that I left my cell phone in the house... How many Poles moved into your barn? Is there any other foreigners in there? Are you in the HVAC field? (high-voltage AC) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stusviews Posted January 19, 2016 Share Posted January 19, 2016 Devices such as Insteon or Z-Wave bulbs are meant for fixtures that are not controlled by a switch or that use a keyed socket (i.e., pull chain). Using an app as a controller is ideal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grahamk Posted January 21, 2016 Author Share Posted January 21, 2016 Thanks for all the input. After thinking about this for a while I have decided that zwave bulbs are not the right device for this application. What I really need is an in wall micro-dimmer on the circuit that I can use with "regular" bulbs. That will allow everything to be controlled from one place. I can easily tuck one of those into a recessed lighting can. It is also a less expensive option, which helps too. As far as a wall switch is concerned - - HA allows me to put these lights in a place I never could before because there simply is no place to put a wall switch unless I make it into a semi-major construction project - which just isn't going to happen. Yes, we will need to access a device, smartphone, or webpage to turn the lights on and off, but it is auxiliary lighting that won't be used very often, and there is a computer screen handy in the room. This is a question of something or nothing. So something with zwave is much better than nothing at all. That is the beauty of HA in my book. Allowing me to do something fairly easily that would have been a huge PITA to do without HA. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbuss Posted January 21, 2016 Share Posted January 21, 2016 Devices such as Insteon or Z-Wave bulbs are meant for fixtures that are not controlled by a switch or that use a keyed socket (i.e., pull chain). Using an app as a controller is ideal. With Stu's help I installed 10 Insteon LED bulbs in recessed light fixtures our family room. We are using switches to turn them on. But we also use Insteon remotes to turn on the different scenes and have a remote in an area where it just wasn't practical to install a wired switch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffesmi Posted April 4, 2016 Share Posted April 4, 2016 Hi, So I'm curious. I've been playing with home automation lights and switches for several years more as toys and curiosities than anything else. It kind of went this way: 1) Bought the TCP lighting kit for our hallway lights so when my daughter turned on the hallways lights at 1am on her trip to the bathroom and didn't turn them off, I didn't have to get out of bed to take care of the problem or yell at her to turn them off. They worked great, so I bought them for my ceiling fan, night-tables, and main light in my bedroom. Smart controls let me set all or any bulbs to any setting I want. I have a goodnight mode that dims my bedroom main light and hallway light closest to my daughter's room to 10% and turns off all the other bulbs. 2) She still leaves the bathroom light on.. Arghhh. Here comes the Wemo Wall-switch. Got another for the main family room. They work great and I can turn the lights off from my bed when I look and see they are on. I'm not using the WeMo app anymore (see below), but I'm 99% sure there was a smart control/scene function that allowed me to say with one click, turn off all lights. Don't get me started on the WeMo Insight switches I added to my Christmas lights and office halogen torch lamp. I love these things and was able to tweak my Christmas light power usage to a manageable level as the Insight switches reported back to me how much I was spending on electricity costs. 3) My daughter leaves these other lights on because she's not real fond of dark, so I bought a WeMo light kit just to compare it to the TCP where she could leave a dimmed bulb on without feeling the need to leave all the other lights on. These bulbs are great and you can tune the output from warm Incandescent to stark hospital white. Again, I'm 99% sure the controls let me say set bulb A to 10%, turn off Bulb B, and turn off all switches from a single click item. My Christmas lights turn on at dusk and turn off at 10:30pm. 4) I got a LiFX bulb for my front porch so we can display local team colors on wins, green on St. Patty's, etc. I only have the single bulb, so I might be missing something, but other than the ability to change the color of the bulb and make "scenes", It didn't have a lot of functionality for multi-device control.. again that may be because I only have a single device. 5) I got tired of using three different apps, so I did some research and decided on the Samsung SmartThings hub. I linked all my devices through this hub, and have very similar functionality where I can turn off multiple devices, dim multiple devices, etc. I even have a dim ceiling fan that dims everything to 10% (which is a bit of a problem as 10% is the lowest setting on smartthings "routines," but I can manually take it down lower). Again full ability to control multiple devices to pretty much any extent I want. The Belkin bulbs work directly with my smartthings hub, so I've pulled the Belkin controller from the wall. 6) As a side-note that is unrelated, I bought a Samsung smartthings multi-purpose sensor and installed it on my garage door so at night I don't have to get up and check that the door is actually closed as many a morning I woke up and the darned thing was open. I'm currently trying to program it to inform me by text if the door is open for more than 1 hour, but Samsung is having some type of problem and I haven't been able to get this functioning. I also bought a motion sensor that I haven't decided what to do with. 7) I just bought but haven't installed a Leviton dimming wall switch for my kitchen lights. My main reason for this item is that it should work directly with my smartthings hub like the WeMo bulbs. I'm hoping the dimmer works okay with my LED bulbs. All of that being said was to say that I've played with several of the DIY home systems that are available and all of them seem to have the functionality to easily dim four bulbs with the touch of a single button on my phone. Why is using the "scene" function an issue? Also, some thoughts / questions / ideas about the need to wire a wall-switch: 1) You really need a way to manually turn off the bulbs. If nothing else, you might need to reset them and the bulbs I have you do this by turning them on and off x number of times in x amount of time. You can always do the pull-chain or hidden toggle switch near the light fixture, but you should have something other than the circuit breaker. 2) I haven't bought one yet, but there seem to be dozens of smart light switch zone controllers, hand help remotes, and wall mountable control centers for the smart automation Z-Wave and other similar devices. Couldn't you put one of these in a standard location for grandma where you hit button A, the light fixture goes on at full power and hit it again and the light fixture turns off? I haven't played with any of these yet in my alliance of different devices, but I have to imagine it would work. 3) The micro-switches that can mount behind your normal switch or even provide dimming may be able to trigger a wider event for you. For example, these out-of-the-way lights you have that are either smartbulbs or microswitch controlled are tied into that light switch that turns on the single wall-outlet lamp on and off. With the smartthings hub, I haven't played with it, but can't you tie it together so when that smart bulb or micro-switch go on that it brings the other lights on as well and when you turn them off, it turns the other lights off? Anyway, nice to meet everyone. This smart home stuff promises to be more fun as everyone is pushing it, prices are plummeting, and many vendors are competing to give us what we want, but this year alone, with my adjustments to Christmas light usage, my bill was down over $100, so it promises to help save some money too. Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michel Kohanim Posted April 4, 2016 Share Posted April 4, 2016 Hi Jeff, Thank you for the post but I think you are on the wrong forum! With kind regards, Michel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffesmi Posted April 4, 2016 Share Posted April 4, 2016 Hi Jeff, Thank you for the post but I think you are on the wrong forum! With kind regards, Michel If you say so. I know some forums are a lot more strict about "discussing out of bounds," but aren't our controller's kind of the same'ish? I'm always up for chatting about cool stuff. I might not have a universal devices controller, but I would think the input from an outside perspective would be good. I can't see myself buying a universal devices controller, but that doesn't mean that I can't benefit from stuff you try and you can't benefit from my input. Doesn't matter much to me, but I think my advice is relevant and helpful even if my backstory is long. Later, Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stusviews Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 Hi Jeff, This forum isn't restrictive at all, but it comes across that you're trying to promote something a lot of things not just different, but instead of an ISY. I'm not sure there's anything you mentioned that can't already be accomplished with the ISY, in some cases even easier when using an ISY. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oberkc Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 This is a forum about using the ISY and zwave. While I read your post and found it intresting, I agree that you may be in the wrong forum if you are expecting much help in response to your "thoughts/questions/ideas" at the end, since very few of your devices are zwave and you arent using the ISY994. I suspect there are not a lot of regulars around here that use wemo, tcp, lifx, or smartthings. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larryllix Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 WeMo uses WiFi. According to Networking protocol gurus WiFi bogs down at about 32 devices as the protocol overhead exceeds the available bandwidth. This has nothing to do with having 255 or 511 available IP addresses. My vehicle's speedometer also goes to 220 kph.. This is one of the reasons that home automation will not go end up with WiFi, although it seems so easy and popular. I was once directed to a document that gave the logistics for the protocol and demonstrated how and why, using simple math, to prove the protocol saturates as any network solution does. I cannot find that link anymore but I am guilty of need dependant laziness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scottmichaelj Posted April 5, 2016 Share Posted April 5, 2016 WeMo uses WiFi. According to Networking protocol gurus WiFi bogs down at about 32 devices as the protocol overhead exceeds the available bandwidth. This has nothing to do with having 255 or 511 available IP addresses. My vehicle's speedometer also goes to 220 kph.. This is one of the reasons that home automation will not go end up with WiFi, although it seems so easy and popular. I was once directed to a document that gave the logistics for the protocol and demonstrated how and why, using simple math, to prove the protocol saturates as any network solution does. I cannot find that link anymore but I am guilty of need dependant laziness. Larry Im gonna call BS on you! Lol Wifi should handle a ton of devices just fine. I would love to see where you got this info. Maybe back in the day when Wifi on b/g and was down in the 50mbps but most Wifi now can handle 300Mbps and higher. More than enough for a home with 50+ wifi lights sending a small couple kps of data over the air. Hell most peoples actual internet cant max out the Wifi speeds and internal device to device over Wifi have bottlenecks around a couple hundred mbps due to other factors. My home seriously has about 50 devices and as more and more people add tablets, cell phones, alexas, smart tvs, etc its going to be the norm. Not to mention cord cutting, netflix, hulu, mlb.tv viewing etc. Oh BTW both my cars speedometers go to 200mph and they will go to 200mph. I have only personally tested them though to about 150. Im chicken to go faster and of course it was in a "safe" environment lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeffesmi Posted April 6, 2016 Share Posted April 6, 2016 Wow, you may be right. This forum is not for me. Sharing my experience with multiple devices that I've personally tried being interpreted as promoting those devices tells me what I need to know about this forum. I found the original question about linking multiple bulbs together to be interesting, so I thought I'd add my input since I had tackled this same problem with multiple products. FYI, I have no allegiance to a specific brand which should be obvious from my post of TCP, Belkin, Samsung, and Leviton which are AFAIK not only unrelated, but competitors. Sorry to have bothered you guys with my non-ISY product banter. I'll go find a forum that is less sensitive about discussing multiple home automation products as I hope the future of home automation will be interacting devices from different vendors working together to give the customer the most flexibility and biggest product selection instead of a single product, a single protocol, or a single idea. Good Luck with your future endeavors, Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larryllix Posted April 6, 2016 Share Posted April 6, 2016 Wow, you may be right. This forum is not for me. Sharing my experience with multiple devices that I've personally tried being interpreted as promoting those devices tells me what I need to know about this forum. I found the original question about linking multiple bulbs together to be interesting, so I thought I'd add my input since I had tackled this same problem with multiple products. FYI, I have no allegiance to a specific brand which should be obvious from my post of TCP, Belkin, Samsung, and Leviton which are AFAIK not only unrelated, but competitors. Sorry to have bothered you guys with my non-ISY product banter. I'll go find a forum that is less sensitive about discussing multiple home automation products as I hope the future of home automation will be interacting devices from different vendors working together to give the customer the most flexibility and biggest product selection instead of a single product, a single protocol, or a single idea. Good Luck with your future endeavors, Jeff Try cocoontech.com. They tend to promote other brands of products developed by participants there. It's not that your ideas are not welcomed here. It's just that you may get good responses returned from your efforts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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