Brian H Posted January 3, 2022 Posted January 3, 2022 (edited) Unless you are in a state that banned them or they also are discontinued completely now. They use to make a bulb that meet the energy standard. Used less power and where almost as bright. I believe they where Halogen and have a filament. So they worked with the old style dimmers. Where the LED bulbs rated for use on a dimmer? One of the confusing things is they have LED bulbs made to be dimmed and not be on a dimmer. Same goes for OK or not OK in a totally enclosed fixture or damp location. The bulb information maybe a label on it or on the bulbs box. Edited January 3, 2022 by Brian H Add information
PLCGuy Posted January 3, 2022 Posted January 3, 2022 4 hours ago, Brian H said: Unless you are in a state that banned them or they also are discontinued completely now. I live in Canada and so yes, the incandescent I need for the fixture are unavailable. 4 hours ago, Brian H said: Where the LED bulbs rated for use on a dimmer? Yes, the LED bulbs were rated for use on a dimmer. The problem was the old "dumb" dimmer, not the bulb. Found a Leviton DZ6HD Decora Dimmer for $45 USD at Aartech (compared to $25 USD for the equivalent Leviton dumb LED dimmer) so I went for the DZ6HD. The light works like a charm now, I have another light I can turn on when entering a room and and an extra ZW node in my mesh. All good. P.S. I have not had experience with Lutron RA2/RA3 but I do have a second property with Lutron Caseta installed. I find they are good, but no better than the Leviton ZW products. I've had a number of the Caseta LED-rated dimmers not work with my LED lamps and needed to add LUT-MLC Load Adapters to those switches. I've also had the system suddenly go into a slow 1 minute oscillation after two years of operation - that required a full power down of the system. So I really don't think there are any "perfect" HA solutions out there yet, but we are getting closer with Z-Wave. Regards Eric
Mustang65 Posted January 3, 2022 Posted January 3, 2022 7 hours ago, Brian H said: Unless you are in a state that banned them or they also are discontinued completely now. I have one incandescent bulb left in the house, it is a 100 watt (actually 99.8 watts) that I use for calibrating my Energy Management Circuit Transformer circuits. It is wrapped in packing air pouches just in case with a note on it "Do Not Use". I know I should just upgrade my meter.
MrBill Posted January 3, 2022 Posted January 3, 2022 (edited) I still have 5 of these in a rarely used fixture... I just had to order a new 2 pack a week or so ago... when 1 burned out I thought about researching LED bulbs for that fixture again, but at 2 for $2.97 i just decided it wasn't worth it since the fixture only gets turned on for 30 minutes or an hour at night when our granddaughters spend the night which might once or twice a months. Edited January 3, 2022 by MrBill
stillwater Posted January 3, 2022 Posted January 3, 2022 (edited) Just re-read the following comment by @mwester. I think it's very wise. I'm reflecting on what I should learn from my Insteon experience in terms of how to avoid too much commitment to one vendor or technology... We built a new house (finished in 2015) and although I had been an ISY-994i /Insteon user for quite a while before that it was under a dozen Insteon devices. I didn't understand the limits of the PLM in terms of number of scenes and devices. I was in a hurry to get the house built and built in more KPLs than I needed, so as to leave open space for later customization. Although I designed Insteon into the house the wiring is conventional. Most KPLs have loads directly attached. Once the house was built I slowly ordered customized KPL buttons during Smarthome sales -- I should have realized when the black ones were cancelled that it was time to hurry up and order everything else. But never mind that. I am currently reconstructing an old cabin and building some small buildings on a lake. So thinking through control for those as well. But these are more rustic. I think if I were starting from scratch I would take a more radical approach. Looking at the offerings on the market I don't see one line that I like (I can never figure out the Lutron switches in hotels) and I wouldn't want to be captive again anyway. I'm assuming that HA technology will continue to evolve and am looking for an approach that would minimize the cost and increase the ease of evolving with it. One of the weaknesses most often commented on is the lack of an input device equivalent to the KPL. (Nice finish various colors feedback by light, labelled buttons...) The KPL and switchlincs also offer control (via ISY) of light levels on the switches which is nice for my photophobic guests.. Just very nice. In theory you could disassemble the KPLs and access the switches and LEDs directly but with the load already wired in the box and not much extra room for a power supply and a radio and a dimmer this doesn't seem promising. Anyway if I were starting over I would strongly consider completely separating the input/sensing, signalling, controller, and electrical control (switching/dimming) functions. (If this became a common strategy there might be more offerings of such specialized products). So for the switches and keypads instead of going with a smart unit that combines input, signaling, and load control (as the KPL does), I'd go with dumb low voltage momentary contact switches, combined in some places with LED indicator lights. This way, however smart home signaling technology evolves the money I spend on durable color-stable nice looking switches would not go to waste. I have found two such lines of low voltage switches that fit in Decora plates but haven't seen them in person: A ) Hubbell Control Solutions switches with engraved keys -- price unknown Most of the Hubbell line is designed for their proprietary protocol but some are completely dumb: https://www.hubbell.com/hubbellcontrolsolutions/en/Products/Lighting-Controls/Lighting-Controls-Sensors/Wallbox-Devices/Low-Voltage-Switch-RJ45-Enabled/p/2659695 B ) Kyle Switch plate Ultra series 1-6 switches with or without LED indicators. https://www.kyleswitchplates.com/engraved-touch-plate-6-button-ultra-led-low-voltage-switches/ While having the engraving on the keys (as in the hubbells or the Kyle Classic line) looks cleaner, it's more conservative to avoid people touching the engraving causing wear, so that makes me lean toward the Kyle Switch plates -- The 6 button engraved LED version runs $106 (with no comms or intelligence. ) -- so not cheap. You wouldn't want to buy more than you need. These are just dumb momentary contact DC switches that would have to be read by a microcontroller or something like a Shelly i4 and then have the LEDs also turned on/off (or dimmed to various levels via PWM) by a microcontroller or relay or power isolated from an AC load. Getting the engraving done at build-time means you have to design the whole installation rather than letting it grow organically. But on the other hand you wouldn't get caught with a lot of A B C D KPL keys like I still have in my house. (I am aware of the DIY laser etching possibility that is fully addressed elsewhere in the forums and I have some blank white buttons and clear buttons and probably could make blank black buttons with acetone but it's not something I've gotten around to doing...) At least the switches themselves are likely to have nearly infinite life. To make servicing easy I'd probably put all the intelligence in a central box and have the switches and LEDs be dumb -- no intelligence in the outlet box. Or you could run ethernet or RS-485 and power to the boxes and do interpretation and signalling by microprocessors there. A $1 RP2040 chip ($4 board) could be ideal for this. Its also possible to buy Z-wave plus chips for $8 quantity 1 on DigiKey or wifi for $3. If you were happy with radio then you'd just run low voltage DC power to the switch boxes. They could also be read by something like the Shelly Plus I4 with results transmitted over radio. The Shelly Plus I4 can listen to three buttons and distinguish between one click, two clicks, and a long button push on each and thus a central controller could interpret them differently. The Shelly Plus I4 doesn't keep track of the length of a long push so it can't be used for dimming as with the Insteon KPL keypads -- but a microcontroller could easily be programmed to read the key input this way. Then to future proof the load circuitry I would run dc wiring from the vicinity of the central controller and put relays (or triacs) or 0-10v or other remote control dimmers at the load point. Then any RF (Z-wave, wifi or other protocol) would be left to serve the ones I hadn't planned for at the outset. Very little congestion on the radio network as a result. No powerline signals. This configuration would significantly reduce the amount of copper needed to wire a house. At a few switch box locations I'd consider a smarter interface -- like an e-paper touch display that would create buttons in software and could have multiple screens that could be selected in sequence depending what was wanted to be controlled. For new construction, I'd provide DC power to this from a central location and communicate back over wired ethernet. For retrofit you'd have to get power from the AC line through a small power supply module and use radio (zwave or wifi and MQTT) for communicating switch state and receiving status info from a controller. The e-ink display would mostly just serve the role of engraved buttons and could also serve as status indicators for remote devices. Here is a display and touch pad for under $30, designed to be attached to a $15 Raspberry Pi Zero W with wifi. https://www.waveshare.com/2.9inch-Touch-e-Paper-HAT.htm and wiki https://www.waveshare.com/wiki/2.9inch_Touch_e-Paper_HAT. A UL approved power supply module costs $8 or $9 from Digikey. So under $50 component cost in single quantities. This pretty much fits right behind a standard Decora bezel though mounting would take some ingenuity. One could save on the microprocessor by using a $4 raspberry pi pico and a $3 SPI to wifi converter, or an ESP32.. but in diy quantities the more powerful pi zero processor and built in wifi would make it easier. Something like this exists for sale assembled and ready to use as well as a completely DIY project. $70 assembled at https://www.tindie.com/products/luma/ha-switchplate-hasp-single-wide-assembled/ and on Github https://github.com/HASwitchPlate/HASPone. It's an active TFT display rather than e-ink so it's visible in the dark (this has plusses and minuses) and uses some power. The display is a little smaller than I'd like and it communicates by wifi rather than by wire as I'd prefer for new construction, but this is suitable for retrofit. Also it gets its power from 120 volts in the box rather than being fed from a central point, so it has a power supply module (another failure mode). Its housing is made by 3-d printing so I'm not sure how stable the color of the plastic would be over time. The display is Nextion so it uses the Nextion gui editor which is relatively easy to work with. There is an integration with Home assistant. Presumably a node server could be written for Polisy or rPI/ISY994i. Or you could possibly hijack the Brilliant hub hardware and repurpose it. (Presumably not something you could do for a paying customer) Anyway so that would be my ideal approach in response to being burned by SmartLabs... Have a human input technology that is universal and separate from the "smarts" , same with sensors, use signalling that as much as possible is not dependent on one radio standard or that if it is can be moved to the next without buying new keypads and sensors, have an extensible multi-protocol controller like Polisy or Home Assistant (but make sure it is 100% reliable because you need it to operate anything... for mission critical things you might consider relay back up in the central signalling box), and have distributed electrical control devices (relays/ dimmers) that are either cheap with signalling protocol built in or extremely durable and have their signalling modules separate. Just my 2 cents... How practical this is I can't say, and in the near term it would depend a lot on the "fit and finish" of those low voltage momentary switches. Maybe its more a thought experiment than a real proposal... Edited January 3, 2022 by stillwater typo
Mustang65 Posted January 3, 2022 Posted January 3, 2022 (edited) 1 hour ago, stillwater said: ........... Just my 2 cents... How practical this is I can't say, and in the near term it would depend a lot on the "fit and finish" of those low voltage momentary switches. Maybe its more a thought experiment than a real proposal... You may enjoy this. Been awhile since I watched this, like quite awhile. Cat5/6 to each switch.... Edited January 3, 2022 by Mustang65
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