Uh-Wise Posted February 14, 2017 Share Posted February 14, 2017 Here's the thing. I went ahead and prepared the house thinking about Control4 Panelized Lighting, with keypads in the rooms and main areas. The problem is that at first they were gonna be wired, but since the zigbee mesh for other products could use a little more nodes, I went with wireless. The problem is that I forgot to mention it to my architect and they only wired CAT6 to be used for wiring the Keypads to the BUS, and didn't add electrical wiring to the wall. The walls are concrete and the walls have been finished and painted already, so I'd like to avoid chiseling away. Would it be TOO bad to run LINE/NEUTRAL/GROUND through the CAT6 cable to power the keypad? The cables run all the way to the rack closet (about 50m away). Thank you in advance for any help or insights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lippavisual Posted February 14, 2017 Share Posted February 14, 2017 NO Do not run high voltage over any CATEGORY CABLE. Instead, you can use the Cat6 cables to power the keypads using a low voltage power supply. Control4 sells a power supply specifically for powering keypads on low voltage. That is your best approach, although the wiring of it could get ugly at the headend without a proper plan. How many keypads? And you are still using panelized lighting, correct? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bsmall423 Posted February 14, 2017 Share Posted February 14, 2017 If the walls are concrete then they put conduit in, just run the romex through the conduit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uh-Wise Posted February 14, 2017 Author Share Posted February 14, 2017 11 minutes ago, lippavisual said: NO Do not run high voltage over any CATEGORY CABLE. Instead, you can use the Cat6 cables to power the keypads using a low voltage power supply. Control4 sells a power supply specifically for powering keypads on low voltage. That is your best approach, although the wiring of it could get ugly at the headend without a proper plan. How many keypads? It's 4 keypads. Thankfully I asked here before asking my dealer and getting disowned. Is it the 48V Bus Power Supply? And instead of buying the Ethernet Gateway we simply use Zigbee? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyknight Posted February 14, 2017 Share Posted February 14, 2017 28 minutes ago, Uh-Wise said: It's 4 keypads. Thankfully I asked here before asking my dealer and getting disowned. Is it the 48V Bus Power Supply? And instead of buying the Ethernet Gateway we simply use Zigbee? While the 48v power supply can be used for it, Control4 actually sells a normal plug-in power supply for the purpose. And yes the intended use there is to use the wireless/zigbee power supplies, so you wouldn't need/use the ethernet gateway. Those are intended specifically for panalized lighting setups. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyknight Posted February 14, 2017 Share Posted February 14, 2017 Wait - do you HAVE panalized lighting? Then yes it would probably make sense to use the 48v unit in a panel as it would be wired that way. Just keep in mind that the wireless version uses more power, so when counting the number of units it can power, count a wireless keypad as 1.5 wired keypad. Alternatively, if you want, with what I'm reading, you are also in a position to use a mixture of both wired and wireless, you can actually just install the wireless keypads in place of the wired ones in several locations, just connect the data wires through. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lippavisual Posted February 14, 2017 Share Posted February 14, 2017 ^ This... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vitali Posted February 15, 2017 Share Posted February 15, 2017 NO< NO< NO. you can use a kit for keypad. we did it few times, house was pre wired for another system and our sales person took it over, so we used adapter, one adapter can be used for 5 keypads (not sure, last time did it few years ago) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Lowe Posted February 19, 2017 Share Posted February 19, 2017 Control4 Also provides a lighting design team for this very purpose. Encourage your dealer to use this service or get some one who does. Control4 will do all the leg work for you and ensure that the provide zigbee coverage as well power-supplies are quoted for you. then if something is a problem you can bring it back to them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Uh-Wise Posted February 25, 2017 Author Share Posted February 25, 2017 On 2/14/2017 at 3:01 PM, Cyknight said: Wait - do you HAVE panalized lighting? Then yes it would probably make sense to use the 48v unit in a panel as it would be wired that way. Just keep in mind that the wireless version uses more power, so when counting the number of units it can power, count a wireless keypad as 1.5 wired keypad. Alternatively, if you want, with what I'm reading, you are also in a position to use a mixture of both wired and wireless, you can actually just install the wireless keypads in place of the wired ones in several locations, just connect the data wires through. Yes, because of previous people involved in the construction, most of the lights are panelized, BUT since we're using system remotes, wireless thermostats, and some keypad dimmers/switches/etc in other rooms, we went with wireless configurable keypads to improve the mesh. When you say "connect the data wires through"... Can you please expand on this? English is not my first language and I don't quite understand what that means. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VINCELdUB Posted February 25, 2017 Share Posted February 25, 2017 Yes, because of previous people involved in the construction, most of the lights are panelized, BUT since we're using system remotes, wireless thermostats, and some keypad dimmers/switches/etc in other rooms, we went with wireless configurable keypads to improve the mesh. When you say "connect the data wires through"... Can you please expand on this? English is not my first language and I don't quite understand what that means. What is meant by "connect through" is hat there is a control wire run from the panel to each location you have a keypad. Wired or wireless. Two wires for power and two wires for communication. Please connect all 4 wires into wired KP and 4 wires back out to the next KP in line. And if it is a wireless KP, connect only the power wires to the KP and let the two power wires pass through to the next KP in line. Happy Automating! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SMHarman Posted February 25, 2017 Share Posted February 25, 2017 What is meant by "connect through" is hat there is a control wire run from the panel to each location you have a keypad. Wired or wireless. Two wires for power and two wires for communication. Please connect all 4 wires into wired KP and 4 wires back out to the next KP in line. And if it is a wireless KP, connect only the power wires to the KP and let the two power wires pass through to the next KP in line. Happy Automating! You can't run 110v on cat cable. You can run 48v power over ethernet poe. Control 4 have a 48v power block that fits in half a lighting panel unit. Install that. Connect the data wire cat cable your installer ran to the block. Connect the other end to a wired or wireless keypad. The wireless keypad works on 48-110 (maybe 240) input. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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