Next Generation Dimmers?

[BriPink]

The official Control4 Blog mentions next generation dimmers that use only 350mW. I haven't seen anything about the dimmers apart from this one mention, though. The 350mW is great: house-wide, I would save 75W over the current generation! But more importantly, if the new dimmers have a better industrial design the WAF may improve significantly. Anyone have any more info on these dimmers?

Here's the link to the blog post in case you missed it:

http://control4blog.com/?p=360

Thanks.

[thecodeman]

I think they mean the existing dimmers... the standard ones only use 1.4w with led's off, not sure where the 75w savings is being calculated from.

http://www.control4.com/uploads/Products/product_27/Control4-120V-Lighting%282%29.pdf

.35w = 350mw, so a 1.05w savings, should a future dimmer only use that amount of electricity.

I'm not aware of any new dimmers at this time other than what's already in the market.

[BriPink]

If there were really one that used only 0.35W and there was a savings of 1.05W/dimmer, then I get to multiply that 1.05W by 74 dimmers to get a household-wide savings of close to 75W.

The 100W or so that the dimmers currently use represents about 5% of the "idle" load of the house. I'm on the warpath about reducing the power consumption of the servers, so the fraction attributable to dimmers will rise.

[thecodeman]

If there were really one that used only 0.35W and there was a savings of 1.05W/dimmer, then I get to multiply that 1.05W by 74 dimmers to get a household-wide savings of close to 75W.

The 100W or so that the dimmers currently use represents about 5% of the "idle" load of the house. I'm on the warpath about reducing the power consumption of the servers, so the fraction attributable to dimmers will rise.

Ah I follow you now. Was eating and posting

[akg4y]

How much do each of the controllers use when idle, most notably the HC-1000 which Im sure is a little power hungry?

I feel like the control room in my basement is 50%+ of my monthly energy use...

[tebery]

How much do each of the controllers use when idle, most notably the HC-1000 which Im sure is a little power hungry?

I feel like the control room in my basement is 50%+ of my monthly energy use...

I was wondering the same thing. I have a MC that I only use for the I/O's. I am thinking of getting the new I/O extender when it come out.

Also v2 vs v3 amp at idle. And audio matrix switches.

[RyanE]

If you really want to save on the amps, the 4-channel amp has a power save feature that shuts down the main amplifier power supply when no zones are calling for amplification.

It runs at 2W while in 'standby', and only fires up the big power supply when called for.

The drawback is that it takes a few seconds to 'spin up' the big supply.

RyanE

[bebster]

Ryan,

Does the 8 channel amp have the same power-save feature?

[thecodeman]

Ryan,

Does the 8 channel amp have the same power-save feature?

He means 4-zone, 8 channels. The big one is 8 zones, 16 channels. (2 channels (speakers) per zone)

[RyanE]

Yeah, sorry. The 4-ZONE amp is what I was talking about.

RyanE

[bebster]

You're right, I was asking if the 8-ZONE 16 channel amp has the same power-save feature?

[RyanE]

And unfortunately, the answer is no.

RyanE

[bebster]

Any idea how much the 8-Zone/16 channel amp draws when not in use?

[RyanE]

Sorry, I don't know, if I were at home, I could plug it into a Kill-a-Watt meter and find out.

RyanE

[ILoveC4]

Sorry, I don't know, if I were at home, I could plug it into a Kill-a-Watt meter and find out.

RyanE

I would like to get one of those...I think.

If I find out how much power all this gear consumes I may feel guilty....maybe I don't want one.

[bebster]

I tested my 16 channel amp, and it consumes 23 watts when in standby. My first reaction was that isn't too bad, but since I have 3 of them, that's about 70 watts per hour for them. Or 1680 watts per day (1.68 kWh or kiloWatt hours). Times 365 days, it's 613 kWh per year.

That's not an insignificant amount of power. Enough to make me want to think how I can turn off these amps when not in use. Even if I could turn off 2 of them when music isn't playing and use 1 of them for zones that might play announcements that could help.

[RyanE]

You say in standby, but really, there's no standby functionality on the amp.

The 4-zone amp *does* have a standby functionality, which reduces it's usage to <2 Watts.

Unfortunately, that doesn't help your situation.

RyanE

[henniae]

I tested my 16 channel amp, and it consumes 23 watts when in standby. My first reaction was that isn't too bad, but since I have 3 of them, that's about 70 watts per hour for them. Or 1680 watts per day (1.68 kWh or kiloWatt hours). Times 365 days, it's 613 kWh per year.

That's not an insignificant amount of power. Enough to make me want to think how I can turn off these amps when not in use. Even if I could turn off 2 of them when music isn't playing and use 1 of them for zones that might play announcements that could help.

You have three 16 channel amps!!! With that many zones I imagine you have a very large house. Is the power used by the 3 amps really that much in the overall use of you monthly power bill in a house with that many audio zones?

[thecodeman]

I tested my 16 channel amp, and it consumes 23 watts when in standby. My first reaction was that isn't too bad, but since I have 3 of them, that's about 70 watts per hour for them. Or 1680 watts per day (1.68 kWh or kiloWatt hours). Times 365 days, it's 613 kWh per year.

That's not an insignificant amount of power. Enough to make me want to think how I can turn off these amps when not in use. Even if I could turn off 2 of them when music isn't playing and use 1 of them for zones that might play announcements that could help.

The only thing I could think of off hand was if someone wrote an driver for something like the Furman programmable UPS line.

http://www.furmansound.com/product.php?div=02&id=F1500-UPS_CE

This would allow you to turn off individual components when not in use.

[bebster]

It is a larger house, but there are 2 sometimes 4 speakers in every room, including the garage, hallways, patio, deck, etc. But most of the electric power comes from solar panels on the roof, so I'm pretty conscious of electricity consumption. In fact one of the main benefits of the C4 system is to help reduce consumption by intelligent dimming, shutting off lights when no motion sensed, etc.

Hopefully C4 continues to minimize the power consumption of its components, especially when not active. But I guess these amps aren't of that generation.

Cody's idea of controlling the power is something that might be worth exploring. Assuming the power can be shut off to the amps under program control, I'm wondering if when music is called for, whether any "reboot" time of the amps will be a problem? I'm assuming they'd have to power up and then become recognized by the director.

[bhadams]

I remember seeing that APC had very simple rs-232 controlled power strips. If you have 3 amps, than likely you are doing matrix switching on the next level up. If this is the case, you should remove the amps from director completely and set the channels to pass through to their amps. This would eliminate the need to connect to director each time it powers up.

[henniae]

I remember seeing that APC had very simple rs-232 controlled power strips. If you have 3 amps, than likely you are doing matrix switching on the next level up. If this is the case, you should remove the amps from director completely and set the channels to pass through to their amps. This would eliminate the need to connect to director each time it powers up.

If you do this you will not be able to control the volume with the amp. Volume control on the amp is better than using volume control on the matrix switch. The hardware on the matrix switch has less fine grained control than the amp.