What lights for large house?

[Barryl3]

Hello everyone. 

 

A dealer will be installing the Control4 system and I am trying to tell him what I need/want. It’s a rather large house, which will be fully renovated in the next months. I am looking for 2 types of lights in the ceilings. 

 

- LED HUE ambient dimmable white/orange GU10 or similar lights for ceiling

-LED RGB dimmable GU10 lights for ceiling.

 

I have been reading that there seem to be a lot issues with the Philips lights, which I had planned on buying for this house. I would like the system to work and not have to “play” around with it to get the lights to dim or turn. Is this possible? I don’t mind setting color scenes rather than changing the color manually.

 

All lights switches will be replaced by the C4 switches. With my understanding you can control one light circuit with the dimmable switch. We have rooms / switches that will control 2-4 light circuits though. Do I need a puck for every additional light circuit or can I have the C4 control the light through Zigbee, without the need for additional hardware?

 

TiA

[Cyknight]

4 hours ago, Barryl3 said:

I have been reading that there seem to be a lot issues with the Philips lights, which I had planned on buying for this house. I would like the system to work and not have to “play” around with it to get the lights to dim or turn. Is this possible? I don’t mind setting color scenes rather than changing the color manually.

I've seen no issues within C4 with hue lights for a long time now.

4 hours ago, Barryl3 said:

All lights switches will be replaced by the C4 switches. With my understanding you can control one light circuit with the dimmable switch. We have rooms / switches that will control 2-4 light circuits though. Do I need a puck for every additional light circuit or can I have the C4 control the light through Zigbee, without the need for additional hardware?

You cannot magically control a non-integrated load with a switch/puck elsewhere...any load you want to control will need to be on C4, so in that sense you'll need devices for each load (individual load run). You CAN make those laods appear a singular device if desired.

 

Do note that if you are using Hue bulbs, you don't NEED to have dimmers/switches on those loads (indeed dimmers aren't the right choice at all, though a switch would be the advisable choice)

[lippavisual]

If the house is a total gut, I’d be looking at Colorbeam or Proluxe.

[Barryl3]

Thanks for the answers. 

 

My idea was that I put Philips Hue and RGB lights throughout the entire house. I already have one bridge and the house fully covered with a good mesh wifi. 

If I understood it correctly the C4 wall switches will be programmed to send a signal to the Hue Bridge which then tell the lights on/off and dim. This would work without the need for a puck. Is this correct?

 

Are there limitations to which Philips lights I should/can take? Are there other GU10 / E27 lights I could take, which cost less and would also work without the need for a puck?

 

Sorry if my questions seem silly.

[Cyknight]

55 minutes ago, Barryl3 said:

If I understood it correctly the C4 wall switches will be programmed to send a signal to the Hue Bridge which then tell the lights on/off and dim. This would work without the need for a puck. Is this correct?

Assuming it'll actually be keypads and power is passed through - then yes that would work (though I never advise permanently wiring a light fixture, but that's it's own thread, several of them over the years in fact)

 

57 minutes ago, Barryl3 said:

Are there limitations to which Philips lights I should/can take? Are there other GU10 / E27 lights I could take, which cost less and would also work without the need for a puck?

We generally only use or encounter true philips branded bulbs - cannot comment on others, but again there have been a few threads on this in recent months on hue - just do a good search.

 

As for other options - sure there are. Better AND cheaper rarely go hand in hand though - and we haven't done enough 'other' smart bulb brands for me to give you a worthwile opnion on them. (Most rgb we do is DMX which is a whole other ball game entirely)

[Topfox]

Believe there are limitations on how many bulbs you can have to a single hue bridge. A friend of mine went all Hue and got caught up with that. He did Alexa integration, which also led to problems with so many Hue lights. He found a workaround to be able to integrate multiple hubs with Alexa. I forget what it was called though. If it ends up being something you need let me know and I will find out. 

[Cyknight]

1 hour ago, Topfox said:

Believe there are limitations on how many bulbs you can have to a single hue bridge

Recommended under 40 i think, stated limit 50, hard limit somewhere around 65.

 

I should add that there is no limit on how many bridges you can have in C4

 

[Andrew luecke]

What has your dealer recommended?

[ILoveC4]

On 6/16/2022 at 6:59 AM, Barryl3 said:

Hello everyone. 

 

A dealer will be installing the Control4 system and I am trying to tell him what I need/want. It’s a rather large house, which will be fully renovated in the next months. I am looking for 2 types of lights in the ceilings. 

 

- LED HUE ambient dimmable white/orange GU10 or similar lights for ceiling

-LED RGB dimmable GU10 lights for ceiling.

 

I have been reading that there seem to be a lot issues with the Philips lights, which I had planned on buying for this house. I would like the system to work and not have to “play” around with it to get the lights to dim or turn. Is this possible? I don’t mind setting color scenes rather than changing the color manually.

 

All lights switches will be replaced by the C4 switches. With my understanding you can control one light circuit with the dimmable switch. We have rooms / switches that will control 2-4 light circuits though. Do I need a puck for every additional light circuit or can I have the C4 control the light through Zigbee, without the need for additional hardware?

 

TiA

What is a "large house"? How many lighting loads and bulbs are you talking about?

[416to305]

22 hours ago, Topfox said:

Believe there are limitations on how many bulbs you can have to a single hue bridge. A friend of mine went all Hue and got caught up with that. He did Alexa integration, which also led to problems with so many Hue lights. He found a workaround to be able to integrate multiple hubs with Alexa. I forget what it was called though. If it ends up being something you need let me know and I will find out. 

There's no solution required, Hue supports multiple bridges and you just switch between them in the app.  There's a bridge icon in the top left of the app to swap or add new ones.  I have 3 bridges all connected to Control4.

Having said that, Hue is not a solution for permanent lighting but more accent or ambiance.  I always recommend Lutron RA2 or RA3 when it comes to lighting.

[Topfox]

2 hours ago, 416to305 said:

There's no solution required, Hue supports multiple bridges and you just switch between them in the app.  There's a bridge icon in the top left of the app to swap or add new ones.  I have 3 bridges all connected to Control4.

Having said that, Hue is not a solution for permanent lighting but more accent or ambiance.  I always recommend Lutron RA2 or RA3 when it comes to lighting.

Does it work with Alexa though, all 3?  I wonder under the impression that a recent update like maybe 2-3 months ago broke Alexa + Hue integration when you had more than 1 Bridge. 

[Andrew luecke]

Honestly, ILoveC4 makes a good point. Not only does it depend on the house, it depends on the country, circuits, material the house is made out of, whether cables can be run, what other devices are needed, whether RGB is a factor, etc. 

We're not even sure if OP can run cabling for their house, if they want keypads too, is it a budget job? etc.  

 

As an example, if its concrete, Mesh based systems are often less doable.  

[416to305]

12 hours ago, Topfox said:

Does it work with Alexa though, all 3?  I wonder under the impression that a recent update like maybe 2-3 months ago broke Alexa + Hue integration when you had more than 1 Bridge. 

I don't use Alexa but it works with Siri and Google Assistant so I don't see why it wouldn't.  Either way the bridges would connect to C4 and Alexa connects to C4, not to the Hue bridges, so Alexa doesn't really care how many bridges there actually are.  

[fleon]

On 6/28/2022 at 9:39 PM, Topfox said:

Does it work with Alexa though, all 3?  I wonder under the impression that a recent update like maybe 2-3 months ago broke Alexa + Hue integration when you had more than 1 Bridge. 

You mean with all the Hue bridges in your C4 project?  Then yes, it does.   Alexa accesses your Control 4 project, not Hue directly.  All the lights across all the bridges are reachable through Alexa.  Including being able to dim them and change colors (at least if you are on 3.3).