Pool and landscape lighting automation

[Dave w]

We are building a new pool.  Preliminary designs call for 24 light fixtures and 39 LED fixtures.  All is run through single transformer to pool control panel which will be Jandy Aqualink.  The house is all Lutron RA2 on a C4 project.   I'd like to have full integration of lighting scenes with C4.  Will the Jandy interface accomplish this on a load by load basis or is there something else I will need?  Basically I get the Jandy system controlling all the pumps and heaters, etc, but the landscape and BBQ kitchen area lighting seems like it should be on Lutron.  no?   Why is it so hard to find pool guys that understand home automation?  It high time these two industries converge.....

[zaphod]

I don't have my pool automated (yet) but I have landscape lighting controlled by C4 dimmers amd my pool light controlled by a C4 switch.

[brucecampbell]

I've only got a few lights in my pool area - they are all RGB LEDs controlled via DMX using the Engineering Solutions box and driver and PX..? decoders bought from china.
 

I've found this solution perfect - as no need for C4 dimmers or switches.

The hardware only has one serial connection to C4.

All the cabling is low voltage - I use 0.44 6 core security cable (though only 4 of the wires are used)

 

[cybuch]

@Dave w I have something similar in my backyard with lots of LEDs in pool and around pool, I even have several thousand pixels.  The first thing I did was get it off of the pool controller and onto its own power supply, DMX engine (Engineering solutions box and C4 driver), and LED driver the PX24500.  The DMX engine connects C4 to the LED drivers so you can control them.  You would need to get a big enough power supply or multiple to handle all the LEDs you are running.  You would also need to get enough PX24500 to handle the load of all your LEDs, might need one per light depending on your lights.  You can address all the PX24500 to the same DMX channels if you want and it would act as one light or you can have each light on its own channel and control each light individually, thats what I did. I used sprinkler timer wire to each of my LEDs and it works great!  This isn't for the faint of heart, but it is super cool when you have a light show with your landscape lights or even set a different mood based on the color you choose.

[lippavisual]

Great advice so far, but the biggest thing is to let the Jandy just work the pool equipment.  Do not run the lighting through it.

The best experience with LED lighting will be the above mentioned DMX Response Box.

[Dave w]

Thanks that is really helpful and answers my question exactly.   Two follow-up questions: 

1. I assume I need a separate DMX box for each lighting zone so each can be a seperate channel on the DMX. 

2. What are the actual advantages of DMX control over using the Jandy controls - is it just better ability to program and control color changes within C4, or are there other advantages? 

[South Africa C4 user]

I use Pentair (don’t know Jandy) and my inpool lights are all controlled via Pentair which creates wonderful colour swimming effects in the water. Better than anything I could do outside of Pentair.

Fully agree that convergence is needed!

[lippavisual]

3 hours ago, Dave w said:

Thanks that is really helpful and answers my question exactly.   Two follow-up questions: 

1. I assume I need a separate DMX box for each lighting zone so each can be a seperate channel on the DMX. 

2. What are the actual advantages of DMX control over using the Jandy controls - is it just better ability to program and control color changes within C4, or are there other advantages? 

Read this thread and look at my last post. 

That is the DMX engine (which controls the DMX universe with a single rs232 to your C4 system and no overhead of C4 processors, all runs on this little box), the driver required for the DMX box and a premade cable (if you need it).

Now the cool thing with this driver is that it uses V2 lighting drivers, so works with advanced lighting scenes, etc.  Switches or Dimmers, same functionality of C4 lighting devices.

Can also setup grouped lighting.  For example, different rope lights around the house and they are all addressed non-sequentially.  The group dimmer will allow you to put in all the DMX channels you need to make those lights look like a single lighting device in the C4 environment.

Other cool tidbits like sound to light (needs audio matrix), effects driver and probably way more than I have time to type.

This is THE solution for DMX lighting for C4.  Nothing else compares for the simplicity and functionality.

Jandy will give you ON/OFF, color changing, etc.  But the driver for Jandy doesn't have everything in the api.

 

1 Response Box

As many DMX driver/decoders required for your loads

As many power supplies to power your lights. 

[lippavisual]

Another note, Pentair and Jandy know pool equipment and threw in a little extra sauce for lighting (typically go hand in hand).  But the controls are.....so so.

Let them control the pool equipment, the way it should be.