NEW CONTROL4 WIRELESS PUCK DIMMER SWITCH

[ILoveControl]

Sorry for such a noob question, but what does this (NEW CONTROL4 WIRELESS PUCK DIMMER SWITCH) do. Is this a nice way of controlling multiple dimmers in one room without having hundreds of dimmer switches on the wall?

[Amr]

9 minutes ago, blub said:

Ah ok via Control4 centralized lighting then. I get it now!. Thx

We are currently trying to figure out how to retrofit a house built in 1998 with control4.
It doesnt look to be easy without pulling new wires and a major issue is lighting and heating control since many Control4 products or solutions are not available in Europe or just look plain ugly

Yep, too modern for our taste and basically doesn’t work for me and ruined the taste ... with all these caveats Control4 was just what we was looking for ... Goodluck for your retrofit work, it will go well at the end ...

[blub]

Yes,
1. You do have to reflash them which takes 5 mins and provides much more from a functionality perspective.
2. Whilst I agree as a protocol zigbee is a better protocol in terms of strength it has its own issues. Example C4 mesh is locked down (which is good due to security) but very little ability for interop.
I have the Vera system which works with Z wave devices and whilst works well with C4 is still very limited to a light switch or two integration.
 
I have had to write my own drivers for the other sensors 

If you can write drivers yourself a great option would be the Zigbee 3.0 gateway "Phoscon" based on deconz.
It has support for many ZLL light bulbs, contacts, motion sensors, light level sensors and even retrofit switches and dimmers from ubisys - this would open the Zigbee 3.0 world to Control4.

[Amr]

2 hours ago, blub said:

If you can write drivers yourself a great option would be the Zigbee 3.0 gateway "Phoscon" based on deconz.
It has support for many ZLL light bulbs, contacts, motion sensors, light level sensors and even retrofit switches and dimmers from ubisys - this would open the Zigbee 3.0 world to Control4.

This is a great hardware and maybe a much better solution than C4's, the Ubisys is much slimmer and euros 119/piece is a great price indeed.

[blub]

The C4 hardware (new full switch solutions) is more capable in terms of functionality - multiple taps etc...

The Ubisys hardware can be used with a standard decoration style toggle switch - which is great for a retrofit.
Together with the Phoscon gateway 2-way control to Control4 is available for all devices which the Gateway support (and if you look at deconz github those are many) - "all it needs is a driver".

[tdougray]

14 hours ago, Amr said:

Yes, I installed 20 around my house, just make sure your box have enough depth to hold the puck, I also used toggle switches to operate them.  This allows me to have a normal looking switches all over the house.

The rest of the house I used toggle switches hooked to IO via cat6 and Loades to 3 DIN rail panels, the entire house is now controllable via C4 interfaces, panels, remotes, etc.

Can you provide a link to the toggle switches you use? These sound like a good option where I do not require the full C4 adaptive dimmers.

 I take it if I were to replace a 3 gang I would require 3 Pucks? IE they do not do a duel load puck?

[blub]

Pucks are all single load

[Pounce]

6 hours ago, ILoveControl said:

Have you looked at the sonoff sing gang switches?

Yes, and various pucks like Shelly(1)(2)(2.5). They can all work with various levels of effort and configuration. I'd still prefer a retrofit C4 puck on Zibee. At the moment I'm working out proof of concept for using Zigbee2MQTT so I can use a wide range of Zigbee products integrating with C4 using MQTT. I'm also using Tasmota firmware (using MQTT) on various Wifi based products like those Shelly pucks and various off the shelf Wifi based switches and even RGBW bulbs.

My two main objectives are:

• Ensure all lighting control is local and does not go to or use the cloud.
• Use the switches we like for the majority of the locations in the various homes. At the moment this is the Legrand Adorne line.

I wish I could just fast forward this technology 5 years because at the moment the options are wide with trade-off's. In 5 years I'd imagine there will be some strong winners and better products. There are some products with great smart internals, but the build quality is crap. That's where C4 is a solid choice if you like the look. Nice products at a cost relative to the build quality.

 

[Pounce]

1 hour ago, blub said:

Pucks are all single load

There are some products with 2 loads.

[Amr]

5 hours ago, Pounce said:

There are some products with 2 loads.

No, all pucks are single loads with two control switches, they also support illuminating swiches if you desire (I don’t like light in house at all).  The two switches works perfectly fine you can have one switch in first floor and a second in the ground floor both are great for lighting stairs for example ...

[Amr]

8 hours ago, tdougray said:

Can you provide a link to the toggle switches you use? These sound like a good option where I do not require the full C4 adaptive dimmers.

 I take it if I were to replace a 3 gang I would require 3 Pucks? IE they do not do a duel load puck?

I used Schnider Electric Unica normal Toggle Switch, it’s usually used in homes for Outdoor Bells!

Its impossible to use 3 Pucks in same Backbox, they are bulky! You can only house 2 max! For the 3rd u might need to use an adjacent  backbox if u use more than one ...

[blub]

Those have 3:

https://www.elektro-wandelt.de/?cl=details&anid=6779e1ccfdd4b2a2ef257da261a37ed5&adword=pla/Gira/03.283203&adword=DE/Shopping | Beta | DE&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7t2Lw8CH4QIVqr_tCh1AIQNzEAQYAiABEgKpZvD_BwE

Just an example. I am sure there are more brands offering 3.
However the puck also needs to go somewhere..

[Pounce]

8 hours ago, Amr said:

No, all pucks are single loads with two control switches, they also support illuminating swiches if you desire (I don’t like light in house at all).  The two switches works perfectly fine you can have one switch in first floor and a second in the ground floor both are great for lighting stairs for example ...

It's possible you didn't realize I was speaking about the market of puck products rather than specifically C4 pucks. There are pucks that are dual load and dual switch. Shelly has some.

[Amr]

11 hours ago, Pounce said:

It's possible you didn't realize I was speaking about the market of puck products rather than specifically C4 pucks. There are pucks that are dual load and dual switch. Shelly has some.

Yes, C4 is very limited unfortunately ...

[blub]

I also just found some ZigBee Control4 compatible pucks from InSona including pucks - http://www.insona.cc/

However I have no idea where to buy those

[Amr]

4 hours ago, blub said:

I also just found some ZigBee Control4 compatible pucks from InSona including pucks - http://www.insona.cc/

However I have no idea where to buy those

I don’t think they operate outside China, never managed to get any pricing nor how to acquire their devices!

[blub]

I don’t think they operate outside China, never managed to get any pricing nor how to acquire their devices!

Yeah, that's what it looks like

[Singularity]

On 3/15/2019 at 10:19 PM, Amr said:

Yes, I installed 20 around my house, just make sure your box have enough depth to hold the puck, I also used toggle switches to operate them.  This allows me to have a normal looking switches all over the house.

The rest of the house I used toggle switches hooked to IO via cat6 and Loades to 3 DIN rail panels, the entire house is now controllable via C4 interfaces, panels, remotes, etc.

How do you program all the pucks? Are they perfectly syncronized when turning on and off the lights? (If you have multiple zones and pucks turning on and off lights at the same time)

[Amr]

9 hours ago, Singularity said:

How do you program all the pucks? Are they perfectly syncronized when turning on and off the lights? (If you have multiple zones and pucks turning on and off lights at the same time)

Each puck joins the project as a light load, you can Group them and do any task normally.  They are pretty fast, almost instantaneous, no delays at all, they use Zigbee to report back their status to the system.

[tdougray]

In the UK it is common to have the neutral at the light not at the switch so my question is could you install a puck at the light then use a keypad to replace the dumb switch? I.e if the puck was a dimmer  can you wire a keypad from it without a neutral or would I still have to run a neutral down to the switch location?

[Singularity]

Amr. I have a puck that is "connected" with a switch so that if I press top button on switch the same viritual button is pressed on the puck. If I press and hold the button so that the lights dims up or down, they are all syncronized. If i just click it once. The puck is about 1 second behind. The puck waits for the switch load to be done before it starts. The switch is programmed to load on/off. No scenario.

[Amr]

8 hours ago, Singularity said:

Amr. I have a puck that is "connected" with a switch so that if I press top button on switch the same viritual button is pressed on the puck. If I press and hold the button so that the lights dims up or down, they are all syncronized. If i just click it once. The puck is about 1 second behind. The puck waits for the switch load to be done before it starts. The switch is programmed to load on/off. No scenario.

I didn’t get it, do u have this implemented already or asking for such scenario?

[Singularity]

On 5/16/2019 at 3:45 AM, Amr said:

I didn’t get it, do u have this implemented already or asking for such scenario?

It is already installed and the lights conneted to the puck is always 1-2 seconds behind the lights connected to the switch that is used. Switch and puck are synced when I use anything but the switch. Such as the app, or on screen display. I can even see that the l ights on the puck is getting power the moment I press the switch button, but they still wait until the lights on the switch is done dimming up or down before they continue.

[Amr]

1 hour ago, Singularity said:

It is already installed and the lights conneted to the puck is always 1-2 seconds behind the lights connected to the switch that is used. Switch and puck are synced when I use anything but the switch. Such as the app, or on screen display. I can even see that the l ights on the puck is getting power the moment I press the switch button, but they still wait until the lights on the switch is done dimming up or down before they continue.

Decrease the ramp up to 0

[Amr]

1 hour ago, Singularity said:

It is already installed and the lights conneted to the puck is always 1-2 seconds behind the lights connected to the switch that is used. Switch and puck are synced when I use anything but the switch. Such as the app, or on screen display. I can even see that the l ights on the puck is getting power the moment I press the switch button, but they still wait until the lights on the switch is done dimming up or down before they continue.

Ahh u r using switch lights ... hmmm, I never use any switch with lights but u can play with the setting I guess so u don’t have to wait ... Is my assumption correct?

[Singularity]

On 5/25/2019 at 2:24 PM, Amr said:

Ahh u r using switch lights ... hmmm, I never use any switch with lights but u can play with the setting I guess so u don’t have to wait ... Is my assumption correct?

Unfortunately  not, the puck always wait for the switch/dimmer to finish the ramp up/ramp down before it starts. So I have one zone in my livingroom that ramps up imidiately after pressing the button on the switch/dimmer, and then the second zone starts. Looks completely retarded. I have looked at ramp times, scenarios and nothing works. I guess if I remove the load on/off function on the switch/dimmer it may work (an make all functions  scenarios), but thats not good if I would have some problems with the controller. Then I might be unable to turn on/off lights if the C4 controller is down.

 

Am I the only one that has tried this? Or am I the only one that has this problem?