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Controlling remote lighting loads ?


TundraSonic

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Small garden shed about 200' from the house. The shed has 120v power and a switch (Ubiquiti 8 port POE) off the house network. What are good options for dimmer control of three 120v lighting loads?

- Two of the loads are exterior fixtures that require 120v clear lamps so LIFX and Hue are not good options.

- Am I thinking correctly that w/ Casetta we'd need both a bridge + EA/CA in that building?  Or should the main EA-5 be able to see the remote bridge? I'm new to Casetta so not sure how the C4 to bridge communicates.

Other options?

Thanks,

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TP-Link work just fine.  Just be aware that while on/off/dim will be instantaneous, feedback on state will lag behind.  That's because the driver will be polling for state only every 10 seconds +.  In other words, the touchscreen will show the light as off for a few seconds, even after you turn it on.  Not really an issue for your use case.

The driver for TP/Kasa is from Chowmain and is easy to set up and robust, assuming that you have solid wi-fi.  The switches use a 2.4 network, not 5 GHz.

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Currently just RA for shades. We're installing Casetta for lighting loads in our studio (separate building but same network) and also Casetta's in our house for landscape lighting. For landscape the Casetta's will be installed in the mechanical room with tails dropped outside for the landscape folks to connect their xformers.

Central dimmers are all C4 (I'd wanted Lutron but got a deal on the C4).

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On 9/24/2021 at 10:16 AM, OceanDad said:

Just be aware that while on/off/dim will be instantaneous, feedback on state will lag behind.  That's because the driver will be polling for state only every 10 seconds +.  In other words, the touchscreen will show the light as off for a few seconds, even after you turn it on.  Not really an issue for your use case.

The driver for TP/Kasa is from Chowmain and is easy to set up and robust, assuming that you have solid wi-fi.  The switches use a 2.4 network, not 5 GHz.

I'm not fully understanding the lag. From a programming standpoint the driver s/b able to call for a state change and, since it knows it just did that, immediately verify the change. 

We're currently using the Chowmain LIFX driver and are quite underwhelmed. They are using the LIFX cloud which results in variable delays and commands sometimes not executing. They also do not allow for controllable or smooth fades. Given higher priorities we've just lived with it thus far. To their credit Alan did say that they'd give us our money back if we wanted which after a year of use we'd not do. I am hoping to try the Axon Engineering LIFX driver to see if it's better.

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9 minutes ago, TundraSonic said:

Thank you. We'll have a UI U6-LR AP in the shed so WiFi won't be a problem. Kasa seems the best solution.

How does a Casetta bridge talk to an EA-x? IP? WiFi? Zigbee? Other?

Thanks,

There is a Casetta C4 driver for the bridge and registered on your network during setup.    I think you may need the Casetta bridge pro if not mistaken.

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Caseta - Pro Bridge Required, controlled over IP. Each Lutron device has an id which gets assigned to the respective driver in Composer.

While Caseta is intended to be a single bridge per residence system, others have done dual bridge systems to get around limits and range and multi building. You'd have 2 logins for the Lutron app and through Lutron they're completely separate residences, but it would all work as one under Control4.
http://www.remotecentral.com/cgi-bin/mboard/rc-custom/thread.cgi?39519

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  • 3 weeks later...
23 hours ago, TundraSonic said:

This is an unheated building in Minnesnowta.  Any idea how Casetta or TP-Link/Kasa handle extremely cold or hot temps?

0-40C (32-104F) is typical spec. You'll hear lots of users with locations in use well beyond those values.

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Thanks. Yeah, a lot of stuff does just fine outside of the official specs, some not so much, some things just stop working at low temps and come back while some things stop working and never come back.  -30°c (-20f) is not unusual here. I should maybe consider a small heated cabinet of some sort for the electronics.

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