joth

indeed, it's largely the fact I'm very happy with centrally located CV dimmers for LED strips that makes me which I'd done that with all the CC fittings too. In fact I did with 8 circuits that needed "remote" drivers and they work great. Mains dimming felt better at the time, both easier to project manage (it looks like a normal install to main contractor and sparky) and more future flexible. But the quality and efficiency and quality of light by removing the mains element is very attractive. Only snag with CC drivers is they sometimes need >24V -- especially if you want to double or triple up fittings on one channel due to series wiring. So a tiny bit of me thinks having the Loxone PSAB and hanging the CC circuits direct from the 36V battery would be elegant, if it doesn't completely fry the charging logic. If keeping with mains, I'd do Dali like you. (And massive apols to Thorfun I know this debate spins you in circles )

Yes! So only caveat with the mains dimmers is the lights on them flicker quite noticeably when the house is being powered from the house battery. (new development as we only recently got the battery). This is with: Phos lights& mains dimmable driver <- whitwig 16ch mains dimmer (early prototype version!) <- Solar Edge So the blame may not be all with the dimmers. I need to do some more experiments. But, dies make me wish I had central constant current drivers that I could run straight from a nice pure DC battery....

I have the same model, and my own energy metering reported the same number you see. But useful to have it confirmed the melcloud numbers are vapourware. I was in the middle of writing sidebar details of a PH+ article based on it, I'll have to think again.

You can get them in larger formats, I used these 24ch ones: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002995692320.html They were £1.30 per channel when I bought them! Now about £2.20 That page is light on details, the old seller that I bought from had more info: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32837953011.html Again the terminals are grouped in quads of "+RGB" with 3 DMX channels per four terminals. I just ignore the + terminals and treat RGB as 3 arbitrary DMX channels - some drive white LEDs, some drive RGBW, some drive SSRs etc. You can select 500Hz or 2kHz. using 2kHz derates the power rating slightly. I'm even using one channel to speed control a PWM controlled extractor fan for the AV cupboard, that one had to be 2kHz as that's what the fan required. EDIT to add - at half the price per terminal, and higher frequency, I'd be tempted to go with the AliExpress ones; they work very well for me, and also mostly because screw terminals seem preferable to IDC crimp connections! That said, Mike's gear is excellent, great to support a local company, and the price is totally reasonable. You should do fine with either.

If it's like every other constant voltage dimmer I've used, you can ignore the +ve "outputs" completely and run the light directly from your +24V supply (via appropriate fuse). This is why I call it a convenience. I expect internally in the unit they're all just paralleled to the main supply rail . But you could email whitwhig to confirm, he's pretty responsive with questions I had in the past.

http://whitewing.co.uk/dim96_48info.pdf has a bit more info. The key is this little stencil: Basically each connector is 3 channels of dimming, plus a (convenience) +24V supply for them. This is great for RGB but bit of a fiddle for your RGBW strips. You need to wire them across multiple connectors. Once you break them all out to cabinet terminal blocks it's moot, just bit of a head scratger trying to understand from the images they provide

Nice. Those supplies are 128.5mm deep. Looks like you mounted a custom rail directly to the back plate to fit them, and presumably this is all behind a blanked off cabinet cover section so not visible to the user. Do you worry about ventilation for them, or do they run pretty cool even when loaded? What's the standby power draw like with them all powered on but unloaded? Cheers for the pointer

Yes I currently have one of those, and also a noisy as heck cheapo 1kW supply for LEDs that I only fire up when actually needed. The meanwell you link had very low standby current so probably no need to power them off even if unloaded (all lights out). But it also has negligible power on time and very quiet, and fits a future automation cabinet well. Just will take up a couple rows as you say If doing it again, I'd either do the Loxone battery PSU for one stop simplicity, or roll my own using AGM batteries and 24V regulator, and perhaps drive LEDs direct from the batteries (esp any constant current fixtures) to avoid the overhead of regulating them... Possibly with some logic to trim their brightness dynamically based on the battery level if necessary.

Of course, it's like having 7 separate PSUs to subdivide as you like. E.g maybe keep one for audio, one for everything else in the cabinet, and the others for external devices. Split them up so if a fuse pops you don't loose an entire floor of lighting. Keep things critical away from nice to haves. Etc It will provide up to 1440W for 10s, and is on the tree bus so will tell you live loading and if it's overloaded so you could even program logic to respond and cull the least important accent lighting on the very unlikely chance everything is on at once. Unconventional but actually quite cute https://www.loxone.com/enen/kb/power-supply-backup-block/

My guess is, with some reasonable diversity estimates, the new Loxone 1kW PSU would actually power all that lot just fine. Whether you want to do it all central is another call of course, but it would mean ~everything important is covered by the battery backups.

So aside from the double register reads needed, another shortcoming of the SolarEdge ModbusTCP implementation is their server only accepts a single TCP connection at a time. Boo. I wanted to have Loxone and Home Assistant both pull data directly from it; for control and long term monitoring/logging purposes respectively. I'll have to move to have one piggyback data off the other, but I'd much rather they were totally independent systems.

This sounds like DoS / DDoS protection is kicking in. Is there any logs in the router about potential threats? Did you have a failing script/process somewhere that was rapidly reattempting TCP connections or something?

Do you use IP addresses or mDNS or something else for local name resolution? Most often it's name lookups that screw up my local LAN connectivity. Unifi has its odd hiccup with this too

What tells the ecodan to turn on? You have a central stat as well as room stats? Normally you'd have the ufh wiring center call the ASHP to turn on when 1 (or N) rooms are calling for heat. Anyway you have the same wireless requirement either way. A pair of Shelly devices would do it. i4 for input and the plus 1 for output https://shellystore.co.uk/product/shelly-plus-i4/ https://shellystore.co.uk/product/shelly-plus-1/

I ran 1.5mm2 5 core flex back to the Loxone cabinet. (The exact stuff you'd use for Dali) In the cabinet I have 2x 24 channel DMX pwm constant voltage decoders. https://m.aliexpress.com/item/4001254896720.html As well as driving led strips, they do some track lighting, and drive a dozen SSRs in place of mechanical relays. Only challenge is getting a meaty enough 24V PSU. The new Loxone ups one, while pricy, does look a good one stop shop for powering everything. (Except the knx and Dali bus, damnit)

Don't forget to purchase the matching crimp tool! https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/GPJCCT.html It'd be totally outrageous to use a totally standard set of needle nose pliers to crimp them, wouldn't it 🤫

I used GPO gel filled crimp connectors, quick to use and worked very well. https://cpc.farnell.com/tuk/xjya-100/gel-crimp-2-wire-orange-capped/dp/CN22298?

No I'd still use 6a. sure you can't get as much in a duct and it had a larger turn radius, but it's a lot more robust for contractors to pull through the building. And the screening on pairs supports 1wire and tree in the same jacket with minimal cross talk as Dan says. We did also have a lot of skinny 8 core security wire which is a nice fallback for digital sensors in really hard to reach places like door sensors in door jams.

Think of it as Insurance. It's entirely overkill aside from that one in 10,000 time that you actually need it.

Termination is just as easy for Loxone devices etc, in fact I find the larger awg easier to deal with most the time. The patch panel IDC punch down was all done by my wife but seemed easy enough. Getting cat6a wall keystones is a bit of a faff, and the occasional rj45 crimped on a flylead are a fiddle until you work out the correct parts and tool, bit once that's lined up it's no harder than any other rj45. Just don't let a subcontractor try with the tools off the van. hot tip: don't teach yourself to do this 4 meters up a wall on a cold November day trying to get the CCTV in just before they strike the scaffolding.

What did you want 1.5mm2 T&E for? Dedicated cable you could put mains on if you ever wanted, but obviously can't do that with the pair inside Tree cable. Personally I just did cat6a everywhere. One drop per room then daisy chain devices in the room. 24V on orange pair, Tree on green pair, and then up to 4 digital input devices per room on the blue and brown pairs. I used cheap (£9) PIRs from AliExpress (laboriously desoldered the relays to remove the clicking hahaha) and retractive switches in some places. I'd do this again, unless I decided to go absolutely all in with Knx in which case I think I'd use TP1 Regarding HDbaseT, as mentioned elsewhere I found cable bandwidth is not the issue, but the matrix breaking HDCP copy protection means I don't get 4K distribution anyway. Changing the cable doesn't fix that.

So. I still haven't got around to installing that second FCU that I bought on ebay back in, what?? July. (Were does the time go? Oh yeah I know) And now I noticed that the Panasonic FC-D15 I originally was looking to purchase is (possibly?) available in the UK now: https://www.saturnsales.co.uk/Panasonic-Aquarea-PAW-FC2A-Ducted Fan Coils.html They appear to have arsed about with their numbering scheme, latest brochure says that the FC-D15-1(-R) I ordered way back in 2020 is now known as the FC2A-D020[L/R] but otherwise the specs seem identical. It seems the main thing is they've now introduced 4-pipe versions of each too. Anyway, if people are looking to source FCUs in the UK, there maybe another option now.

Further to everything @AliG says, if the house air temp increases so quickly in 30min it means you must be running the heating at a fairly high flow temperature. Try turning the boiler flow temperature down (e.g. to 30 or so rather than 50 or more) and run it for longer. This will both be cheaper (as a condensing boiler is more efficient this way) and also give a longer period for the walls and building fabric to warm up. I assume you have TRVs through out all radiators, so you may need to tune these a bit to stop downstairs rooms overheating. Installing something like Tado smart thermostats can help a bit with these sorts of experiments and in confirming (based on its estimate model) as how much energy each room is sinking. Ultimately you need to determine if its convection or conduction heat losses, and if it is through floors, walls, doors or windows, and there's a limit how much help you can get with that online vs doing the investigation in real life.

Do you actually need 3phase? I was quoted about £4000 for the upgrade, over and above the £2k it was going to cost anyway to move the existing single phase meter head, and I couldn't bring myself to pay it even though it would have made my solar installation a bit simpler (no need for G99 permission). in retrospect Installing 3ph would also have added extra project risk (time line to close and dig up the road, during lockdown as it turned out, and delays in getting a 3ph smart meter, etc). Obviously if you have a hard requirement for 3ph then go ahead, as you say £10k is not the highest quote ever for what is in essence a complete new supply

This sounds perfectly reasonable to me, but it's easy to find reports of 537.3.2.2 jobsworths that demand a local switch within 2m of the device. One challenge is the regulation says the means of isolation must be clear and convenient, which is subjective. I'd be annoyed to plan for central relays and then an onsite contractor insist on putting in per blind isolators anyway. Although this is what happened on my build with UFH and towel rads.