Manymany smart lights... problem?

[puntloos]

Populating ceilings with GU10 down facing lights is pretty common (is it a good idea?). But if you want to do that exercise with smartlights (e.g. IKEA Smart GU10) the numbers start to add up. I could imagine a 10x10m floor could need 9x9=81 lights.. 2 floors.. 162.. 

 

I'm worried about: (in general, 'ikea' is my go-to for value for money (brightness lumen/$) but happy to consider others..)

 

1/ The non-internet control not working well (I think it uses zwave). Do these have limits on # of lights?

2/ Non-internet controls disagreeing (multiple zones(rooms))

2/ The internet control not working well

 

And by 'not working well' I primarily mean that say only 9 out of 10 lights respond to the commands given.

 

Has anyone ever attempted this?

[Temp]

5 minutes ago, puntloos said:

I could imagine a 10x10m floor could need 9x9=81 lights..

 

I wouldn't use regular GU10 downlights for such a large area. There are bigger LED downlights and LED flat panels capable of >1000 lumens.

[puntloos]

4 minutes ago, Temp said:

 

I wouldn't use regular GU10 downlights for such a large area. There are bigger LED downlights and LED flat panels capable of >1000 lumens.

 

Nah I don't mean an actual 10x10 room, just that assuming every room in a 100sqm floor has such lights, things start to add up.

A more realistic version is a 4x4 room would maybe have 9 lights, and then another 4x4 room, and.. etc

[Temp]

Pretty sure you don't need hundreds of Alexa compatible bulbs, you must be able to use one Alexa compatible dimmer to control a  room full of standard led bulbs.

Edited November 21, 2019 by Temp

[puntloos]

8 minutes ago, Temp said:

Pretty sure you don't need hundreds of Alexa compatible bulbs, you must be able to use one Alexa compatible dimmer to control a  room full of standard led bulbs.

 

I wasn't aware there are such dimmers but makes absolute sense.

That said, with only smart bulbs, you can very closely control the lighting with some areas lighter than others etc. That said I'm not sure if one would ever actually use that...

 

[MikeSharp01]

How does an individual bulb know you are talking to it and it alone. "Alexa - 2nd bulb on left off"

 

[Siochair]

I use Philips Hue bulbs and hub. They are a tad expensive but I’m don’t have too many of them and the convenience of being easy to source and rather idiot proof was an attraction. I use Alexa to control the lights. I can operate either groups or individual bulbs in any room from any room. I particularly like being able to tell Alexa commands like “goodnight” and it switches everything off. The only downside is the Philips hub is connected to my Virgin Media hub and if it goes down then so does your voice control of the lights. Whilst I have had a few problems with Virgin’s reliability previously I am hopeful that the recent remedial work has been successful and they are behind me now and everything is fixed and running properly.

 

Bottom line is my set up is not the cheapest but it is nice and idiot proof.

[Dreadnaught]

I am keen on having an automation system I can strip-out and take with me if/when I sell my house (or charge the buyer extra for if they want to keep it). Am thinking of going all-in with Philips Hue. Hue GU10 bulbs and normal bulbs in normal light fittings, down-lighters, lamps, both inside and outdoors. Hue motion sensors. Normal light switches present but blanked off, etc. 

 

I have been experimenting with a few in my current temporary house and found them to work remarkably well. I hope they will work as well when I have dozens of bulbs.

 

And also hope I can find someone who will sell me the bulbs at trade rates for a bulk purchase.

[ProDave]

A lot of people go way over the top on number of downlights.  Our kitchen has 8 GU10's each with a 5W LED lamp in it.  That is plenty.

[puntloos]

2 hours ago, MikeSharp01 said:

How does an individual bulb know you are talking to it and it alone. "Alexa - 2nd bulb on left off"

 

 

(simplifying a littlte) Bulbs have their own unique serial, so when they sign on to wifi, your network can remember it that way. A bulb doesn't know where it is, so you will have to do manual work giving location names to them, so Alexa will know if you say bulb West1, that you actually mean the bulb with serial 17ab51ee..

 

33 minutes ago, Siochair said:

I use Philips Hue bulbs and hub. They are a tad expensive but I’m don’t have too many of them and the convenience of being easy to source and rather idiot proof was an attraction. I use Alexa to control the lights. I can operate either groups or individual bulbs in any room from any room. I particularly like being able to tell Alexa commands like “goodnight” and it switches everything off. The only downside is the Philips hub is connected to my Virgin Media hub and if it goes down then so does your voice control of the lights. Whilst I have had a few problems with Virgin’s reliability previously I am hopeful that the recent remedial work has been successful and they are behind me now and everything is fixed and running properly.

 

Bottom line is my set up is not the cheapest but it is nice and idiot proof.

 

Do you find any use in being able to control different groups in the same room? I can totally get controlling an entire room on/off/dimmed, but is it helpful to have the left corner bright and the right corner dark and..

 

12 minutes ago, Dreadnaught said:

I am keen on having an automation system I can strip-out and take with me if/when I sell my house (or charge the buyer extra for if they want to keep it). Am thinking of going all-in with Philips Hue. Hue GU10 bulbs and normal bulbs in normal light fittings, down-lighters, lamps, both inside and outdoors. Hue motion sensors. Normal light switches present but blanked off, etc. 

 

I have been experimenting with a few in my current temporary house and found them to work remarkably well. I hope they will work as well when I have dozens of bulbs.

 

And also hope I can find someone who will sell me the bulbs at trade rates for a bulk purchase.

 

My sense (as a Dutchman) is that Hue is probably one of the more solid/trusted setups, but they are probably too expensive for me without adding any benefit. Kinda like Apple, they perhaps go the extra mile in support but their hardware is great but not superior to cheaper alternatives. As noted, so far Ikea Tradfri seems a lot better there:

 

For example:
- 2x Hue GU10 - 37.95

- 2x TradFri GU10 - 24.00

 

The lights have basically the exact same spec and - at least theoretically - they use the same wireless protocol although Philips might be incentivised to intentionally break these working with each other ..

15 minutes ago, ProDave said:

A lot of people go way over the top on number of downlights.  Our kitchen has 8 GU10's each with a 5W LED lamp in it.  That is plenty.

 

You're probably right but 8 for a kitchen is pretty close to what i had in mind anyway. My calculation sample is one-per-meter coverage, how far apart are yours?

[Siochair]

I am hopeful that this Black Friday sale will have decent bargains of Philips Hue products. I bought my hue hub and bulbs 3 years ago at substantially reduced prices. I’m now looking to kit out another room with them and have a few as spares.

[Dreadnaught]

I bought all my Philips Hue bits on eBay secondhand. I am trialling at present with just four bulbs, a switch, a motion sensor and the hub. Works well.

 

I really like the idea that when I sell the house I just need to remove all the Hue bulbs, switches, motion sensors and other gubbins and leave with them all in a carrier bag or two, reverting the house lighting to a normal non-automated setup for the new buyer.

Edited November 21, 2019 by Dreadnaught

[Siochair]

Puntloos; I find having control of different groups in the same room handy as I prefer to have different lighting for watching tv, reading or listen to music. I have groups set to light each situation. It’s also handy to still retain control of individual lights too. I have a couple of bulbs in different groups or scenes. It’s certainly flexible enough for my needs. I also have a couple of plugs linked to Alexa so I can control lamps that are not connected via the Philips hub.

[MJNewton]

I've just started on this road myself as I am in the middle of creating an open-plan 'family room' space consisting of kitchen, dining and lounge areas. Each area has different lighting requirements and I want/need to be able to control them independently to suit different scenarios throughout the day (night). I have flood wired the room with lighting cable coming back to a central distribution point which, with a 4-switch bank also being regarded as a spoke to this hub, means I can have either a traditional 'dumb' setup or something 'smart' (in both name and function ideally!).

 

Put off slightly by the cost of Philips Hue, to start with I have picked up a bunch of bulbs, remotes and a gateway from Ikea and have been trying them out. First impressions have been mixed:

 

+ Good colour rendition with CRI's >90

+ Good response from the remotes (generally; I've sometimes needed an additional button press as if the first got lost somewhere)

+ Seemingly good synchronisation - I've yet to end up with one bulb's brightness being out of sync with the others

- White spectrum functionality of the GU10's (not tried other bulb types with this) has been disappointing - the 2700K is fine (as has always been our preference), but the 2200k has been far too orange and the 4000k (or whatever it is) far too blue. As a result we'd never use this functionality, which on the plus side means we could their cheaper non-spectrum bulbs. Despite being able to change the colour temperature, they cannot be configured to automatically warm as the light is dimmed as per incandescent (and indeed as per Ikea's cheap dumb bulbs which have this functionality).

- Not sure about the aesthetics of putting four of the Ikea round remotes on the wall (which is something we'd want to do as turning the lights as we enter is something we'd continue to expect to want to do). The square remotes aren't much better and with only two buttons means you have to press-and-hold for dimming rather than being able to tap in small increments

- Ikea smartphone app somewhat basic in functionality, with seemingly artificial limitations on what you can do (e.g. the number of remotes a given bulb can be bound too). 3rd party apps have been slightly better but still suffer what are presumably limitations imposed by the gateway

 

I still feel like my itch hasn't been scratched and so what I'm going to explore next is the use of 'dumb' bulbs and use smart dimmers. The recently-released Shelly Dimmer is going to be my starting point. I don't expect smartphone or voice control to be our primary control method (but who those - I am open to my habits being changed) and so am still keen on wall switches. For this, and in the absence of many off-the-shelf options, I am looking at using a bank of four Philips Hue dimmer remotes interfaced to the system via a Pi running zigbee2mqtt and Home Assistant. Sure, my 'roll your own' approach is going to take a lot more effort to get going but it'll give me maximum flexibility - full choice of what bulbs I use (I can pick the 'best of breed' for each different type if required) and methods of control without the limitations of what the closed systems each bring. It should also be a lot cheaper given the lack of a commercial gateway and expensive proprietary bulbs, not to mention that a single dimmer can drive a whole strings of bulbs if appropriate (e.g. the worktop task lighting will always function as a group). It could of course be a massive failure but there's only one way to find out!

 

Edited November 21, 2019 by MJNewton

[AliG]

Quite a few times I have heard or seen people talking about how many downlights they have in a room and the numbers  seem excessive.

 

We have two bedrooms at over 4m square with 4x GU10 downlights. At its widest our kitchen is almost 10m across and it has 6 downlights across its width. If it was a 10x10 square I would estimate 36 x 500 lumen downlights would be fine depending on the brightness required.

 

I used an on line lumens calculator to make sure I was in the right ballpark. I cannot find the one I used at the time and they seem to vary wildly on the amount of light they will tell you is required.

 

I also used standard GU10s with the smart functions (Fibaro) built into the switches, this cost around £100 per switch, £50 for the switch and £50 to wire it up.

[Temp]

One thing to think about is the beam angle. For some reason the world seems to be standardising on 36 degrees for GU10 bulbs. I find 90 or 100 degrees is much better but they are harder to find (BnQ have some). You get a bit more glare but fewer shadows and more even lighting.

 

 

[MikeSharp01]

2 hours ago, puntloos said:

(simplifying a littlte) Bulbs have their own unique serial, so when they sign on to wifi, your network can remember it that way. A bulb doesn't know where it is, so you will have to do manual work giving location names to them, so Alexa will know if you say bulb West1, that you actually mean the bulb with serial 17ab51ee..

Yes I appreciate how it works - but it still seems a lot of talking just to turn a light on / off / brighter / colour change. You will also have to tell it about zones and which lights are in which zones. Overly complex I feel. Juts find a controlled dimmer / colour controller for a bunch of dumb lights much simpler - although you still have to tell it which zone you want to control. 

[Temp]

Perhaps you need an app which has a floor plan of your house with all the lights on it.  I'm no programmer but it sounds like an application for one of the "visual" programming languages?

[AliG]

As with all these things you have to decide will you actually use the features.

 

Almost every room in our house has one set of smart lights. A couple of two and some have none. All these lights are dimmable, no one ever seems to dim them, they just switch them off and on. None of them are colour changing. I personally cannot imagine any scenario where I would want colour changing lights but other people may love the idea. My family for some reason hate if I dim the lights, they like them either on or off. The point is don't pay for stuff unless you actually plan to use it. If you just plan to switch the lights on and off get a switch.

 

Once I had time I did programme our system to turn off all the smart lights at 8am and at 10pm. Thus when my family turn on lights before the school run or go to bed, lights are not left on all day. This seemed to reduce our electricity consumption. I have also got the system working with Alexa which is quite cool, but again I am the only person who uses it.

[ToughButterCup]

On 21/11/2019 at 17:02, Temp said:

Perhaps you need an app which has a floor plan of your house with all the lights on it.  I'm no programmer but it sounds like an application for one of the "visual" programming languages?

 

It's called DIALux , several hundred quid per license, and you need a top spec machine to run it on.

Awsome watching it work: photorealistic rendering

[joth]

43 minutes ago, AnonymousBosch said:

DIALux , several hundred quid per license

 

If you like the challenge of working a room at a time, there's a free version too: https://www.dial.de/en/dialux-desktop/download/

I lack the top spec machine to run it on, but I have a slight hunch that @puntloos would love the challenge.

Edited November 28, 2019 by joth

[puntloos]

2 hours ago, joth said:

 

If you like the challenge of working a room at a time, there's a free version too: https://www.dial.de/en/dialux-desktop/download/

I lack the top spec machine to run it on, but I have a slight hunch that @puntloos would love the challenge.

Ha, already downloaded it - but haven't played with it enough, somehow currently I don't see a way to do the simplest things e.g. adding furniture, or specifying a non-rectangular room.. 

Suspect i'm missing some important 'draw toolbox' button. Anyway will report back once I know

[Ferdinand]

Sweet Home 3d (free) has some lighting design features, and is good at displaying internal layouts, but it may not be sophisticated (or complicated ) enough for @puntloos.

 

 

I have 3 zoned dimmers in my kitchen, but have not used the dimmer bit since I switched wholesale to Ikea LED bulbs 5 years ago.

 

Ferdinand

Edited December 5, 2019 by Ferdinand