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Quinetic Switches


PeterW

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Just now, Nickfromwales said:

You and I are peas in a pod. 

My customers jobs are 100% complete, with merits, and my bath panel has been missing 5 tiles on the end for 3 years. 

My wife has stopped nagging now, is that good or bad. :/

I guess you do what brings home the bacon........

 

Only 3 years...lightweight! :)

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16 minutes ago, Onoff said:

 

These dimmer switches I have, you can only switch them down, let go and it springs back.

That would neatly avoid the up=on / down=on issues ... unless the one push switch operates two lights on separate circuits... where, if you power cycle one circuit when the lights are on you end up with the lights operating in opposite senses. I.e. one light on, one off ... press the button and both lights change state.

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12 hours ago, Nickfromwales said:

My wife has stopped nagging now, is that good or bad.

 

This is bad, and deep down you know this and that one day it will be used in a much more effective way than a simple nag. So be a good boy now and trot along and do it without being asked. You could be in the good books for a few milliseconds too ;)

 

 

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I'd be interested to know the real world range of these switches, as I'm less than impressed by the Byron/HomeEasy remote switches we have.   I have two two way switches that both operate two receivers in the ceiling of our kitchen/dining room, and had to locate the receivers as close to the wall switches as possible to get them to work, and even then they aren't very reliable, and it often takes two or three presses of the switch to activate the lights.  At a guess the range can't be more than about 3m and the receivers only have the thickness of the skimmed plasterboard ceiling (which isn't foil backed), between them and the wall mounted switches.

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8 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

I'd be interested to know the real world range of these switches, as I'm less than impressed by the Byron/HomeEasy remote switches we have.   I have two two way switches that both operate two receivers in the ceiling of our kitchen/dining room, and had to locate the receivers as close to the wall switches as possible to get them to work, and even then they aren't very reliable, and it often takes two or three presses of the switch to activate the lights.  At a guess the range can't be more than about 3m and the receivers only have the thickness of the skimmed plasterboard ceiling (which isn't foil backed), between them and the wall mounted switches.

 

The leaflet says 30m indoor, 160m outdoors - presumably line of sight. That's their lab test distances. 

 

I know with the Bluetooth speakers just fitted I only really have to go out of the bathroom with the phone and the signal gets choppy. Probably because walls, floor and ceiling are lined with foil faces pir. 1' solid walls don't help.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Yesterday I pushed the button on buying two, 2 gang switches and two receivers, to replace the (really crappy) Byron/Homeeasy remote switches we already have.  I'm hoping that the Quinetic stuff will be more reliable, and also hoping that the test you did with the dimming switches and the ordinary receiver works.  I don't like the idea of having the switch directions reverse if there's a power cut, and the option to just push on and push off seems an attractive one to me.

 

I shall report back on how well they work once they've arrived and are wired in.  I still don't understand why the Byron/Homeeasy ones are so crap, but I've tried replacing switches and receivers to no avail, they barely function  at all with the receivers mounted up behind the ceiling and the transmitted mounted on the walls around 2 to 3m away.

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@Onoff tested the 6A receiver (part number QUR303) with the dimming 2 gang switch (part number QUD12W) and found that it worked and got around the switch changing up/down sense after a power cut.

 

Today I received a couple of the same QUD12W  2 gang dimmer switches but, because I'm switching switched mode low voltage power supplies for our LED lights, that probably have a high turn on surge current, I opted to buy the 16A  non-dimming receivers, (part number QUR305).

 

I've just done an ad hoc test and these work fine together, with a pretty long range as far as I've been able to test so far.  I'll get them installed this week, to replace the pretty useless Byron/Homeeasy units I have fitted at the moment and see how they go.

 

Thanks to @Onoff for finding out that the dimming switches work fine with the non-dimming receivers, as that makes things a lot simpler.

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I'm really hoping they will come up with a 2-gang dimmer switch, IP67 in a chrome finish!

 

Going to see how the standard, 2 gang, white dimmer (QUD12W) fares when installed within easy reach of the bath!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Finally got around to pulling the old Byron/Homeeasy remote switches out and replacing them with the Quinetic remote switches.  All I can say is that they do as they say on the box, and work perfectly.  Before fixing one of the remote switches to the wall I wandered around the house with it, as a range check.  It would work from anywhere inside the house, so in practical terms at least 10 times better than the Byron/Homeeasy stuff.  The other big advantage is never having to replace the batteries in the switches.

 

All around I'm pretty impressed, they look neat, are easy to wire up, have proper wire protection over the terminals (unlike the Byron/Homeeasy receivers) and have a good range.  It's nice to have kitchen lights that actually switch on reliably, rather than being hit and miss.

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I would love to have the money to burn to see how some of this cheap Chinese equipment stands up to an over voltage. Like my Quinetic receivers and Bluetooth modules. I have this conspiracy fear that as the Chinese take over our utilities one day an over voltage burns down thousands of UK homes!

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4 hours ago, Onoff said:

Just a pity they haven't got Wago terminals!

 

I’ve added short cable lengths to stuff like these and just Wago the ends. Easier to make up on the bench then push into the ceiling space. 

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  • 1 month later...

Has anyone used the non dimming Quinetic switches? Just wondering if they spring return like the dimmer switch (in my video clip above) or stay in the up/down position.

 

(Might have an obscure use for the tech at work).

 

Cheers

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9 minutes ago, richi said:

I think you're talking about 2-way "retractive" switches. Something like https://amzn.to/2Cm4dup ?

 

 

But they aren't Quinetic ones.  The Quinetic switches are radio remote control ones, that use the energy from pushing the switch to generate the power for the transmitter, so don't need batteries.

 

One glitch with the standard "on/off"  Quinetic switches is that if there's a power failure they can end up the wrong way around, as if a light was on when the power failed, when the power comes back on the light will default to off, but the switch will still be in the on position.  The way around this is to use the dimming switches with a standard receivers, as they are just push switches, they don't have an on or off position.  Push one for on, push again for off.

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  • 2 weeks later...
1 minute ago, recoveringacademic said:

Bump.

Can I just check something, please?

Would any of our more experienced members use only Quinetic light switches in a new build? 

Would it be sensible to have (say) one or two key lights switched by a more traditional light switch?

 

Have done.... and only got 3 standard switched lights in cupboards apart from fitting a set of lights on the stairs that are hard wired

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