Consumer Unit + Loxone all-in-one

[BartW]

Hi,

I am currently planning my Home Automation cupboard (room?) and am wondering if it may be possible to have the typical Consumer Unit with main switch, RCD with banks (or individual RCBOs) integrated into a big din cupboard. This would then be shared with full loxone shebang as well as other “things” to neatly conceal it all away. 
 

And whilst I appreciate technically it is all no rocket science, would I be caught out by the regs?

 

Part M stipulates height range for a standard CU with a double row unit achieving certain height in the middle of it (sorry not quoting exact extract word by word, as I don’t want to confuse in case wrong). 
 

loxone cabinet by the time built, would be around a metre (maybe more) in height. 
 

any thoughts on this please?

[Nickfromwales]

CU and breakers need to be like manufacturer, eg no mixed manufacture equipment, and stand completely alone from any other 3rd party equipment / manufacturers. It's a no from me.

[BartW]

1 hour ago, Nickfromwales said:

CU and breakers need to be like manufacturer, eg no mixed manufacture equipment, and stand completely alone from any other 3rd party equipment / manufacturers. It's a no from me.

Ok,

so stuff I would have seen online from various businesses is not necessarily conforming?

 

which leads me to another question:

 

i have various lighting and power zones. Sockets are easy to terminate to an mcb. But what about lighting? Do I run , say, 6A breaker out of CU to loxone cabinet and bridge across relays, then out of loxone cabinet? Sounds like the only way, but this will be a busy Summer 😵‍💫

 

[Dan F]

2 hours ago, Nickfromwales said:

CU and breakers need to be like manufacturer, eg no mixed manufacture equipment, and stand completely alone from any other 3rd party equipment / manufacturers. It's a no from me.

Agree.  I don't know the details from a regs perspective, but if Loxone is separate and correctly protected it can be classed as an "appliance" with reduced compliance I believe.  As soon as you start putting stuff in your inside CU that is a whole different ball game. There are some threads that touch on this over on https://groups.google.com/g/loxone-english, and a guy called Martyn is particularly knowledgeable on this.

[Carrerahill]

2 hours ago, BartW said:

Hi,

I am currently planning my Home Automation cupboard (room?) and am wondering if it may be possible to have the typical Consumer Unit with main switch, RCD with banks (or individual RCBOs) integrated into a big din cupboard. This would then be shared with full loxone shebang as well as other “things” to neatly conceal it all away. 
 

And whilst I appreciate technically it is all no rocket science, would I be caught out by the regs?

 

Part M stipulates height range for a standard CU with a double row unit achieving certain height in the middle of it (sorry not quoting exact extract word by word, as I don’t want to confuse in case wrong). 
 

loxone cabinet by the time built, would be around a metre (maybe more) in height. 
 

any thoughts on this please?

What you propose is done all the time in commercial and high-end resi installs. Typically what is done is rather than having your lighting circuits fed directly from a DB/CU, you will feed the Loxone board from a say 63A supply from your panelboard/DB/CU and that becomes the lighting supply, for example, then you have 6/10A breakers/RCBO's to protect the various circuits within the controls board. If your controls also has other mains circuits, say, boiler or pumps/fans, you just size the supply to the Loxone board suitability, usually a MCB supplying a SWA cable, then de-rate and protect all the outgoing circuits with suitable protection devices. 

 

I have just finished a Hilton hotel reception area design where I have just created a 63A SP supply from the main switch board, which feeds Mode lighting racks, within the Mode racks we use RCBO's.

 

Don't worry about the BS7671 CU heights, if you have a board that is 1200mm tall then it stands to reason you cannot have all switchgear at the p[prescribed height. If this was an issue then every single large board would be non-compliant. I know BS7671 says the breakers should be within 1350-1450 but that just isn't happening 85% of the time.

 

If you have a board, at a realistic height, fully accessible, 1000mm step back, then your laughing. 

 

 

 

 

[Nickfromwales]

Yup. I used to install switching and dimming ( DMX512 ) when installing sound and lighting rigs for nightclubs / universities etc, and this is what we did. Lighting setups were all in 19" racks and had their own feeds from the 3ph DB.

A bit on the fence when it's a residential as it may / may not be cost-effective, but as I don't have a drawing for the job it's hard to comment comprehensively.

[BartW]

4 hours ago, Nickfromwales said:

Yup. I used to install switching and dimming ( DMX512 ) when installing sound and lighting rigs for nightclubs / universities etc, and this is what we did. Lighting setups were all in 19" racks and had their own feeds from the 3ph DB.

A bit on the fence when it's a residential as it may / may not be cost-effective, but as I don't have a drawing for the job it's hard to comment comprehensively.

I considered DMX dimming but am struggling to decide if it is of any value on my project. The scenes are far from extensive (maybe bar the gym) but not totally obsessed with being able to set individual lights separately in terms of brightness etc. 
 

so it’s just a lot of TRIAC drivers for me run off loxone relay box. Nothing too fancy. 

[Nickfromwales]

2 hours ago, BartW said:

I considered DMX dimming but am struggling to decide if it is of any value on my project. The scenes are far from extensive (maybe bar the gym) but not totally obsessed with being able to set individual lights separately in terms of brightness etc. 
 

so it’s just a lot of TRIAC drivers for me run off loxone relay box. Nothing too fancy. 

In that case I’d prob look at a 10a RCBO in the CU for each floor of lighting, plus another for outside / landscape, and then use din rail mounted 2a or 4a MCB’s to feed each lighting device. 
I’m not familiar with much HA stuff tbh, as I only ever hear of it failing ( so have been avoiding it, unless the client has demanded it be brought in ). I’ve always delegated or asked ( told ) the client to get a 3rd party HA contractor in and that we’d work with them. 

[joth]

If you're using Future Automation cabinets you can get a matching single rail LXN-RE to use for CU and place under the LXN4 (or 5 or 6) cabinet with the HA gear in, which means they all match aesthetically (for significant £ Vs using a contractor CU).

Only snag is this pulls you back into the  1.5m height from FFL which is tricky if the CU is below rather than beside the HA cabinet . I've heard people successfully argue putting the CU lower down and putting a padlock on it (that's never actually used) is more accessibility friendly and just as child safe. Or claim it's all one big unit, which is excempt per @Carrerahill 

 

As others mention the downside of putting everything in the same cab is the whole lot then gets pulled into BS7671 for e.g. ensuring every single cable entry is via a sealed grommet which is a PIA if you have 60+ dimmed lines going into trunking, believe me.

On my latest install I'm putting all the RCBOs in the main CU, and just having single MCB in the HA cabinet, for maintenance needs not earth leak protection. This makes it clear the HA is not providing any circuit protection and not blurring the line of where the CU is.

[BartW]

5 hours ago, joth said:

Only snag is this pulls you back into the  1.5m height from FFL which is tricky if the CU is below rather than beside the HA cabinet . I've heard people successfully argue putting the CU lower down and putting a padlock on it (that's never actually used) is more accessibility friendly and just as child safe. Or claim it's all one big unit, which is excempt per @Carrerahill 

Main CU under HA is what I prefer and I think would logically fit under the ceiling (2.44m FFL). 
 

is there any software out there to help visualise / configure all gear that I need to be able to squeeze in? I don’t want to buy a cabinet that is just about big enough (or heaven forbid too small) but equally I don’t want to end up with 50% empty space. Supposedly I could start counting din units and see what count I get? Bee Automation when doing his loxone cabinet demo, had a nice clean printout with everything on there. Surely software created it?

 

on a separate note, do I need connection blocks? It seems a common thing to, say, have relay output cable go to the connector block inside the cabinet first, and only then into a typical T&E cable and out. Any logics behind it?

[Radian]

20 hours ago, BartW said:

so it’s just a lot of TRIAC drivers for me run off loxone relay box. Nothing too fancy. 

 

Just curious what you guys are doing with old-school dimmers... DMX 512 dimmer packs and suchlike were fine for incandescent lighting when the hot filaments quietly averaged out the power to smooth brightness levels - but they're never very good with the electronic drivers in LEDs. With everything happening at 50Hz irrespective of leading or trailing edge phase-control, some of that audible spectrum stuff is always going to be noticeable. Plus, the non-linearity exhibited by even the best matched LEDs to conventional dimmers I've found is plain awful.

 

Like I say, I'm just curious - not wishing to rain on any parades. I've all but given up on any non-smart LEDs in anything other than plain on-off applications.

 

[BartW]

4 hours ago, Radian said:

 

Just curious what you guys are doing with old-school dimmers... DMX 512 dimmer packs and suchlike were fine for incandescent lighting when the hot filaments quietly averaged out the power to smooth brightness levels - but they're never very good with the electronic drivers in LEDs. With everything happening at 50Hz irrespective of leading or trailing edge phase-control, some of that audible spectrum stuff is always going to be noticeable. Plus, the non-linearity exhibited by even the best matched LEDs to conventional dimmers I've found is plain awful.

 

Like I say, I'm just curious - not wishing to rain on any parades. I've all but given up on any non-smart LEDs in anything other than plain on-off applications.

 

I would probably be more tempted to do dmx if I actually understood it better. But I don’t…

 

for a standard domestic application with a few (dozen) of led circuits of standard single colour dimmable stuff. Is it worth it?

 

[joth]

4 hours ago, Radian said:

Just curious what you guys are doing with old-school dimmers... DMX 512 dimmer packs and suchlike were fine for incandescent lighting when the hot filaments quietly averaged out the power to smooth brightness levels - but they're never very good with the electronic drivers in LEDs.

 

For mains dimmed LEDs in use 

http://www.whitewing.co.uk/acdim.html

Specifically designed for LED mains dimming.

 

For constant voltage or constant current fittings (i.e. skipping the mains driver) I use whitewing or D4C from AliExpress.

I can dig out more links if you're genuinely interested

 

DMX is just a protocol. I also use it to control relays, SSRs, and even a PWM variable speed extraction fan.

 

 

 

 

 

[joth]

5 hours ago, BartW said:

is there any software out there to help visualise / configure all gear that I need to be able to squeeze in?

Google Sheets is my current go-to for this 😐

It's worked well, parts arrived for my second build this week and the trim plates all fit just as expected 🙂

 

 

The top two blank rows hide terminal blocks and whitewing dimmers respectively.

 

Terminal blocks make onsite installation much quicker, if you lace the cabinet before install, and slightly more flexible over time. and also solves things like what to do with all the dangling neutrals and earths.

Top tip is to layout terminals in an order logical for the cables coming in from the building rather than grouping by function within the cabinet (while keeping low voltage and mains segregated). Everything works out much neater and easier to trace this way. 

[Radian]

2 hours ago, joth said:

For mains dimmed LEDs in use 

http://www.whitewing.co.uk/acdim.html

Specifically designed for LED mains dimming.

 

Trailing edge is certainly better and dimmer packs have the advantage of not relying on a little current flow in the load to keep them operating (unlike dimmers without Neutral) but I've yet to find a 240V LED that doesn't sing and flicker a bit at 50Hz. The best i could find were Integral WarmTone GU10

 

2 hours ago, joth said:

For constant voltage or constant current fittings (i.e. skipping the mains driver) I use whitewing or D4C from AliExpress.

I can dig out more links if you're genuinely interested

 

I am genuinely interested but I make all my own gear - thanks anyway. I used to design DMX dimmer packs and other club lighting kit in the 90's and moved on to LED's with our own proprietary drivers at the turn of the century. For the lighting in our house I mostly re-flash chinese junk with my own code to work over MQTT. The products with dedicated PWM chips are by far the best for this.

[joth]

15 hours ago, Radian said:

I've yet to find a 240V LED that doesn't sing and flicker a bit at 50Hz. 

 

We settled on Phos eyeconic in the "nice" areas which generally work great, and Philips GU10 elsewhere. The Philips don't dim to such low levels and the phos flicker when the house is running off the battery (but fine when importing from grid). So yeah, I'd use less mains dimming if I could do it all again.

 

15 hours ago, Radian said:

I am genuinely interested but I make all my own gear - thanks anyway.

Sorry think I came across more snarky than intended, I meant if you're actively looking for suggestions on what to buy I'll find the exact links. 

I'm a big fan of DIN mounted DMX controlled constant current drivers, these seem the sweatspot on price, efficiency and quality of dimming, but some manufacturers get pissy if supplying your own drivers. (not something that bothered me on my own build, but now I'm spec'ing this for others I have more culpability to think of)

 

[BartW]

On 25/02/2023 at 19:42, joth said:

 

For mains dimmed LEDs in use 

http://www.whitewing.co.uk/acdim.html

Specifically designed for LED mains dimming.

 

For constant voltage or constant current fittings (i.e. skipping the mains driver) I use whitewing or D4C from AliExpress.

I can dig out more links if you're genuinely interested

 

DMX is just a protocol. I also use it to control relays, SSRs, and even a PWM variable speed extraction fan.

 

Ok, thanks!

 

So supposedly I could use one of these to drive all my 24V LED strips?:

 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32734596270.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.0.0.2c856d0ePot8RK&gps-id=pcDetailBottomMoreThisSeller&scm=1007.13339.291025.0&scm_id=1007.13339.291025.0&scm-url=1007.13339.291025.0&pvid=8394cd96-5a79-46ce-8d51-a16ab02a53c4&_t=gps-id:pcDetailBottomMoreThisSeller,scm-url:1007.13339.291025.0,pvid:8394cd96-5a79-46ce-8d51-a16ab02a53c4,tpp_buckets:668%232846%238114%231999&pdp_ext_f={"sku_id"%3A"61422846924"%2C"sceneId"%3A"3339"}&pdp_npi=3%40dis!GBP!26.48!26.48!!!!!%40211b58ef16774439383547046e5bd2!61422846924!rec!UK!

 

Downside being distance between the Loxone Cabinet and all LED strips in various locations adding to the resistance by a lot?

 

If I choose to use the Westwing dimmer as linked on the other hand, then I still need to run multiple drivers. Am I right? In which case, is its only additional benefit the price vs Loxone Dimmer extension?

 

 

Thanks, and yes please do share some more

 

 

 

 

[joth]

13 hours ago, BartW said:

Ok, thanks!

 

So supposedly I could use one of these to drive all my 24V LED strips?:

 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32734596270.html?spm=a2g0o.detail.0.0.2c856d0ePot8RK&gps-id=pcDetailBottomMoreThisSeller&scm=1007.13339.291025.0&scm_id=1007.13339.291025.0&scm-url=1007.13339.291025.0&pvid=8394cd96-5a79-46ce-8d51-a16ab02a53c4&_t=gps-id:pcDetailBottomMoreThisSeller,scm-url:1007.13339.291025.0,pvid:8394cd96-5a79-46ce-8d51-a16ab02a53c4,tpp_buckets:668%232846%238114%231999&pdp_ext_f={"sku_id"%3A"61422846924"%2C"sceneId"%3A"3339"}&pdp_npi=3%40dis!GBP!26.48!26.48!!!!!%40211b58ef16774439383547046e5bd2!61422846924!rec!UK!

 

Downside being distance between the Loxone Cabinet and all LED strips in various locations adding to the resistance by a lot?

 

If I choose to use the Westwing dimmer as linked on the other hand, then I still need to run multiple drivers. Am I right? In which case, is its only additional benefit the price vs Loxone Dimmer extension?

 

 

Thanks, and yes please do share some more

 

 

 

 

Yeah I'm using something like that in my house. Actually the 2x the 24 channel versions https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32821457070.html

They do a 36 channel version now too.

 

On my current build I'm using the whitewing equivalent CV driver http://www.whitewing.co.uk/rgbdim48.html (there's a 96 channel version too).

 

You need a beefy PSU to make the most of this. I'm using the Loxone Backup + PSU now. Tip: You can feed +24 V directly from the PSU to the various LED strips, and then just route the negative return via the dimmer, which reduces the overall current passing through the dimmer.

 

I use 1.5mm2 cable for all LED strips, and the voltage drop is negligable, less than 1V over 30m, which for a 24V fitting is fine.

 

[BartW]

ok, so my longest run is in the region of 12 - 15m run in 1.5mm T&E. That's where it is supposed to have a driver connected to it, and run in 0.75mm over a 5m final feed line.  

 

The loft is one area where this happens to 5 different circuits. I wonder if I could test the full line with a meter and see the actual resistance it returns, then decide whether to move the dimmers to the Loxone cabinet, or have remote drivers closer to the final run. 

 

Whilst the walls are yet to be covered, I might be able to redirect the said 1.5mm direct to the lighting points, and shorten the runs at the same time.

 

So, with these DMX dimmers, do I just beef up my PSU and driver voltage direct through them up to the light fitting? All strips are going to be 24V, and my initial idea was to have it all in the cabinet.

 

 

 

[joth]

1 hour ago, BartW said:

ok, so my longest run is in the region of 12 - 15m run in 1.5mm T&E. That's where it is supposed to have a driver connected to it, and run in 0.75mm over a 5m final feed line.  

 

The loft is one area where this happens to 5 different circuits. I wonder if I could test the full line with a meter and see the actual resistance it returns, then decide whether to move the dimmers to the Loxone cabinet, or have remote drivers closer to the final run. 

 

Whilst the walls are yet to be covered, I might be able to redirect the said 1.5mm direct to the lighting points, and shorten the runs at the same time.

 

So, with these DMX dimmers, do I just beef up my PSU and driver voltage direct through them up to the light fitting? All strips are going to be 24V, and my initial idea was to have it all in the cabinet.

 

 

 

Voltage drop over the line is a function of (proportional to) current and distance. How many watts are the furthest strips?

I really think you'll be fine if 15m is the furthest run. But if they're really high wattage per meter and lots of meters of led strip you can alway split it to multiple strips or feed them at both ends, which mitigates the voltage drop along the tape itself too. 

 

https://www.12voltplanet.co.uk/voltage-drop-calculator.html is pretty good (expect silly domain name). With 24V strip you lose 1% off the voltage for every 10m at 1 amp.

 

 

[BartW]

7 minutes ago, joth said:

Voltage drop over the line is a function of (proportional to) current and distance. How many watts are the furthest strips?

I really think you'll be fine if 15m is the furthest run. But if they're really high wattage per meter and lots of meters of led strip you can alway split it to multiple strips or feed them at both ends, which mitigates the voltage drop along the tape itself too. 

 

https://www.12voltplanet.co.uk/voltage-drop-calculator.html is pretty good (expect silly domain name). With 24V strip you lose 1% off the voltage for every 10m at 1 amp.

 

 

 

I am using these throughout:

 

https://www.hafele.co.uk/en/product/led-flexible-strip-light-24-v-rated-ip20-cob-monochrome-loox5-led-3069/83376391/?MasterSKU=P-01565497#

 

8W per metre, and longest strip at the furthest location @ around 6m, so 48W, fed both ends on some of them. So all in all up to 2Amps @ 24V. I guess I could trial and error, and if need be, I could just move the drivers closer without modifying the circuits.

 

[joth]

benefit of central dimmer is a single pack can do 48channels, you loose that if distributing them. Also I personally find DMX a dream to work with if kept in the cabinet, but a PITA to debug if strung all around the house. Ymmv.

At least if you use T&E to feed them you do have options. 

But I doubt you'll notice the 2% loss.