Who is using the Whitewing DMX dimmers DIM16-ACL and how are you controlling them.

[MikeSharp01]

Read a lot about DIM16-ACL, here and elsewhere, and it is time I purchased one to control the lights (well some of them we need to dim) in our build. 

 

I am thinking of controlling it using an RPi PICO, perhaps running ESPhome, via an RS485 bus driver interface using MQTT for full control and direct inputs to the PICO from the momentary wall switches (with suitable opto isolation) for very low latency simple On/Off.  The house will have Home Assistant running on RPi 5, with a cloud based private MQTT broker (using  Transport Layer Security (TLS) and End to End (E2E) protocols if possible) so I can get in and out via MQTT from anywhere securely. Not sure if that all makes sense but it feels like a workable solution, and if anything fails I can bridge out the DMX controller and connect the lamps to the switches. So in normal circumstances HA will control the brightness using occupation sensors via MQTT (or otherwise directly using ESPhome protocols), switches will be used for legacy reasons and a mood lighting app (TBA).

 

What is anybody else doing with it. I know about @Thorfun system using LOXONE but I want to go somewhat my own way on this so trawling for experience from the wise crowd.

 

Any thoughts welcome at the party.

[G and J]

I think I’m capable of putting that kind of system together, and I know I’d enjoy the challenge, but I’m going the other way and installing nothing that isn’t fixable by normally available tradespeople.  Maybe bend that rule a little and use a Shelley relay/dimmer, but that’s it. 
 

What’s your motivation for going this route?

[MikeSharp01]

6 hours ago, G and J said:

What’s your motivation for going this route?

I guess it's because I can and I do understand the issue.

 

There are dimensions to the thinking here which we probably need to face head on. Our homes are getting ever more sophisticated and we already rely on technology that is hard for the average tradesperson to keep track of - look at all the discussion here about how well ASHP technology is understood. This does not mean that tradespeople won't get more capable over time as younger people with more digital depth get a foothold and we can also think out of the box to find people who can look after it. Once you have  Solar, a battery or two, diverters, energy management and an EV you have a set of very sophisticated possibilities and needs if something goes wrong. 

 

I will do everything I can to make it possible to revert, hence being able to switch out the DMX controller, which is a very well understood technology in stage, set and party lighting - we have a big creative industries sector using this gear all the time, using standard switch units in normal places around the house and having full documentation of the system in the form of an M, E & S manual. Using very common systems, such as RPi, MQTT, ESPHome and Home Assistant, also helps bring it closer to serviceability. Finally and I suppose something of a cruncher for me, given we have such sophisticated gear in our homes we will be looking down replacement of the various systems over time anyway and provided we have good infrastructure that is well understood later users can migrate in their own directions.

 

[Alan Ambrose]

I say do whatever you fancy and brings you pleasure. A backup plan for the inevitable glitches and for a later luddite buyer might be a good thing.

[G and J]

Part of me is the later Luddite.  And it’s a bit like having a funeral plan.  No bloody use to me in my lifetime apart from the comfort that it reduces stress for J a little bit at a crap time.

 

But as you say, to each their own.

 

 

[MikeSharp01]

Don't get me wrong - I acknowledge the issue. I have been documenting everything, all the wiring, all the plumbing, the MVHR, I even have a load of the ASHP documentation done, even though I haven't chosen one. I know enough about what will turn up to get cables, pipes etc in place and today I got so frustrated with manually labelling everything I went out and purchased a label printer, fun tool very useful for making sure everything is documented, everywhere! (Love the way it prints heat shrink labels. 

[G and J]

Heat shrink labels for cables?  You just gotta post a link!

 

I can never read my own indelible pen scrawl on the sheathing!

[MikeSharp01]

49 minutes ago, G and J said:

You just gotta post a link!

It's a Brother E560BT, I think there are other versions that take the heat shrink as well.  I got mine from Screwfix for £145. https://www.screwfix.com/p/brother-pte560btvp-electricians-label-printer/739ta 

 

[Thorfun]

best of luck with this @MikeSharp01. like @G and J i'm capable of doing what you are but wanted a system that had professional support if required in case i wasn't around. i also needed it to work without me tinkering with it so it's family and visitor friendly. hence the Loxone route.

 

i tried a homebuilt HTPC once and it worked for a while. but the frequent driver updates and tinkering just made it get forgotten about so i bought a black box that would do the job without my input.

[MikeSharp01]

49 minutes ago, Thorfun said:

 i'm capable of doing what you are but wanted a system that had professional support if required in case i wasn't around. i also needed it to work without me tinkering with it so it's family and visitor friendly. hence the Loxone route.

Makes perfect sense. I think provided I make it properly, no corners cut, use common building blocks, document it to within an inch of its life and don't demand any cloud connectivity I hope to be OK. I will also take our kids through it so they can help their mum if needs be. There should be room in the panels (2×600×700) to go proprietary if needed. 

[Thorfun]

1 minute ago, MikeSharp01 said:

Makes perfect sense. I think provided I make it properly, no corners cut, use common building blocks, document it to within an inch of its life and don't demand any cloud connectivity I hope to be OK. I will also take our kids through it so they can help their mum if needs be. There should be room in the panels (2×600×700) to go proprietary if needed. 

i admire you energy and enthusiasm to document and educate. i'm way too tired/lazy for that. 🤣

[Alan Ambrose]

Agree with @G and J and if you’ve ever spent a few hours of your life trying to figure which xxxxx cable is which, you might agree.

[joth]

On 04/02/2025 at 22:32, MikeSharp01 said:

Read a lot about DIM16-ACL, here and elsewhere, and it is time I purchased one to control the lights (well some of them we need to dim) in our build. 

 

I am thinking of controlling it using an RPi PICO, perhaps running ESPhome, via an RS485 bus driver interface using MQTT for full control and direct inputs to the PICO from the momentary wall switches (with suitable opto isolation) for very low latency simple On/Off.  The house will have Home Assistant running on RPi 5, with a cloud based private MQTT broker (using  Transport Layer Security (TLS) and End to End (E2E) protocols if possible) so I can get in and out via MQTT from anywhere securely. Not sure if that all makes sense but it feels like a workable solution, and if anything fails I can bridge out the DMX controller and connect the lamps to the switches. So in normal circumstances HA will control the brightness using occupation sensors via MQTT (or otherwise directly using ESPhome protocols), switches will be used for legacy reasons and a mood lighting app (TBA).

 

What is anybody else doing with it. I know about @Thorfun system using LOXONE but I want to go somewhat my own way on this so trawling for experience from the wise crowd.

 

Any thoughts welcome at the party.

If I was using home assistant I'd probably looks at ethernet to dmx adapters. The world of theatre lighting (from where dmx originates) has pretty much dropped rs485 variants although using ethernet for everything. 

Personally my worry with Loxone is less it is proprietary or them going bust but more the single point of failure. If I was going fully open protocols I'd definitely look into a more distributed architecture, either knx, or shelly (or similar). You can control either from home assistant, but the lights will still work even when the raspberry pi fails 

 

(Personally I only ever run HA on a VM under proxmox, on an NUC or similar, it makes backups and recovery so incredibly simple. Had a machine die the other day and HA and 2 other VMs restored from nightly snapshot to another machine in a matter of minutes. And makes experiments so simple too. But each to their own!)

 

 

 

[joth]

Oh to the original question - yes I've used Whitewing (mains and 24V PWM) dimmers on several projects, always from loxone though (except some tinkering with a wifi - DMX bridge I gave up on). It's good hardware (within the caveats of mains dimming)

 

As a totally different approach, have you looked at smart light bulbs? There's a good range with WLED firmware built in, which makes them very easy to control direct from Home assistant.  (WLED also has an experimental DMX output driver fwiw). Using some relays it'd be possible to have the circuits fall back to conventional switching fairly simply, if desired.

 

You can also put ESPHome on many tuya bulbs.

Benefit of this approach is avoiding mains dimming, which is inefficient and doesn't give anywhere near as fine control as talking directly to the LED driver.

 

Also, I personally wouldn't consider letting MQTT out of the local (ideally, vlan segregated) network. Use TLS if you can, but still, it's not what I consider hardened software suitable for exposing externally.