Home systems integrators are awesome. They really are. They’re masters at designing and installing complex electronic systems into homes that mesh perfectly with you and your family’s schedule, routines, and lifestyle. But as with anything you purchase for your home, there’s bound to be a breaking-in period, when you learn to use the system—and possibly discover things you wish you would have done a little differently.
This is particularly true of automated lighting systems. As it’s being installed by a home systems integrator, you’ll need to specify times for the lights to turn on and off, preferred intensity levels of groups of lights, fade rates, special scenes, and other details. Sometimes, your specifications are right on the money; other times, they’re a little off. For example, maybe having every single light turn off completely when you press a Good Night button on your iPhone makes the house too dark. It’s probably better to have the hallway lights stay on at a 10 percent intensity level so you can find your way to the kitchen. Incorporating a minor change like this into a lighting system isn’t difficult—it’s just a tweak to the system’s software. But in the past, it was a tweak that only a home systems integrator was able to perform. And even though the modifications could happen remotely via the Internet, manufacturers have now put the power of change into the hands of homeowners.
Rather than call a home systems integrator to alter a schedule, adjust a scene, or set up a new routine for the holidays, homeowners are now free to tweak their systems on a whim. The self-programming movement has fostered greater familiarity with and appreciation for the technology, and provides homeowners with an electronic system that can be constantly adapted to their changing needs. Here’s a look at some of the manufacturers leading the charge. We’ve asked them to highlight some of their most tweak-friendly features.
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CONTROL4
One of the most widely adopted features in a Control4 smart home is smart lighting control. We provide the ability to make the dozens of light switches in your home work together so that it is easier and more convenient to illuminate your home.
Few homeowners are comfortable with installing their own light switches, so we let the professional electricians handle the leg work of wiring up all of your new wireless lights. But from there, a homeowner can get creative and start thinking about the lights that they turn on together most often, say, the kitchen sconces and the sink overhead, or even the garage and porch lamps. One of the most popular scenes is the “Goodnight” scene which turns off every light in the house except for the hallway light, which dims to 15%—much like a night light. These lighting scenes are as unique and unlimited as your imagination.
Your professional integrator can get you started in the right direction by setting up some initial lighting scenes, but many homeowners find that after living with Control4 smart lighting, they could benefit from some additional personalization. This is where the Control4 Smart Home Operating System takes it a step further and puts the power of those scenes in the owner’s hands with features focused on editing lighting scenes.
Here’s what you can do right from a Control4 touchscreen or the Control4 App for iPad:
Create a new scene—Add an entirely new series of lighting events that are triggered by a single command.
Edit an existing scene—Add a new light to a room or adjust the brightness levels of existing lights.
Add or remove rooms from your scene—When you don’t want lights in a specific room to turn on and off.
Rename a scene—Perhaps you thought “Dinner” would be a good name for a scene, but it turns out that the setting is actually more suited for a name like “Dinner Party” when you invite guests over. Changing the scene name is very easy to do.
Learn—Not sure how you want your lights set for a particular scene? No problem. Play around with the lighting levels and settings and have the system “learn” a scene based on how you’ve set the lights.
Ramp or fade scenes—One tap lets you ramp or fade your selected scene.
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CRESTRON
Crestron Pyng is our new home automation app that incorporates lighting, shading, audio, HVAC, sensors, and security into an app that exists, not only for control, but also for the complete commissioning and configuration of the house. By developing the app, we’ve reduced installation time by letting home systems integrators use tablets to configure existing home automation products equipped with the Crestron infiNET EX wireless mesh-network technology. This has empowered homeowners to make changes and create scenes without the need for an integrator to come back and do this for them. We’ve created five easy steps to get Crestron Pyng up and running.
Step 1: Build your house Define what rooms exist in the home;
Step 2: Pair your devices Describe all the physical devices in the house, give them names, and put them in the rooms created during Step 1;
Step 3: Grouping shades For large windows with multiple shade motors, we allow you to control them all as one individual unit;
Step 4: Creating scenes Involves setting lights and shades to particular levels;
Step 5: Customize and schedule This is where you define what happens when you press buttons on a control device, such as an iPhone or tablet, what happens when rooms are vacant or occupied, and what happens when doors are locked or unlocked. After the initial system set-up is complete, homeowners can view an interface on a tablet, smartphone, or touchpanel that features the ability to set up scenes and schedules for their home’s lights and other devices.
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LUTRON
Lutron’s RadioRA2 and HomeWorks QS total home control solutions allow homeowners to conveniently customize and control their own lighting and shading scenes in the entire home with the touch of a button. They can personalize and utilize pre-set options like setting a schedule based on different preferences, including time of day, or special events or occasions like entertaining or nighttime. On the Lutron Home Control+ app for RadioRA2 and HomeWorks QS, the Keypad Builder allows homeowners to create new scenes on their own, while the Level Editor feature provides the keypad, timeclock, and thermostat programming to be easily adjusted or saved. The HomeGlance screen found on the app provides an at-a-glance overview of favorite keypads, devices, and timeclock modes.
Also customizable by a homeowner is Lutron’s DIY-friendly Caseta system. Lighting scenes can be scheduled based on the time of day and sunrise and sunset. The recent integration of the Caseta Wireless Smart Bridge with Apple’s HomeKit allows homeowners to use Siri to “turn off my lights” before bed or to check whether the basement light is off. Also, homeowners can group individual lights that exist in the same area to create “Rooms” or a group of rooms into “Zones” on the Lutron app, all of which can be controlled by Siri.
Lighting scenes can also be created to save energy, while actually enhancing comfort and convenience. In particular, the RadioRA2 and Homeworks QS “Green” button can be utilized to save energy by dimming the lights and closing the shades to significantly reduce solar heat gain in the summer or insulate the windows in the winter. In addition, the Green button can be programmed to set back the thermostat to further maximize energy savings in the home. Caseta Wireless can be set to recognize the location of a homeowner through geo-fencing technology. The Lutron app will alert the homeowner that the lights were left on when leaving home, or can automatically turn the lights on when the homeowner approaches the front door.
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SAVANT
The Scenes area in Savant’s mobile app allows homeowners to easily capture, create, and schedule Savant scenes that incorporate the operation of multiple systems. When the perfect song is on, the lights are low, and everything feels right, users can capture the moment and relive it any time with just one touch on a smartphone or tablet that’s running the Savant app. Users can also personalize settings for specific rooms and services, like scheduling the house to warm before a predefined wake-up time, streaming different songs to separate rooms, or setting the lights to turn on and off randomly when the house is unoccupied.
Essentially, any connected technology in any room can be captured to create a scene. From lighting, security, comfort, and/or entertainment, it can all be saved and played back later. Scenes can be created from scratch if the house isn’t already in the state you want to save, and both captured and created scenes can always be edited later by the homeowner. Scenes can also be scheduled by time of day, day of week, specific date, or even relative to celestial time, such as 30 minutes before sunrise or dusk.
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VANTAGE
In the past, modifications to lighting or automation scenes required programming by trained professionals, causing any adjustment to be somewhat of a hassle for both the home systems integrator and the end user.
In 2014, Vantage conducted ethnographic research that showed many users of lighting control were wary of utilizing their systems for fear of pushing the wrong button. As a result, manufacturers are adapting control for the end user so that modifications can be made easily whenever they deem it necessary.
In the edit mode of a Vantage Equinox 73 or Equinox 41 system, or on Equinox apps, a user can simply change the dim level of a light, or even go so far as to create a custom lighting scene without ever having to call their home systems integrator. Today, users are confident in their own ability to manage their entire automation systems on their own and even find it fun to “play” with some of the widgets. Additionally, Equinox has the capacity to provide user profiles, which puts further personalization into the hands of the end user. Each member of the family can have his or her own profile with personal settings saved for quick and easy access. EH
Scenes and Setups to Try
When you’re ready to try your hand at setting up your own lighting scenes and schedules, give these setups a try (as suggested by lighting control manufacturers).Scenes (from Control4):
Home Now—Includes garage lights, interior hallway lights to kitchen, stairway lights to bedroom, and living room lights to sit down and relax after you get home.
Cooking—Includes the kitchen overheads, counter sconces, and sink overhead lamps to give you maximum brightness for cooking purposes.
Evening—Turns off all the kitchen lights, hallway lights, upstairs and bedroom lights, and ramps up the living room lights.
Movie—The same as the Evening scene, but lowers the living room lights to 25% for movie viewing, and has an opposite scene called Movie Pause that turns on the living room lights to 85% and turns on the kitchen overhead lights. This gives you the right amount of light to make popcorn while your movie is paused. Pressing the Play button initiates the Movie scene again.
Sunroom Greeting—Combines your garage exterior light and two sunroom floor lamps.
Goodnight—Turns off all the lights in your home except for your bedside table lamp, for reading.
Dog Lights—Sets the bedroom hallway lights to 15%, stair lights to 15%, kitchen lights to 15%, and the porch light to 30%.
Away—All lamps inside turn off, all exterior lights turn on.
Schedules:
Home Now—Triggered when your garage door is opened after 5:30 p.m.
Cooking Lights—Press of a keypad button
Evening Lights—Press of a keypad button
Movie Lights—Press of a remote control button
Sunroom Greeting—Your sunroom is where guests enter your home. This scene is set to be triggered by a motion detector aimed at your driveway as guests walk up to your home.
Goodnight—Press of a keypad button
Dog Lights—Press of a keypad button
Away—Triggered when your alarm system is set to Away.
Exterior Lights—Set on a schedule to turn on 30 minutes before dusk and turn off 6 hours before sunrise on weekdays, 4 hours before sunrise on weekends.
Scenes (from Crestron):
Security—When the security alarm goes off, all the lights can turn on and the shades can raise automatically.
I’m Scared—When the kids hit this button on a keypad by the nightstand, the bedside lamp comes on at 10% and the hallway lights leading to the parents’ bedroom activate.
Scenes (from Lutron):
Movie—Lights dim to a pre-determined level while glare-eliminating solar or room darkening blackout shades silently lower over the windows.
Wake Up—Shades lift to the precise positions to let in the early morning daylight. Lights illuminate gradually over the course of a few minutes.
Scenes (from Savant):
Making Dinner—Task lighting in the kitchen turns on, the AC in the kitchen kicks up a notch to compensate for the heat from the stove, a favorite music playlist streams through the kitchen speakers, and the TV in the living room turns on to Nickelodeon to occupy the kids.
Dinner Time—When the meal is ready, everything but accent lighting in the kitchen turns off, lights in the dining room activate, and a relaxing playlist is delivered to the dining room speakers.
Pathway—As you walk down a path outside, the lights in front of you get brighter while the lights behind you dim.
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