Increasingly in modern homes, lighting plays an important part in the elegance and comfort that a homeowner enjoys. Dining rooms, great rooms, media rooms and home theaters all benefit from lighting scenes that create the proper mood for various activities. And to provide safety, security and energy savings, lighting controls can work together with dusk to dawn sensors, motion detectors and door sensors. Best of all, a “whole house controller” can let you set the whole house from your master bedroom for night time or near your front door when you leave.

Wouldn’t it be nice to offer customers scenes like this:

A Kitchen and Breakfast Area can have five settings from a simple Room Controller:

• All on for setting the table or cleaning up – full brightness to see what you’re doing
• Morning scene for cooking and breakfast before school and work – a gentle light to wake up and get moving
• Evening scene for dinner – a more subdued light for casual dining
• Birthday and party scene – just enough light to enjoy the candles
• All off when not in use or day is done.

A Great Room can have settings for its many uses:

• Full brightness for finding those keys or the remote control
• A reading scene for glare-free reading
• Movie scene to adjust lights for best contrast on the wide-screen
• Night lights for a nightcap by the fireplace
• All off when day is done

Home theaters and media rooms, with their accent lighting, ceiling lights, equipment lights, wall washes and sconces can enjoy lighting controls for:

• Entering the room
• Watching a movie
• Intermission
• Gaming, music listening and Internet browsing.

 

Beyond these individual rooms, lighting controls offer energy savings and convenience by making sure those lights are set appropriately based on whether you’re home, asleep or away – all by touching a button by the door or by your bedside, as opposed to chasing around the house checking all those switches!

Think it requires a lot of expensive equipment? Not anymore. A new system called HLC ( HAI Lighting Control) combines smart switches and “room controllers” for room control, and Lumina controllers for whole house control and home automation options. All of this equipment is “no new wires,” so it works with existing wiring for renovations, retrofits and upgrades. In new construction, conventional wiring is used, and you can save labor by not having as many “three way” switches, saving wall space and reducing clutter.

So how do they do it? Well, after all these years, the lowly light switch is finally getting some brains. First of all, we have to explain two concepts. First, HLC switches talk to one another so they can cooperate. Second, they have a feature called “links” that makes it easy for the homeowner to adjust those scenes.

HLC switches communicate using a new, digital standard called “UPB”, which stands for Universal Powerline Bus. UPB transmits digital pulses over the same wires used to connect the switch to your home’s wiring – no new wires are needed. The digital signal travels to all switches and controllers in the house, so that the ones that need the signal can react to it. UPB has superior reliability to older X-10 based powerline carrier switches, and superior range to RF (radio frequency) technologies without the need for unattractive repeaters (and the delay in response that each repeat causes) scattered about the home.

So now we know that the switches and controllers can talk to one another using UPB. What do they say to each other? First, each HLC switch has an “address” – like “Dining Room Chandelier” or “Front Porch Lights”. Then it has a list of commands that it can follow – like On, Off, dim to 40% or brighten up. This is all the usual stuff in a remote control switch. (HLC goes one better by actually putting the name of the switch, along with other information about the house it’s in, what room it’s in, and how the switch works – but we’ll save that for another day…). Commands and queries can be sent to the individual switch by HAI Luminas as well as other UPB compatible controllers.

In addition to the address and commands, HLC switches and controllers have a feature called Links that add the real magic. Links are a way to easily command a group of switches from a Room Controller all at once. The Links feature also creates an easy way for homeowners to set their scenes without doing any tricky programming. Here’s how it works: let’s say a Master Bedroom suite has a ceiling light, two wall sconces, a closet light, and a bathroom light. Each one is on an HLC switch. There is an HLC Room controller in the master bedroom. We’d like to have some scenes:

• Everything On for making the bed, clean up, etc.
• Evening get ready for bed
• Wake Up
• Make the 3 am trip to the bathroom
• All off – we’re asleep or at work

Right out of the box from the factory, HLC switches and Room Controllers are programmed with Links. The Room controller sends links, the switches receive them. So the controller sends Link 1 when you press the ON button. All of the switches are preprogrammed to know that Link 1 means “turn on to 100%”. Similarly, the “Evening Get Ready for Bed” button sends link 2, and all the switches go to 80%. “Wake up” is 60%, and “Make the 3 am Trip” is 20%. Again, that works right out of the box, no setup needed. So, what if you want to change the “Make the 3 am Trip” scene? We only want one wall sconce on at 20%, the ceiling light off, and the bathroom lights at 30%. Here’s how we change it: Press the button for “Make the 3 am Trip” on the Room Controller. Next, adjust the lights the way you want them. Now press the “Make the 3 am Trip” button on the Room Controller 5 times. The room controller sends out a Set Link command, and all the switches memorize the new settings for the scene! It doesn’t get any easier. To set the other scenes, just repeat the example for the other buttons on the room controller.

Now, let’s say you want to add more rooms, like the Great Room and the Kitchen and Breakfast area. We need to change the Links in each room, so that the switches in the Great Room don’t respond to the Room Controller in the Master Bedroom. Here’s where the Lumina controller comes in. There are two models: Lumina, which handles 8 rooms, and Lumina Pro, which handles 31 rooms. A Lumina can configure the addresses and links for the switches and Room Controllers to separate one room from the next. For example, the switches and Room Controllers in the Master Bedroom will be configured to use Links 1 – 8. The Great Room will be configured to use Links 9 – 16, and so on. Do you need to know or care which links are in use? No. Lumina takes care of this for you. And don’t worry about having to reprogram or remember a lot of settings if you replace or add a switch – Lumina will program the new or replacement switch for you.

Adding a Lumina also enables you to have one or more House Controllers. Each button on a House Controller represents one room. The Lumina monitors the activity of the HLC switches and Room Controllers all over the house, and lights the room button on the House Controller(s) if any light in the room is on. It turns the button off when they’re all off. That way, you can tell what’s on and off, and also turn each room on and off. House Controllers are ideal for the master bedroom, by the front door, and by the back door, if you use it to go in and out of the house – say, to your car.

Lumina’s are based on HAI’s proven Omni family of security and automation controllers, so you get many of the features of that product line, dedicated to lighting control and automation. First, you get the scheduling capability: any light can be scheduled by time or by using the built-in sunrise / sunset calculator – perfect for outdoor and indoor security lighting. Second, you get the ability to connect door contacts, motion detectors and other devices (wired or RF wireless) to control lighting when doors open or motion is detected. Third, you get HAI’s Advanced Control Programming ( ACP), which lets you program whole house scenes (like “Entertain,” Go To Bed and Wake Up). Fourth, you get modes, which are different from Scenes in that a mode is saved in memory, where a scene is a one-time activation. For example: the “Entertain” scene sets lights all over the house once when you activate the scene – but there is no memory that the Entertain scene is in effect. A “Vacation” mode could be used to tell the home to turn lights on and off around the house to give it a “lived in” look, but only while in the Vacation mode.

Luminas also give you options: A trained HAI dealer can add features such as:

• Telephone access, to call in and control the home by cell phone while you’re away – this is convenient for arriving guests, or while you’re on vacation;
• Thermostat Control – add thermostats and outdoor temperature and humidity sensors to your Lumina system to incorporate comfort and energy savings features to your system;
• Touchscreen control – add an elegant touchscreen to control individual lights, scenes, modes, temperatures, audio and more.;
• Audio Control – Lumina Pro can control popular Multi-Room audio systems from its touchscreen
• Internet Control: Add HAI’s Web-Link II to remotely control your system over the Internet;
• PCAccess: Program and control your Lumina using your PC on site, or remotely using the Internet or modem;
• Connection to Windows XP Media Center Edition – use the remote control for your Media Center PC to adjust lights, temperatures and more with HAI’s Home Control for Windows Media Center.; and
• Other lighting systems - Luminas can also control lighting devices by Leviton, Lightolier, Lutron RadioRa, ALC hardwire, SmartHome and others. It can even bridge between HLC switches and these lighting technologies using programs.

Whether you’re wiring a new home, doing some repair work or renovating a basement for a customer, don’t forget to mention these great new features that lighting control can add. They’ll expand your business opportunities and delight your customers – time and time again. Want to learn more? Check out www.homeauto.com for more information and training on Lumina and other HAI products.