Indigo Domotics

Curious if anyone makes an x10 2000 watt dimmer? Or other interface that would work with Indigo?

I see that there used to be a PCS LM4L but looks like it's no longer manufactured. Anything beefier than the insteon 1k watt?

Thanks for the help,

Anthony

Okay . . . so I'll take that as a "no, no one makes a high wattage x10 dimmer"

Very likely, the only way you're going to handle that much current is to drive a 110 V relay solenoid; Back in the day, that'w what we had to do to drive a 5 HP well pump from a standard pressure sender

Plus there's not really a huge market for x10 equipment anymore. :/

I want to be snarky and say "2005 called and they want their X10 back" but that's snarky. Oops, I did it .

It probably does exist or did exist at some point, but finding it may be challenging since those folks manufacturing X10 equipment have a pretty tiny market these days with Insteon and ZWave dominating things. You may have to build your own.

On a slight trivia note apparently my grandfather (a physics lecturer) did some work for Pico electronics when they were designing the x10 protocol back in the 70s. Not sure if his work was on the x10 stuff or something else but I've always been excited by automation just for that little link

Love the snark!

Okay, let me back up and give you the problem (to which x10 clearly isn't the solution).

I've got two sets of bookshelves that have low voltage cove lighting. I've been driving them off two separate insteon high wattage dimmers. I even wired a low wattage incandescent bulb into the mix to try and address the situation.

Long story short: it works but it seems to be burning out an insteon dimmer roughly every 9-12 months (think I've gone through 2).

So . . . I'm curious if there's a better solution.

The parameters are: indigo controlled, I can't break the loads up into fewer chunks (i.e. add a 3rd dimmer), need to be able to dim them.

Any solutions out there? I assumed the easiest was to inquire about higher wattage dimmer - as you point out - no go.

Is there a dimmer better suited to this application (dimmer - transformer - low voltage) that I can also control/dim with indigo?

Thanks for any help (or snark),

Anthony

You need a dimmer designed for MLV (Magnetic Low Voltage) or ELV (Electronic Low Voltage) transformers, depending on what those lights use.

I don't know if any of the Insteon ones are. A Caseta one using the Lutron plugin might work.

FlyingDiver,

Thanks for the response.

And those dimmers are substantially different from the insteon high voltage? Guess I'm just making sure that there is technically something different between the two before I add another protocol.

Also, do you have any experience with the Caseta plugin? What would I need beside the dimmers to get that up and running with Indigo? Can I include those dimmers in a scene controlled from an insteon multi-button dimmer?

Sorry, just totally unfamiliar with the caseta line.
Thanks,

Anthony

I'm not really familiar with the various Insteon dimmers. Lutron has dimmers that can do both forward and reverse phase dimming, which is important for specialty loads like ELV/MLV.

You need a Caseta Pro hub to control them from Indigo. The plugin uses an IP connection to the hub. You can't include them in an Insteon scene, but you could trigger the Lutron load from an Insteon keypad button that's also controlling the Insteon loads. I control both Insteon and Lutron loads from my Insteon mini-remotes.

FlyingDiver,

Thanks for the quick response.

So do you basically create two separate scenes and then trigger them both?

So let's say the scene is insteon and lutron both at 80%. Do you build two scenes and then trigger them both? Can that be done.

Hesitant to add another protocol but also hate having to swap out dimmers for these low voltage lights.

Thanks for the help/guidance.

Also, any hidden drawbacks to controlling both insteon and lutron from indigo?

Thanks,

Anthony

I hesitate to call them both "scenes". You do whatever you would normally do on the Insteon side, then you set Indigo to trigger on they remote or keypad command that triggers the Insteon lights and have it turn on the Lutron lights. I don't know if Caseta does "scenes". RadioRa2 does.

It would really be better if someone who actually uses Caseta would chime in, as I only use RadioRa2.