Indigo control of 12VDC lighting?

Posted on
Fri Aug 21, 2020 10:44 am
mprusse offline
Posts: 15
Joined: Jul 24, 2012

Indigo control of 12VDC lighting?

I want to add some 12VDC lights to my deck. I understand this will require a transformer. I also want to be able to use Indigo to control and dim these lights but not sure how that works. Can I use standard Insteon outlets and keypads to control the power to the transformer to activate & dim those lights? That's what I would like but since I'm new to this I'm not sure where to learn about how to do this. Thank you for any direction or reading material you can provide.

Posted on
Fri Aug 21, 2020 12:05 pm
kw123 offline
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Posts: 8333
Joined: May 12, 2013
Location: Dallas, TX

Re: Indigo control of 12VDC lighting?

You should look at Shelly devices.
They have led rgb drivers,
Switches that work at low voltages as well as 110, 220

And you have 2 plugins that can be used to integrate into indigo

Karl


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Posted on
Fri Aug 21, 2020 9:09 pm
auto_man offline
Posts: 30
Joined: Oct 04, 2015
Location: Salem County, NJ

Re: Indigo control of 12VDC lighting?

I use Insteon receptacles in outdoor weatherproof boxes connected to standard 12v magnetic landscape lighting transformers.. This has worked well and has been very reliable, although I do not dim the landscape lights. The landscape lighting fixtures have LED bulbs. I used magnetic transformers, since then generate less line noise than electronic transformers,

Posted on
Wed Nov 18, 2020 3:39 pm
mundmc offline
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Posts: 1060
Joined: Sep 14, 2012

Re: Indigo control of 12VDC lighting?

You could also use the 8 Channel IP relay- it has a plugin and is relatively inexpensive, albeit you need an ethernet drop to wherever it goes. The Insteon IOLinc could also handle the 12VDC load from a transformer.

Posted on
Fri Dec 04, 2020 10:52 am
dduff617 offline
Posts: 659
Joined: Jul 05, 2006
Location: Massachusetts, USA

Re: Indigo control of 12VDC lighting?

There are several z-wave controllers that operate as low-voltage controllers.

I have a Fibaro brand RGBW controller. It takes 12V to 24V DC input and provides four separately controlled outputs, which can be used for the four channels of an RGBW LED strip light or can be used to control four separate monochromatic low-voltage loads. The Fibaro is supported in Indigo and I presume the other brands are as well, since they probably follow standard z-wave dimmer protocols.

The Fibaro model has been out a while (about 4-5 years ago, I think). Some other models that are available now that are similar include Zooz Zen31 (which happens to be inexpensive), Monoprice 36511, Qubino QUZMNHWD3, etc.

These units operate completely on the low-voltage side, downstream from your power supply. I find that they are well-behaved dimmers for any type of light but especially for LED, as they use pulse-width modulation (essentially turning the power on and off very quickly) for dimming. Using Fibaro RGBW, I saw no flicker and perfectly uniform and smooth dimming behavior all the way from 0% to 100% -- no dead bands and no hysteresis, unlike when trying to control an LED light fixture on an Insteon or Z-wave dimmer switch, for example.

Another way to go that I've used in the past is to put an AC control (such as an Insteon or Z-Wave dimmer switch, plugin module, or in-line module) upstream from the transformer or power supply. In this case, you must be sure to use a dimmable power supply.

In the "old days" you drove your landscape lights from a transformer, typically a magnetic one. Power from the transformer was 12V AC, lights were incandescent. These days, LED fixtures and electronic low voltage power supplies are more common. You can research to see what options there are for AC vs. DC fixtures and power supplies and their compatibility, but you should know that the z-wave controllers I identified above only work on DC low voltage systems.

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