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Home lighting control (RS-485 wall switches, DMX-512 dimmers)

J

Jussi Laakkonen

Hi,

I'm looking for information and help with my plan for home lighting
control for a new house we are building.

After a thorough evaluation of many home automation and lighting
control products, I decided to go with DMX-512 due to the price,
"professional grade" components and its industry standard status (dimmer
packs widely available).

Basically, this solves my dimming and light control issues as far as
the "engine room" is concerned. Now I need to solve the human interface
part. I hope you can help me out =).

Basically, I want to have a low voltage lighting control switches /
slides / panels at around 20 locations around the house. These would
then be wired back to a central controller, which preferably would also
have other inputs and which would output DMX-512 for the dimmer packs.
The controller would map the input signals to the proper lighting
scenes. The controller should preferably have a SDK or tool set for
configuring the scenes, timings etc.

I haven't been able to locate a good source for the lighting controls
nor the controller.

If you have any suggestions, I'd really appreciate your input. For
more information about my project, please check out this web page:
http://media.assembly.org/okt/lighting.html

Thank you for your assistance!

-- Jussi
 
G

George Kinder

Jussi,
Try www.nsicorp.com or www.lightronics.com
They both have "architectural" dmx systems. NSI has some attractive
control panels which appear to talk 485 to the central controller which
then translates to DMX.
I have been looking at alternatives for our church, which needs both
"architectural" (pretty and simple) controls and a more versatile "stage
show" (multi-scene, programmable transitions, etc.)interface available.
george
 
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