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I suppose wiring for the lv lights won't change realistically and cat6 won't be unusable for a very long time, I'm just not the type to wire a house up like that personally. I just put up with mediocre WiFi  You've obviously thought far more about it than I have so please don't take it that I'm making GBS threads on the idea. The whole concept of more adaptable/flexible interior lighting is one that bugs me so I think I should study it more. I'd love more dimmers than I can currently have because of 3 way switches, and I'd love selectable white/temperature lighting, without having to rely on phones and apps - guests and visitors need to switch lights to!
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Nov 10, 2017 10:26
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When I researched this what I found is that the whole lighting scene is a complete shitshow. There's a handful of lighting control standards most decades old and many of which are hodgepodges on top of each other. The guy in the post went for DMX which is really designed for controlling stage lighting, and that really shows in the types of control products available and their prices. I was going to go for DALI which is at least an ISO standard, but after reading the terrible (and very expensive) documentation it turns out to be a standard and protocol written by a committee of incompetent assholes. And yet it's the best wired system available. It's also expected to be used primarily in giant corporate offices which leads to very expensive control and driver equipment; I was on the brink of buying some direct from Shenzhen when I stopped the process. There are other systems available, some on zigbee, others wifi, but I was particularly keen not to be part of a botnet and the software/hardware quality of these systems varies wildly. In the end I didn't feel like my electricians had enough faith to go ahead with it so I opted for a layered approach; bog-standard 240VAC GU10 fittings with normal switches, then stick Ikea bulbs in (supports dimming and colour temp adjustment, plus has physical remotes for those guests you mentioned), and then use the soon-to-be-open API of the Ikea bulbs to integrate them safely into my own home automation code. If anything goes wrong with the higher layers I can ignore or disconnect them, and when I move out I can either leave it in place or replace everything with normal static bulbs.
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Nov 10, 2017 12:22
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If I were wiring my own house today I’d probably end up rolling my own controls, or starting with an open hardware/software project. The lighting industry is going to be a mess of competing LED systems in the near future, but a wide assortment of Edison-base bulbs will continue to be available for a very long time.
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Nov 10, 2017 12:34
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Platystemon posted:If I were wiring my own house today I’d probably end up rolling my own controls, or starting with an open hardware/software project. Yeah, I nearly did this myself. I got as far as prototyping on breadboard and finishing a circuit layout before I realised that I hadn't accounted for the heat generated by the MOSFETs and went looking for something pre-made. Had I known what a mess the standards were I would've pressed on and redesigned the circuits with appropriate heatsinks, not that it would've mattered in the end. I did go looking for open hardware versions of this stuff and they don't really exist that I could find, there's just a few circuit diagrams floating around on instructables or whatever. But it's not too hard, some mosfets and an optocoupler are the most exotic components involved. You just gotta deal with the huge wattage flowing through it if you've got e.g. 10m of 82 SMD/m RGBW LED strip running at full power. Jaded Burnout fucked around with this message at 12:47 on Nov 10, 2017 |
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Nov 10, 2017 12:43
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cakesmith handyman posted:I suppose wiring for the lv lights won't change realistically and cat6 won't be unusable for a very long time, I'm just not the type to wire a house up like that personally. I just put up with mediocre WiFi Ethernet was introduced in the 70s, and evolved from coax to twisted pair cable in the mid 80s. In computer terms that's getting into geologic timescales. Cat6 supports up to 100 gigabits per second, which is fast enough the house is likely to reach must-renovate levels of datedness before the cable is meaningfully obsolete in terms of what you can do with it, let alone useless. With conduit and some string, you wouldn't even need to open the walls to upgrade the network wiring. Just the ability to put access points wherever you want without needing a chain of wireless repeaters could potentially pay for the cable and conduit. I just don't see a reason not to run ethernet in new construction.
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Nov 10, 2017 12:54
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I flip a switch like old fashioned bitch
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Nov 10, 2017 12:59
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10 Beers posted:It's very cool, but does he ever explain why he doesn't have a range hood or bathroom venting? Is it just to lessen "piercing the envelope?" Over here, cheap/crappy range hoods just force air through a really thick/tight filter (that you have to run through your dishwasher every few months.) Seems like a better idea than nothing. Plus then you don't have to put up with the shittiness of an electric stove.
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Nov 10, 2017 13:18
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Jaded Burnout posted:bog-standard 240VAC GU10 fittings with normal switches, then stick Ikea bulbs in (supports dimming and colour temp adjustment, plus has physical remotes for those guests you mentioned) I haven't looked at Ikea for a long time, this seems to tick all the boxes so I'll take another look thanks. Platystemon posted:The lighting industry is going to be a mess of competing LED systems in the near future, but a wide assortment of Edison-base bulbs will continue to be available for a very long time. Thankfully the UK seems to be slowly coming to the conclusion ES bulbs are better than crappy wobbly bayonets. Blue Footed Booby posted:Ethernet was introduced in the 70s, and evolved from coax to twisted pair cable in the mid 80s. In computer terms that's getting into geologic timescales. Cat6 supports up to 100 gigabits per second, which is fast enough the house is likely to reach must-renovate levels of datedness before the cable is meaningfully obsolete in terms of what you can do with it, let alone useless. With conduit and some string, you wouldn't even need to open the walls to upgrade the network wiring. My house is only 2 years old and has no provision for anything like this, however I know the structure of the house so when I do some minor interior work shortly I'll run Ethernet from the router to the tv and the future homework/office area because I think it'll take like another hour max. Sounds like I might never need to touch it again. ~Coxy posted:Plus then you don't have to put up with the shittiness of an electric stove. A decent induction hob with suitable pans is better than gas. I used to do white goods testing and I will stand by that statement from my experience. Just don't get the cheap crappy induction jobs that run off a 13 amp plug and throttle the burners when more than one is switched on.
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Nov 10, 2017 13:48
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Blue Footed Booby posted:Ethernet was introduced in the 70s, and evolved from coax to twisted pair cable in the mid 80s. In computer terms that's getting into geologic timescales. Cat6 supports up to 100 gigabits per second, which is fast enough the house is likely to reach must-renovate levels of datedness before the cable is meaningfully obsolete in terms of what you can do with it, let alone useless. With conduit and some string, you wouldn't even need to open the walls to upgrade the network wiring. I agree with your broad point but cat 6 (250MHz) tops out at 1Gbps. 6a (500MHz) is rated to 10Gbps. I put in 7a (1200MHz) which is supposedly 40Gbps but it's a bit handwavy since it apparently never made it to a real standard before they refocused on to cat 8. I did intend to use conduit in my house but it's too old and ramshackle (110 years old with multiple extensions) so the routing just wasn't on the cards for conduit. Replacing all that would be a huge pain but it sure as hell isn't happening before I've moved on. Certainly I won't be buying kit rated for those speeds for some time, and I'm even punching on 6a connectors for now to save costs. I would definitely use conduit in a new build. cakesmith handyman posted:I haven't looked at Ikea for a long time, this seems to tick all the boxes so I'll take another look thanks. Yeah they came out right at the crunch point for my project and ticked the boxes I needed, so it seems like a good shout. I've not installed them yet but I still plan to. cakesmith handyman posted:Thankfully the UK seems to be slowly coming to the conclusion ES bulbs are better than crappy wobbly bayonets. Not my sparkies  cakesmith handyman posted:A decent induction hob with suitable pans is better than gas. I used to do white goods testing and I will stand by that statement from my experience. Just don't get the cheap crappy induction jobs that run off a 13 amp plug and throttle the burners when more than one is switched on. As a lifelong gas proponent I'm planning on putting in an induction range this time. Everyone raves about them, I just gotta. I still ran gas pipes to likely locations, just in case. The range I have in mind draws a maximum of 16.4kW so I had them run a real beefy cable and got the feed from the street upgraded. Jaded Burnout fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Nov 10, 2017 |
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Nov 10, 2017 14:21
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Liquid Communism posted:McMansion Hell has made me unable to see multiple, multiple rooflines like that without shuddering. It's even more fun to have to go up on them, measure them, and diagram them for an insurance claim. Thankfully, there's Eagleview, at least until they maybe let me use my drone.
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Nov 10, 2017 14:48
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cakesmith handyman posted:I haven't looked at Ikea for a long time, this seems to tick all the boxes so I'll take another look thanks. ONLY the remotes are worth anything. The remote dimmers technically have a turn-off but jesus those fuckers are unwieldy. Literally every other of the physical control gadgets is worthless. So, bulbs, remote, gateway. Some bulbs are only available with the remote (???). You can't hook up multiple remotes to a set of bulbs (you CAN hook up the gateway and remote at the same time - you actually have to - and then it's just ZigBee and you can hack together ~basically anything to control them via a RPi ZW). The remote+bulb bundle is the cheapest for the 2200k/2700k/4000k + remote bulb set, and there's a bulb that's got way more colors but is only in a set.
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Nov 10, 2017 17:31
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endlessmonotony posted:ONLY the remotes are worth anything. The remote dimmers technically have a turn-off but jesus those fuckers are unwieldy. Literally every other of the physical control gadgets is worthless. Also if you want to set a bulb to a setting separate from the other bulbs, it needs a separate remote (unless the gateway can work around that?). The bulbs are fine, but Ikea's documentation is shoddy as gently caress. So first ask if 2200k/2700k/4000k is the right bulb (980lm vs 600lm for the rainbow one), then if it is, count how many unique lighting settings you want for rooms, then buy that many remotes. Or... don't, and just buy a few remote+bulb sets to test it out.
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Nov 10, 2017 17:34
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cakesmith handyman posted:I'd love more dimmers than I can currently have because of 3 way switches.
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Nov 10, 2017 19:14
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cakesmith handyman posted:I suppose wiring for the lv lights won't change realistically and cat6 won't be unusable for a very long time, I'm just not the type to wire a house up like that personally. I just put up with mediocre WiFi The key is that he ran it all in 2" conduit to a central location, which makes upgrading it in fifteen years a two beer job.
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Nov 10, 2017 22:09
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HycoCam posted:You can replace one of the three way switches with a three way that supports dimming. The limitation is you can only set the dim level from that switch--the other switches will just turn the lights on and off. So if switch A is a dimmer and I turn it off at switch B, what happens when I toggle switch A again? Back on dimmed? On full? endlessmonotony posted:Also if you want to set a bulb to a setting separate from the other bulbs, it needs a separate remote (unless the gateway can work around that?). The bulbs are fine, but Ikea's documentation is shoddy as gently caress. I've no interest in colour other than shades of white. So if I've 2 pendants and 2 lamps in my room and I want to control the 2 pendants together I can with 1 remote, but the 2 lamps must have separate remotes if I want to switch them separately? So that room would need 3 remotes right?
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Nov 10, 2017 23:04
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cakesmith handyman posted:I've no interest in colour other than shades of white. So if I've 2 pendants and 2 lamps in my room and I want to control the 2 pendants together I can with 1 remote, but the 2 lamps must have separate remotes if I want to switch them separately? So that room would need 3 remotes right? Yep. Also, if you're fine with just dimmer/brighter whites, the bulbs that come in the Gateway Package are 1000lm 2700k bulbs. EDIT: I was wrong! They're the White Spectrum (2200k-4000k ones). £65 for £70 worth of stuff. EDIT two: 2700k dimmable 1000lm are £9 each, 2200k-4000k (2200k, 2700k, 4000k) are £15 each. Remotes are £15 each, but you can get a White Spectrum 980lm & remote for £29 for a massive... £1... of savings, and you can get the Wireless Dimmer + White 1000lm bulb set for £15, which serves the same purpose as the Gateway for any purposes you don't care about frequently turning the light on or off via the dimmer... I think. Ikea's documentation is hilariously garbage, all of this is experimentation. EDIT three: The dimmers are relatively cheap, but have the downside that if you turn the light off at the dimmer, when you turn it on at the wall before adjusting brightness first, it'll turn it on at minimum brightness. Also turning it off requires a flat surface and a weird-rear end gesture that can be difficult to execute for old people. For just enabling the gateway remote control and adjusting brightness, it's fine. endlessmonotony fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Nov 10, 2017 |
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Nov 10, 2017 23:23
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That house is amazing. My biggest question was actually about the roofs. Two of them were slanted towards the house. Clearly he knew what he was doing, so I'm curious if this just isn't as big of a deal as I would have assumed it was?
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Nov 10, 2017 23:33
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How to drive a screw
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Nov 10, 2017 23:39
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The situation with the Ikea lighting is that the basics - the cheap white bulbs, the better white bulbs, the remote control and the gateway - are simple and competent. The additional devices - the wireless dimmer, the motion sensor, the rainbow bulb - feel rushed and poorly thought out. And the documentation is basically a puzzle box to summon the Swedish Chef.
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Nov 10, 2017 23:53
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cakesmith handyman posted:So if switch A is a dimmer and I turn it off at switch B, what happens when I toggle switch A again? Back on dimmed? On full? On dimmed, usually. You might be able to get dimmers with electronic control so that they go back to full brightness if you toggle them on/off if that’s what you want, but normally three‐way dimmers are just a knob or slider that stays in place and maintains the setting till you physically manipulate it again.
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Nov 11, 2017 00:20
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At first, it was simple. I put in the light bulb, I turned the wheel, and the light grew dimmer or brighter. But then I began to notice, it didn't just react to what I did, it reacted to how I did it. Performing the exact same steps at a different speed had different results. The dogs outside the house must have been startled by the rapid changes in lighting. I began connecting more components, and using the existing ones in different ways. I could just perform the right motion anywhere with the wheel, the idea that it had to be attached to something was just for show. The controller snapped to the base from enough distance I could just throw in the right direction, and I would find it waiting exactly where I expected. What began as repeatedly pressing a button labeled "not that" and swearing when I skipped over the hue I wanted soon turned to more control over the lights than I had even known I wanted. I started to notice I had a headache whenever the lights weren't how I wanted them, and could spend hours just fine-tuning them, never feeling like a wasted moment. And it relieved the pain, the waves, like a gong, faded into little more than whispers. I couldn't connect two remotes to a light, but I could attach a computer to the gateway and program it to respond to my commands before I even knew I had made them. The gateway. That's ironic. It's a daunting task getting everything the way you want to, but soon enough, I'll have control to get rid of every little thing bothering me. It can take me hours to figure out how to perform a sequence of commands exactly the way I want them, and sometimes you have to take steps not immediately obvious, like dimming everything to a minimum to synchronize the devices, but it won't take long now until the headaches are gone for good. I can't say I'll miss the pain, or the sound. The constant "bork bork bork".
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Nov 11, 2017 00:28
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Platystemon posted:On dimmed, usually. Lutron makes something called a companion dimmer, like in a MACL-153M-RHW-WH kit on Amazon. You replace both switches with dimmers, one with indicators and one without. The companion dimmer sends signals to the real dimmer, which actual handles dimming the lighting load. It lets you dim from either location.
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Nov 11, 2017 00:29
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That is a drat good magnetized bit.
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Nov 11, 2017 00:41
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cakesmith handyman posted:So if switch A is a dimmer and I turn it off at switch B, what happens when I toggle switch A again? Back on dimmed? On full? The dimmer is only at one end. The other just toggles it off and on. At least with the cheap ones anyway.
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Nov 11, 2017 01:21
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Yes
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Nov 11, 2017 01:39
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endlessmonotony posted:And the documentation is basically a puzzle box to summon the Swedish Chef. I always thought that putting the moose in the blender was a joke, a play on words, not... This.
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Nov 11, 2017 04:18
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endlessmonotony posted:At first, it was simple. I put in the light bulb, I turned the wheel, and the light grew dimmer or brighter. But then I began to notice, it didn't just react to what I did, it reacted to how I did it. Performing the exact same steps at a different speed had different results. The dogs outside the house must have been startled by the rapid changes in lighting. I began connecting more components, and using the existing ones in different ways. I could just perform the right motion anywhere with the wheel, the idea that it had to be attached to something was just for show. The controller snapped to the base from enough distance I could just throw in the right direction, and I would find it waiting exactly where I expected. What began as repeatedly pressing a button labeled "not that" and swearing when I skipped over the hue I wanted soon turned to more control over the lights than I had even known I wanted. I started to notice I had a headache whenever the lights weren't how I wanted them, and could spend hours just fine-tuning them, never feeling like a wasted moment. And it relieved the pain, the waves, like a gong, faded into little more than whispers. I couldn't connect two remotes to a light, but I could attach a computer to the gateway and program it to respond to my commands before I even knew I had made them. The gateway. That's ironic. It's a daunting task getting everything the way you want to, but soon enough, I'll have control to get rid of every little thing bothering me. It can take me hours to figure out how to perform a sequence of commands exactly the way I want them, and sometimes you have to take steps not immediately obvious, like dimming everything to a minimum to synchronize the devices, but it won't take long now until the headaches are gone for good. I can't say I'll miss the pain, or the sound. The constant "bork bork bork". 
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Nov 11, 2017 05:07
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Jaded Burnout posted:As a lifelong gas proponent I'm planning on putting in an induction range this time. Everyone raves about them, I just gotta. I still ran gas pipes to likely locations, just in case. But how much does it put out on the single biggest zone? Not to mention that gas is half the cost of electricity.
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Nov 11, 2017 13:28
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IH kicks rear end especially with limited counter space.
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Nov 11, 2017 13:58
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~Coxy posted:Not to mention that gas is half the cost of electricity. One thing to keep in mind is that induction doesn't heat up the room as much as gas, so you probably come out ahead when you are paying for air conditioning. We recently got an induction stove, and had gas in our last house; my experience has been Induction > Gas > Traditional electric heating elements.
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Nov 11, 2017 20:03
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~Coxy posted:But how much does it put out on the single biggest zone? 3kW. You're right that gas in the UK is about a third of the cost of electricity per kWh, but this source suggests that induction is 3x as efficient as gas at transferring that energy to the cookware, so I guess it evens out. Even if for the sake of argument both were 100% efficient and I cooked on a 2kW burner for a solid 30 minutes every day then the cost difference would be £3.08/month. It's really not worth worrying about. Jaded Burnout fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Nov 11, 2017 |
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Nov 11, 2017 20:35
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How is induction heating with cast iron? I am in the process of switching all off my pots pans out for cast iron as the non-stick surfaces wear out. Currently I have an electric stove but we are plumbed for gas so it is just a matter of waiting until this one dies or my wife threatens to divorce me over it. Unfortunately we are also looking at moving and everyone who has done updates in the area we are looking at have induction. I'm worried about cast iron scratching the glass top.
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Nov 11, 2017 20:58
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With gas I can hold a sausage directly over the hob and flame-sear it for a few seconds. Can't do that with your fancy-dancy electric induction now, can you. Also with gas I can potentially explode my house. I prefer the ever-present very small but non-zero chance of explosive death, it makes the food spicier.
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Nov 11, 2017 21:16
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I recently bought an induction stove because gas isn't an option and i'm in love with it. It really does boil water in under a minute (with my better pans) and my cast iron heats hot and fast. I'll usually hit it up to smoke point and drop it back down pretty quickly and let it sit for a minute before I put my food on. One thing that is super fuckin weird is some pans will make a weird whining or clicking noise though so we actually ended up testing and returning pans that were particularly obnoxious.
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Nov 11, 2017 22:40
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therobit posted:How is induction heating with cast iron? I am in the process of switching all off my pots pans out for cast iron as the non-stick surfaces wear out. Currently I have an electric stove but we are plumbed for gas so it is just a matter of waiting until this one dies or my wife threatens to divorce me over it. Unfortunately we are also looking at moving and everyone who has done updates in the area we are looking at have induction. I'm worried about cast iron scratching the glass top. Induction is scary awesome with cast iron. Be careful not to heat the cast iron too fast and crack it. I exploded a griddle (with pancakes on it) because I was only cooking on one end. Induction on, forty seconds later, it's up at 350°, pancake on. Fifteen seconds later, the griddle splits in the middle, with one end flying off the counter. That end was still room-temperature cold, with the other end at cooking temp, and the cast iron cracked. I had to be careful with dutch ovens, too, as the bottom can be meat-searing hot and the rim is still cold. I guess it's possible to blow the rims off that way.
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Nov 11, 2017 22:46
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I use a heat pump stove, takes a bit to warm up but it is really efficient!
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Nov 11, 2017 23:15
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Yeah induction isnt taking off in Australia due to energy costs- Electricity is up at around 40c per kWh now where as gas is 3.85c per MJ. Even on45KG bottled LPG your still getting about 2200MJ of gas energy and they're about $100-140 to exchange. I get around 18 months out of a single gas bottle running my 5 burner stove and 120L gas oven off it.
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Nov 12, 2017 00:07
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therobit posted:How is induction heating with cast iron? I am in the process of switching all off my pots pans out for cast iron as the non-stick surfaces wear out. Currently I have an electric stove but we are plumbed for gas so it is just a matter of waiting until this one dies or my wife threatens to divorce me over it. Unfortunately we are also looking at moving and everyone who has done updates in the area we are looking at have induction. I'm worried about cast iron scratching the glass top. It's great. Mine came with one of those Stanley knife paint scrapers to clean it, so they obviously aren't worried about scratches to it. One of the nicest side effects is that your pans stay clean on the outside.
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Nov 12, 2017 00:53
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Ferremit posted:Yeah induction isnt taking off in Australia due to energy costs- Electricity is up at around 40c per kWh now where as gas is 3.85c per MJ. Even on45KG bottled LPG your still getting about 2200MJ of gas energy and they're about $100-140 to exchange. I get around 18 months out of a single gas bottle running my 5 burner stove and 120L gas oven off it. Is your electricity made on gold-plated treadmills operated by union labor? That would be like 30 cents USD when you can get under 10 cents in most of the US. I guess that explains why we love A/C so much here.
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Nov 12, 2017 01:48
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crazypeltast52 posted:Is your electricity made on gold-plated treadmills operated by union labor? No we just have a dumbfuck goverment in power strangling all new energy sources while trying to prop up coal stations which are way past their use by date.
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Nov 12, 2017 01:51
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