Controlling driveway lights

[John W]

We are about to fit lights down our driveway.The original intention is to run an armoured cable down the drive,  loop-in style between the lights.It\'s not practical to run a cable from each back to the house. These would all be turned on as one set. We have a pir at the house end of the drive, and a vehicle sensor at the far end, which will hopefully be used to turn them on via comfort.
I\'m now wondering though if I am missing a trick here, and whether there is some way I can individually control them. It would be cool if we could turn them on in sequence,  It would also be handy to have a hidden switch or sensor at the remote end when walking up the drive.
I am considering installing a cat5 cable alongside the armoured for flexibility.
My question is,  what is a reliable,  cost effective way of doing this ?X10 micro modules sprang to mind, wondering if there is a better option though. 
Cheers,    John.

[slychiu]

If you can split up the driveway lights into at least 2 sets, each controlled by a switch then you could turn them on sequentially

I dont know that X10 is still available. They are the lowest cost option provided you dont mind if there are occasional problems
Z-wave light and appliance modules is another option, using the UCM/Zwave

[Swiss-Toni]

You can get sequential lighting board, but you would need to get in touch with a lighting specialist, there are boards out there that will do it, a search on the internet may find what you require, it will take a lot of time and planing as the lights would still need to be fed back to a board and the board controlled by a comfort relay (12v or 230v)
I would consider using a 12V lighting system for a project like that, this negates the use of SWA for the installation giving it greater flexibility. In my opinion 12V lighting is now the way forward and worth considering over conventional 230V lighting and makes it far more easier to integrate into the RLY01H relays as the cables are more flexible and smaller.Ps X10 are useful but I have found them to be very unreliable over a great distance and prone to command failure if the circuits have to much end equipment, recommend you avoid X10........Just had a n afterthought if you cannot get a seqential lighting board break your circuits into three or four sections and use relays that are timed perhaps.

[John W]

Thanks for the replies so far.
Sorry if this is rambling, I\'m thinking his through as I type it

I agree that LV might have been better, but we already have the lights now, and the armoured cable too, just not installed them yet.

The lights are spread out along a ~100m long drive that starts ~30m from the house. A home run from each light would be a lot of cable

I am assuming rf based interfaces may not be great over this distance, and x10 isn\'t either, so ideally I think I need a wire based control.

I think I can get a small cabinet tucked away at the end of the drive. Pairing the lights up and only running to the cabinet would help a bit. It\'s still 300m vs 100m of cable to runeach pair vack to the cabibet though.

Running cat5 to the cabinet would make sense and give options.
Having cat5 at each light gives me flexibility too.
Actually that cabinet would give me a lot of flexibility, because I could fit other modules in it such as a 12v din supply and control other stuff too :-)

I could use any controller then in the cabinet, if I can\'t find a module to fit in each light.

Using the cat5 to each light i could use a twisted pair (or double them up for the longer runs) to switch a relay in each light.

I could put an Irio in the cabinet, and use comforts timers and macros to sequence them. That\'s the best I can think of so far.
Does that sound feasible ?

Once again thanks for your comments.
Cheers,
John.

[slychiu]

IRIO would be a good choice., You can use sub modules for TWS for two way switch control of on/off lighting or the 0-10V outputs if you have 0-10v leds lights

[John W]

HI all, quick update to describe the solution I chose.


I went with what I described above. It isn\'t installed yet, but I have rigged it up to try it out.


I had a spare RIO, so I have mounted this in a sealed cabinet along with a 12V dc din module (supplies the power for the remote relays and vehicle sensor)..


I have bought some twin insulated waterproof external cat5 cable (not swa).
A single run of swa power will loop into each light, along with the cat5. Within each light is a small pcb with a relay on it, which is switched by the RIO using a twisted pair.


I have created some responses to switch all lights on or off at once, and a pair of responses that sequence them on from either end.


This all works great on the bench, so fingers crossed it will when finally fitted ☺


Cheers, John.

[slychiu]

You can replace it all with the IRIO with TWS when ready

[John W]

Haha, nice thought, but this will all be mounted in a remote cabinet, so no need for direct switching.


I want to use the IRIO / TWS modules when they arrive for interior lighting control rather than using rako, velbus or something similar. They need switches too

[Home]

X10 revival
We had a customer last week with faulty X10 dimmer - (In my opinion I think thay had a design fault and they fail LIVE i.e the circuit stays on and cannot be switched off !)
Any way I think you will find that Insteon now sell a DIN rail mounted dimmer/relay.

[Home]

If you want individually controlled lights then take a look at DALI - not sure you will be able to get the wiring set up easily in an external environment though!