Ok, so I have a somewhat annoying lighting issue. There are 16 can lights in my basement main room. The main room usage wise has 2 sections, half the room is a tv area, and the other half has a poker table setup.
In a nutshell each side has 8 lights.
I installed 16 GE Link lights into these cans, and removed the switches so they are always on, so they are controlled either via the app, or via a wall remote with 4 buttons. (I also have a minimote and an IR controller that can fire off commands as well)
In the current configuration I have a couple of automations and virtual buttons configured so that I can fire up several “scenes”
Those scenes are : Poker Room (turns on 8 poker area lights), TV Room, (turns on 6 lights in tv area, DOES NOT turn on 2 lights right above tv screen to prevent glare.) All off (turns all 16 off), All On(all 16 on), Movie pause(turns on 3 lights in middle of room to lowest setting (ie someone getting a snack in a movie, or bathroom break), and Snacking setting,(which only turns on the 2 lights above the couch to a very low setting, so you can see your food, but still have a dark room for movie viewing)
Awesome, except!!! - the link lights are horribly fidgety, they loose connection with the hub here and there, and with 16 of them, it seems like a constant battle where once a month or so at least 1 light will stop functioning as intended. I have also randomly had lights turn on in the middle of the night or at other times for no reason.
Due to the wiring in place in the basement(before I bought the house) the 16 lights are on 3 switches, but the layout of those circuits does not align with my usage. they have 2 lights above where a bookcase was, 6 lights around the outside of the room are one circuits and the remaining 8 lights go down the middle of the room on the third. So light circuits 2 & 3 span both the poker area and the tv area…
So it seems my options at this point are:
A: replace the 16 link lights with something that will function better, and keep my current scene management
B: rewire the circuits to align with my usage - its all drywall… but we had a gas leak(good grief!!!) and had to replace all the gas lines in the house, so I have access holes in almost all the places I would need them. I think I would need 1 additional hole for sure or 2 max to redo the circuits, to something close to the 2 room usage I have. - In this case after rewiring I would put in zwave dimmer switches on the new circuits so they could still be controlled, but would just replace the bulbs with standard led dimmer bulbs.
C: ??? is there another option I am missing?
Its really getting frustrating dealing with the link lights, and right now since the “lightswitch” is one of those aeotech 4 button remote deals, people seem to be confused how to turn the lights on manually.
Thoughts/suggestions/ideas?
