Fibaro Dimmer 2

What tablets seem to do the job? IPads or something a little less expensive per tablet?

You’ve been a great help Robin. Doing a major house renovation for the first time with so many different decisions to make. Still feeling pretty nervous around full Home Automation (at least mainly for lighting) as the wife doesn’t care much for it, so I have to make it as ‘invisible’ as possible to those who don’t care much for it.

But you’ve given me additional confidence that it should all work, and she may even start to see the benefits!

I’m meeting with the electrician next Saturday to run him through my requirements. Any additional suggestions or pitfalls to avoid!?

Separately, have you managed to use z-wave/smartthings to control other things such as Sonos/ music? I’ve not really looked at that.

thanks

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Cheers, so echo dots allow you to turn on the lights and run scenes just by asking Alexa?

Love it. Easy to do, and Alexa generally gets it right?

You running most of these things, eg under counter and external lighting using dimmers? Ie when do you decide to use dimmers vs dual switches/relays?

Hmmm. Thanks, but have sort of committed to a specialist alarm system company to provide intruder alarm/sensors/external cctv and external security lighting - they’re reasonably priced. Be good if I could get that to interact with Smartthings in some way, but all new to me, and Security was important to me not to mess around with for the family/kids etc.

That said, no harm supplementing it. When you say hard wired sensors, do you mean for intruders or more for ability to set scenes, such as ‘if person exits bedroom onto landing, switch on landing lights at 30%’?

Good suggestion. Will speak to the alarm company as soon as I can. Certainly makes sense to leverage the sensors for more than pure intruder detection. I guess I was thinking about putting my own sensors up for that but now that I think about it, that would be unfortunate and quite messy duplicating the sensors that the alarm company will be installing. Will let you know how my conversations go with them. Thanks again.

Crumbs, you bringing up the topic of wired sensors being installed by a Security Company as part of an Alarm install and integration with SmartThings has my head spinning. Been trying to read up on advice being given on various forums, and seem to land on two things.

  1. Konnected - which I think I have to discount if I want to use a full service intruder alarm service including external monitoring/response. Besides I couldn’t live with myself if the system failed at a critical point and it was because I decided not to use an accredited alarm system provider.

  2. something about Envisalink and Alarmserver which appears to allow integration of traditional wired alarm systems and their sensors, with SmartThings. But the forum comments go way above my head.

I don’t suppose anyone has a reasonably succinct summary of the options to integrate a wired Alarm system that will be implemented by an accredited Security company, with SmartThings, even if it just to use responses from their sensors for relatively harmless Home Automation stuff like turning on or off the lights?

thanks

Thanks. Will do. Before I do. What is your set up with regards to Motion Sensors, Window Sensors and overall Alarm System? As you say, as I am doing a full re-wire of the house I have some flexibility now. Be interested to know what you’ve installed.

Is it fair to say that if, for whatever reason, you had to revert to traditional wiring, then you’d only have Live and Switched Live at the switch? You wouldn’t have nuetral at the switch, because this is housed in the junction box and sent to the light from the junction box. Not an issue, but just wanted to have it clear in my head.

Ok, but the connection with the light fitting will always be via the Junction Box, not directly from switch to light fitting?

Thanks. What motion sensor set up do you have, or plan to have with your new re-wire? How are you dealing with ensuring you’re not reliant on batteries and not doubling up on separate sensors for your alarm system?

Ok, but just standard (ie not z-wave) PIR motion detectors? So wiring would be same as mine, albeit initially I’d wire it to the Alarm Control Panel, whereas you wire it to Konnect? Just trying to make sure I don’t make a mistake re wiring. Have also asked Nate whether he thinks I should dual wire or something, as he appears to be working on a solution for this problem at the moment.

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Robin, if easy to do, would you mind posting a picture of a typical wiring in a junction box serving multiple light-switches and light fittings in a single room?

Not seen one before, so am simply conceptualising what it might look like once fully wired up. In our relatively large open-plan kitchen/dining/living room we are likely to have 10 or so zones (10 Fibaros), so trying to figure out what the wiring would look like inside the junction box to support this.

I am sure the electrician will know, so don’t worry if too much hassle, but I sense would be good to know myself to ensure I can have a reasonably intelligent conversation with the electrician.

Maybe put differently, would be good to know whether a junction box you buy is just a box, and then you need to buy additional components to fit into the junction box, and therefore what it is you need to buy in totality for the junction box to work.

Thanks again.

No worries Robin, realised you may not have something handy to copy and paste. I am sure the electrician can earn his wages and work it out!

You did mention something about using the Fibaro Double Relay rather than the Double Switch (for extractor fans), as you struggled to get their switches working. Did I get that right, and your recommendation would be to go for the older double relays?

No worries, and don’t expect it, so anything you come up with will be great. Do you have a link to suggested dimmable lighting (I guess mainly LEDs) that are proven to work well with the Fibaro? What will you be using? Sorry, I seem to have so many questions, one day I’ll hopefully be giving out the advice and recommendations!

Thanks. So if you have 10 independent lighting zones in one room, would you have 10 independent junction boxes storing a Fibaro in each and a bypass if needed? So you’d need space to fix these 10 junction boxes to. Another ignorant question, but how big is a junction box?

Interesting re the Bypass. I was reading that this was seldom needed with the Dimmer 2, as things had improved. There also seemed to be a comment that if you connect the Fibaro to neutral this should also lessen the need for a Bypass. But from experience you’re finding that the Bypass is generally always needed with LEDs? Is this because despite the Dimmer 2 and Neutral, you’re still seeing flickering with LEDs without the Bypass?

Robin, just going back to a comment you made earlier:

‘I use Fibaro dimmers for almost everything!! If I don’t need the dimming function I just change the device parameters so it operates in on/off mode… dimmer modules cost the same as the relay modules and offer greater flexibility of functions.’

If I have neutral to the Fibaro Dimmer, which I will have, does this mean when the Fibaro Dimmer operates in on/off mode, it literally turns off, rather than just operating at very low dim level?

Does anybody see any downside to this. For example if I end up with some non-dimmable lights operating with a Fibaro Dimmer 2 in on/off mode, will this cause any issues?

thanks.

Thanks. But otherwise no issues? Just asking as about to buy around 30+modules, so just wanted to be sure that other than for bathroom extractor fans and blinds, all lighting can pretty much be automated by using Fibaro Dimmer 2s. So won’t bother buying many Fibaro Relays or Dual Switches.