Home Automation

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Home automation is the residential extension of building automation.

It is automation of the home, housework or household activity.

Home automation may include centralized control of lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), appliances, security locks of gates and doors and other systems, to provide improved convenience, comfort, energy efficiency and security.

Warning: Working with electricity can result in injury, property damage, or even death if it is not done properly. Please keep this in mind while assisting others. If you are not sure about what you are doing, hire a licensed professional.

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Powering and controlling LED strips, possibly switched from 120v lights? (alien.top)

submitted 2 years ago by PretendablePirate@alien.top to c/homeautomation@selfhosted.forum

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I'm just starting my home automation journey, and could use some help figuring this out please.

I've got a closet with a regular dumb light switch that controls two overhead can lights (all 120v, no smartness involved).

I've just got some LED strips that I want to mount underneath the shelves, as accent lighting. The strips are 24v and came with no controllers. They are dimmable and color temperature adjustable.

Is it possible to set this all up in either of the following ways, while ensuring it's safe/code compliant?

turn accent lights on to the pre-set brightness and color temp levels when the main light switch is turned on.
turn accent lights on to the pre-set brightness and color temp levels from a second wall switch, that does not require batteries.

The part that's stumping me is finding a controller that will retain the brightness/color temp levels when powered off, and finding one that can accept a regular switch period.

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[–] Spiritual_Entrance75@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What leads do your lights have to solder to? I'm assuming you have a set that could be controlled by a DMX controller. The controller can maintain the color and brightness level. You'd just wire the 120V power to the DMX controller to the same light load of the overhead light that you already have or could be wired to a separate wall switch.

Technically you could also wire it so that the 2nd wall switch would be able to toggle if the accent lights were enabled with the overhead or not when it automatically comes on.

[–] PretendablePirate@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

Thanks, it looks like they are 3-lead. Red/yellow/white (if that's relevant). They haven't arrived yet so not sure if there's a description of each wire does.

[–] Spiritual_Entrance75@alien.top 1 points 2 years ago

For the high voltage side, any wire should match your breaker rating, so 14 gauge for 15A or 12 gauge for 20A circuits. The low voltage side shouldn't matter much, I've used anything from cat5 24 gauge up to 18 gauge depending on distance of the run.