I'm hoping for a little direction. We have purchased property and plan to build a house at some point. I would like to know what my options are for automated lighting. I would prefer to stay with a Mac so hence my choice of posting my query here. Considering it's new construction I would like to find what is recommended in a hardwire system. Ideally I would be able to wire the house traditionally and then add ethernet drops at all my outlets and switches. It would be nice to have the ability to convert from traditional to automated by switching an outlet and plugging in the ethernet. Am I hoping for too much? I'm also concerned about reliability and wife/kids ease of use. Can I find a solution that allows for traditional switches and automated control both? If I need to clarify please let know. Thanks for taking the time. Mike.

Insteon is what you want. This is a solved problem now.

Running extra CAT5 is usually a good idea but I don't actually forsee this as being used for lighting control because the extra wiring is just not necessary with modern powerline signaling. In my house, the builder did what you described and it did come in handy on a couple occasions where I needed a low-voltage connection for something else nearby.

When you run your CAT5 think about other special locations that might be important, eg for security cameras and access points.

Think about alarm stuff too. Individually zoned (home-run wired) doors and windows are a very useful thing if you tie your alarm into your automation system.

Hmm. A vote for Insteon. A wireless solution. In general I typically prefer wired, but let's set that aside and discuss Insteon. Can you describe the result of replacing a light switch with an Insteon switch? Let's say the traditional light switch flips on 4 ceiling lights. Would just replacing the switch with an Insteon switch allow me to control all four lights in the ceiling? What about outlets (lamps)? Can you replace the in-wall outlet with an in-wall Insteon?

I agree about your point of trying to wire to cover future wants like security, audio, etc. I've heard that an option is to have conduit in place so that the wiring can be added later. It seems this might make more sense than trying to anticipate all your wiring needs up front. Does it seem feasible to have multiple conduit runs through the framing? Thanks. Mike.

INSTEON is a dual-band technology - it sends signals both over the powerline (wired) and (for some modules) through RF (wireless). It's one of the (several) reasons INSTEON is more reliable than X10 and other powerline technologies.

To replace a "normal" switch with an INSTEON switch, you literally just replace it. All the wires connect to the same places with the addition of a neutral (all homes built in the last 20 years or so have neutral wiring to every switch and outlet). That's it. Go into Indigo (assuming you've previously connected a PowerLinc of some sort to your Mac), define a new device with the unique address of that switch, and you're ready to automate it.

Outlets can be handled in several different ways - if they are switched outlets, you can replace the switch with a SwitchLinc. If not, you can replace the outlet with an OutletLinc (which provides one controlled outlet and one always-on outlet). Or, you can just plug a LampLinc (or ApplianceLinc for non-dimmable loads) into an existing outlet and plug the lamp into that.

When I was building my home back in 2002, I considered conduit but it was really quite expensive. I finally decided to just run LOTS of CAT5. You can run pretty much anything over CAT5 and it's pretty cheap - much cheaper than putting in conduit IMO. I have at least 4 CAT5 runs to each room in the house (more to my office), all go back to my wiring closet. I don't use much of it, but it's there in case I eventually do need it.

Note - none of it runs to switch/outlet locations (though some are close). I don't expect to ever need to use it for lighting control. Wireless technologies are becoming as reliable for HA as it is for network connectivity, IMO, and most HA technology will go that way. Either using existing HA technologies (INSTEON, Z-Wave, ZigBee, etc.) or using WiFi (as those chipsets get smaller, easier to implement, and smaller power requirements).

banjomacman wrote:Hmm. A vote for Insteon. A wireless solution.

Primarily, Insteon is a wired medium, using QAM signaling over the power line during zero-crossing of the AC wave. The new dual-band devices use radio more as a backup. If you want to understand the technical details there is a very good paper about it here: http://www.insteon.net/pdf/insteondetails.pdf. Also, do not conflate Insteon with X10 - Insteon is a far more robust system and does not suffer the problems of the ancient X10.

In general I typically prefer wired

Me too, but this is a case where ethernet (or RS232/rs485/whatever) will not win. Any product that requires separate low-voltage drops to every single switch is going to fail in the market because nobody has that, and very few would want to pay for it in new construction.

but let's set that aside and discuss Insteon. Can you describe the result of replacing a light switch with an Insteon switch? Let's say the traditional light switch flips on 4 ceiling lights. Would just replacing the switch with an Insteon switch allow me to control all four lights in the ceiling?

Correct

What about outlets (lamps)? Can you replace the in-wall outlet with an in-wall Insteon?

Yes and yes. Check out smarthome's Insteon catalog. They have covered basically every application (dimmers, relay on/off, both hardwired and plug-in, etc). The completeness of their product range is another reason I recommend Insteon without hesitation over Z-wave, Zigbee, or any hypothetical / up-and-coming technology.

I agree about your point of trying to wire to cover future wants like security, audio, etc. I've heard that an option is to have conduit in place so that the wiring can be added later. It seems this might make more sense than trying to anticipate all your wiring needs up front. Does it seem feasible to have multiple conduit runs through the framing? Thanks. Mike.

No, anyone who suggests pervasive indoor conduit has never built a home, read the electrical code, or dealt with an inspector. And you will actually compromise your framing by drilling all the larger holes that conduit requires. Focus on the areas that you know it will be hard to get wires to. Anything up high is usually hardest which is why I mentioned APs and security cameras. Adding stuff in the wall is actually quite easy assuming you have a crawl space. I have drilled many a hole down through the wall using a 5 foot bit - it may sound hard but any electrician can do it and the cost of doing this later as needed is way cheaper in any reasonable scenario than paying up front for all that conduit.

One place where you SHOULD run conduit is outdoors, any time you already have an open trench. Trenching is expensive so if you're running electrical outdoors always throw in a couple extra 1" pipes just in case. Also if you have places like a wiring closet or AV cabinet you may want to run some 2" conduits from those spaces into the crawl space/attic.

The guy who built my house did actually run a lot of CAT5 to most of the light switches. I never used them for lighting automation and I'm quite sure I never will, but they have come in handy on a couple of occasions where I needed a low voltage signal nearby on the wall for something else. One time I used one of them to install my spa remote control. And... actually that was the only time I ever used one. I'm saying there is a point of diminishing returns and running CAT5 to every gang box is well past that point. Do however take the time to identify the non-obvious places where it would be nice to have though. That is something my builder did NOT do, so ironically I ended up with a house stuffed full of "just in case" CAT5 that is never in the places I actually need it!

Jay/seanadams, I wanted to thank you both for very clear explanations and clearing up some of my confusion. Mike.

I use CAT5 for a lot of home automated associated tasks such as network cameras, sending Applescripts to other computers on the network to control cameras, turn on and off AV components, change computer settings/start stop applications, etc. and streaming music to each room in the house.

CAT5 is good stuff. This is one of the other reasons I think "conduit everywhere" is silly. At the risk of making a "640K should be enough for anybody" kind of statement... seriously, CAT5e is good to 1 gigabit, what more could you possibly need? If you run one to every room you now have enough bandwidth to stream **twenty** concurrent DVD-quality video streams to each room. And besides ethernet, the same wire is also good for nearly any lower-frequency application, such as:

- RS232, RS422, RS485
- Telephone
- DSL
- Alarm
- 1-Wire or i2c
- Infrared
- Analog audio (balanced not required, but recommended)
- Analog video (using balun)
- S/PDIF (using balun)
- Digital video (using active converters)
- USB (using active converters)
- Speaker (in a pinch it's sufficient to drive a small one)
- Low voltage switches, relays
- Power (either passively wired or using POE)
- Irrigation valves

I could go on but I've used cat5 for every one of those things at some point or another. What is cat5 NOT good for:

- Direct satellite dish feed - need to use RG6. But I expect in the longer term we will be using only less coax cable, especially for multi-room distribution where switched ethernet will eventually prevail.
- 1080p uncompressed video. Use HDMI.
- High quality component video. Use a multi-coax bundled cable.
- High-powered speakers

But again on the video stuff, distributing uncompressed/analog video in such ways will eventually give way to IP streaming which will use CAT5.

banjomacman wrote:...I would prefer to stay with a Mac... ...and then add ethernet drops at all my outlets and switches

I do not know of any lighting controls that use Ethernet to control the local switch. Rather, I believe the common approach to this space is to deploy what are essentially software controlled keypads in place of switches. These keypads can be programmed to provide one or several controls (dimmer, switch, etc.). The signal from the keypad is sent to a central control computer (usually running some Windows OS). The computer controls a large AC switching matrix to which all the lights, plugs, etc. that are to be controlled are connected.

This type of system does not meet your needs as you have described them. But, I thought knowing about it might help might better understand why someone would run cat5 to switch boxes.

So, I have to agree with the previous posters, cat5 is fine to pre-install. But, you might not need to hit every switch box. As an alternative, I would recommend laying in cheap empty plastic ducting from some central location to various spaces in your house. You can just leave it unexposed behind the walls. But, do make a map of the locations so you can mount a cut-in box later. A good idea is to have at least one duct to every wall in a room.

Just out of curiousity; are the wires in your houses (US) just loose wires inside the walls ? You never encapsule them in pipes/conduit?

This may not be relevant, as I live in Norway, but here most smarthome systems use BUS-wiring. Basicly its just a to lead wire that goes from switch to switch/outlet and gets connected to a central interface in the fusebox. Usually all dimmers and switches reside here to, the switches are just springloaded to register a low-voltage pulse. Here, this is not hard to plan on, you just run a extra flexible pipe to every switchbox. Usually, outlets are connected via the switchbox in some way, so fixing things afterwards is not a problem.

Also, I would recomend CAT6 in every room. You can never have enough! In my opinion, WiFi is only reliable for phones and tablets. Theres nothing like hardwired internet! You may not need CAT6 right away, but seeing as _my_ provider ups the bandwith on my fiber every year, theres no point is saving pennies installing CAT5.