'Intelligent' house

[Nightfire]

I'm wanting to network all our house upto a pc I've had lying around the house for years. I understand that I can network all the electrical appliances via the main electrics in the house, but I can't remember the name of the switches I need to buy!

Can anyone tell me the name of them? Hard to explain them in a forum too.

They're basically a normal switch, except a bigger panel. Can use them as normal light switches oir as a dimmer switch if it's held in. When you remove the cover, there's 2 turnable switches which you turn for it to be identified as a certain name - ie; Turn the notches to B on one switch and 2 on the other, and you can access the lights remotely by calling commands to B2

 

[Has]

Hmmm interesting.......

Only things that spring to mind are the X10 systems..... but ur talking mega mega money.

Whats your budget?

 

[sn00p]

X10. ~£20 a light switch.

Our building here has intelligent lighting & heating (no light switches at all!), but we designed all the electronics & software ourselves.

 

[KDF]

http://www.letsautomate.com/10030.cfm?

Think this is the one your meaning.. you can get much better looking ones now though including one you can just wave you hand close to ..

 

[Nightfire]

Cheers. The X10's are what I was looking for

 

[Has]

Snoop.... even with the switches being £20-25 a pop he need much more to get the house fully wired up!

If you look around nightfire... theres places online offering special discounts for packages to wire up the house.

Ive looked at these in the past and most are all x10 friendly ;0

 

[V1NNY]

I'm sure this was on the gadget show last night on ch5

 

[Hippychick]

I didn't think X10 switches were that expensive :S I was watching a programme the other night (the gadget show) and the switches they used were about £25 and looked pretty smart... I liked the funtionality they offered too. Not bad if your starting from scratch...

Soz has I pressed edit in ur post instead of posting from new lol

 

[sn00p]

Snoop.... even with the switches being £20-25 a pop he need much more to get the house fully wired up!

If you look around nightfire... theres places online offering special discounts for packages to wire up the house.

Ive looked at these in the past and most are all x10 friendly ;0

He only asked about light switches though!

Our solution was much neater that x10, all sockets, lights & sensors are run back to a single point in the room (actually a "box" in the ceiling) - this allows us to use normal fittings for sockets, lights etc - we're also able to monitor current consumption etc. We did have the advantage that we'd renovated our building ourselves, so we were able to route all our wiring in a manner that was suitable for us! Obviously x10 has the advantage that it xfers over mains so is an easy retrofit.

 

[Nightfire]

Yeah it's just lights at the mo that I'm wanting to do. Can't afford to do the whole lot yet, so thought I'd start with the basics

 

[Hippychick]

Those switches did look pretty mint :approve: IMHO

I wouldn't mind them round my place