Needing help with device status, occupancy, scenes

[JClark]

Hi everyone. Just wondering if anyone can point me in the right direction, possibly another thread that will address this issue, or give any guidance on the best practice for setting up occupancy devices,scenes, and some lighting control based on occupancy and scene status. I think one of my main hurdles right now is the relay setup I am using to control the lights. I am having to use hardwired relays that I can TOGGLE form hs, but I can't read there state. So I have wired each relay back to an extra zone on the alarm panel and am using that to determine the status of the relay. Of course this is making the whole process of switching lights on and off a pain.

So I just thought I would see if anyone else has had any experience with a similar setup, or had any advice for the best way to handle this?

[Rupp]

What protocol are you using for your lighting? It's generally as easy as setting up an event to control a group of lights and triggering this using your preferred method of occupancy sensing.

[JClark]

Rupp,
I'm glad to see you being the one to respond to this question as I believe you have some experience with the DSC plugin. I have kind of an odd situation with this current setup. We have just moved into a new building that has some very unusual wiring. The building is actually split into 3 different locations with different tenants in each one. I've inspected the wiring and unfortunately for now, some of our light circuits aren't ran back to our fusebox! I eventually plan on changing this but time just doesn't permit it right now. So needless to say and x10 control is not an option.

What I have done is run wires to each light switch and installed a smtp relay and just wired the existing switches as dry contacts back to the panels. I am using a dsc pc5208 to drive all the relays and trigger lights on and off. But....... One of the big problems have been the fact that I can't find any way for the DSC panel plugin or the panel itself to be able to tell what state the relay is currently in. Since there is no Relay On or Relay Off command (just a toggle only), I am having to also tie in an additional relay to open and close some extra zones on the DSC panel so that HS can have a way to determine if the light is already on or not. (I have the extra zones as well as the relays programmed to different partitions so that HS can control and use them without having any effect on the main partition of the security system).

Because of all this I am getting a little lost when trying to setup events to trigger lighting. This is how I have started setting this up, and maybe this is where I could use some suggestions as a better way to implement this. (I am not sure if scripting would be a better method then using all these events)

First, I have an virtual Occupancy device for each room. I then have a virtual Light status for each light switch. I then have the zone on the dsc panel that is closed if lights are on, open when lights or off. So for just basic control of one light based on motion, I have to create the following.

Event 1. Monitors zone on DSC panel and if Status Set to Restored, the Virtual Light Switch is set to ON

Event 2. Monitors zone on DSC panel and if Status Set to Opened, the Virtual Light Switch is set to Off

Event 3. Monitors motion in RoomX and sets RoomX Occupancy Status to Occupied if Motion Status is Set to Restored, with condition that RoomX is currently set to Vacant.

Event 4. Triggered when RoomX Motion has been restored for atleast 3 min and Sets RoomX Occupancy Status to Occupied, with condition that RoomX Occupancy Status is not currently Occupied.

Event 5. Monitor RoomX Occupancy Status for change to Occupied. When changed to Occupied, with condition that Virtual Light Switch is currently off, then send DSC output control to relay 4

(Room 4 light is turned on triggering Event1 and changing the status of Virtual Light Switch to On)

Event 6. Monitor RoomX Occupancy Status for change to Vacant. When changed to vacant, with condition that Virtual Light Switch is currently on, then send DSC output control to relay 4

(Room 4 light is turned off triggering Event2 and changing the status of Virtual Light Switch to off)

Now, I believe other then the lag I am going to get because of multiple events monitoring other events and setting status based on event, that this will in theory work. Of course if there is a better way to do this then creating the multiple events, I am all for it!

Where I am really worried is once I get the basic controls setup, I also want to be able to implement all this based on the current Scene Status. So say when Scene Status is set to "Movie Time" lights are not triggered on when movement is detected in the theater room. Does this mean I need to repeat most of the steps above with slight modifications for each scene type and add a condition to each event that says execute only if Scene Status is "xyz"? This is where I thought it may be worth looking into some type of scripting to make this work better.

Sorry for such a long post, but just wanted to make sure I was explaining my current setup the best I could. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!!

[completelyhis]

wow. this is the first I've ever heard of someone using the DSC directly connected to lights switches to control them!

Out of curiosity, did you consider Zwave for a solution? being wireless, it wouldn't be affected by the wiring not going back to your panel.

There may be a way to script the monitoring you're looking for, let me noodle on it for a while.

Ian

[Uncle Michael]

Have you considered using a different relay controller for the lights? That way, you could get On/Off information directly back to HS. I suspect the hardware cost would be relatively small compared to the complexity cost you are now dealing with.

[JClark]

Thanks for the responses. I haven't looked much into the zwave but may now consider it. I actually have now gotten to the DSC panel fully controlling all the lights in our building by using a few different events. The quick research I did on using scripts really help cut down the amount of events I had to use. I could really knock it all down to 1 script per light if I could just figure out how to control the relay output of the DSC panel from within a script. I have not yet found a solution for this. Surprisingly, every since I actually figured out how to set the events up correctly, the lighting control has operated flawlessly. I am using a virtual device to indicate the status and now have the ability to click the On or Off button on the status page and get a response back in under a second. Way better as far as realiablity goes, then using x10.

But I'll still look into the zwave. I wouldn't want to suggest this setup for a typical install, but for us to gain 14 light controls using some extra 5208's we had laying around, it was worth the challenge of making it work!