Dimmers

[fattony]

I'm looking for a dimmer which looks different from the usual knob you press then turn, there may be noting out there but I can hope.

From what I can see we have:

Standard Dimmers
Sliding Dimmers - these don't switch off the light you'd need a seperate switch for this.
Touch Dimmers
Remote Control Dimmer

None of the above take my fancy so is there anything else I've missed?

 

[RF Lighting]

scene setter?

 

[fattony]

thasnks I'll google it

 

[tim west]

you could have touchscreens with room layouts and lights showing whether in a flat plan view or an actual snapshot of the room they are quite unusual but cost a fair bit, the beauty is they can be portable aswell but then they fall in your remote control category.

just a smidging of what is available, nice and pricey!

http://www.simplyautomate.co.uk/acatalog/touchscreens.html

I did it a bit cheaper using a 7inch touch widescreen from ebay it had two inputs so i overlaid the room view over strategically placed switches (using home control software) underneath on the vga input screen, all you saw were the lights in the camera view and when you touched them they came on

 

[breezer]

tim west. i like that

Fat Tony

you could always go for DMX controlled, but it would not be as nce looking as tim west's suggestion.


i have been to a video tape duplicating place (bear with me on this)
they have rows and rows of the same brand of vcr.
they also have one very high quality player.
they had the problem of how to get all the vcrs to start / stop at the same time.

some one came up with the idea of taking the IR LED from the remote control and mounting it forward looking into the racks that hold all the vcrs

they did this with multiple leds, and hey presto, it works.

I was wondering perhaps if you got IR dimmer switches, if perhaps you could do similar and put the IR LED descreetly near the light fitting, but pointing at the dimmer.

you could have one dimmer remote in one room with swicthes to select which IR LED it operated in which room.

ther by you can adjust the light in any room from one place.

just a thought.

 

[tim west]

To add to my last post, you could use a laptop/desktop in dual screen mode one screen could have a cad plan of your house/room whatever sent to an input on the touchscreen and the USB back from the touchscreen would control the Home Control(free software)or Harmony software on the laptop screen this in turn controls X10 devices dotted around the house through a XM10/CM11 or similar computer interface(theres a usb one now rather than the old serial to RJ45).

another cheaper touchscreen that uses underlays such as photos and negates the need of having to use a pc

http://www.simplyautomate.co.uk/acatalog/info_48.html