The drywall is just starting to go up in my family’s basement project. I’ve been looking into residential light control systems. Some of the ones I’ve seen have been an upwards of $2,000. I’m thinking it'd be much more fun (and cost effective!) to implement my own Arduino-based system.
The real problem lies in the actual control of the lights. Each group of lights will need to be controlled by a switch-based dimmer system. It would be much simpler if the microcontroller was the only point of control. Alas, this is not the case. I’m assuming I need to use a dimmer switch that lets an outside device interface with it. That would avoid the problem completely as the switch and Arduino could both control the lights the Arduino would control the lights through the dimmer switch.
Can anybody recommend a better solution/approach or suggest a dimmer switch that has some kind of “remote” interface?
Update 3/1/2013: I eventually went with an Insteon-based solution using a custom shield from Good Robot. It works great and can be used to control anything Insteon, not just lights. I'll post an answer here when I get a chance to write up something useful.
Answer
I setup a whole house with X10 about 10 years ago, and while it worked, it could be kind of flaky. If I were going to do it again, I would look at more modern products like Insteon. Insteon is supposed to resolve a lot of the flakiness that X10 has.
I wouldn't bother trying to build the device AC control modules (dimmers, remote switches, etc) yourself as working with mains voltages is very dangerous unless you really know what you're doing.
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