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Step 2Cabling
These dimmer control units are connected using Cat5e cabling back to my understairs cupboard, where the rest of the kit is.
The control units (as you can see from the pictures above) can be easily disconnected from the wall by unplugging their RJ45 plug from the connector. Each dimmer location in the house has a single run of Cat5e to it all home ran back to under the stairs.
The units themselves simply act as a potentiometer, the variable resistors have 3 legs, looking from the front, the leftmost one is grounded, the middle one (the wiper) is the output, and the right one gets 10 Volts DC.
Notice the use of heatshrink sleeving and a dab of epoxy to hold everything in place, this makes for a more reliable unit I've found Connecting them up in this way means that as you turn them clockwise from off to on, the voltage on the middle leg rises gradually from 0v to 10v - This is used to control the dimmer units manually.
Here are some pictures of how the dimmer control cabling terminates under the stairs, I've used standard Cat5e cabling throughout as it is cheap and good quality, I've also used RJ45 plugs and connectors for the same reasons, this lighting system has nothing to do with ethernet, tcp-ip or the like, I'm just using the cabling and connectors normally associated with this sort of thing.
In the picture above, each yellow patch cord represents a dimmer control location, I've used the RJ45 wall sockets as a means of connecting these cat5e runs up to both the dimmers and the temperature sensor control board.
The dimmers themselves are 4 channel units that support both DMX and 0-10v signal to control their output.
I didn't explain this very well originally, so here is some more information on how the 0-10v signal and DMX work together.
The setting of the 0-10v signal (i.e the setting of the dimmer control unit) will (if brighter) override the DMX setting.
This isn't ideal, as it does mean you can leave lights on by mistake, as turning the dimmer all the way up will force the light to stay on.
However, we don't actually use the dimmer controls manually, the lights come on automatically if it is both dark outside (there is a light sensor in the garden) and if someone is in the room (the PIR sensors tell the server if this is the case)
So there is never any need to turn the lights on yourself!
The other potential problem is if the system turned the light on, and you actually wanted to turn it off, turning the dimmer control down would have no effect either.
In reality though, the dimmer racks have a configuration switches on them, should I ever experience a difficulty where the server did something I didn't like, I could either flick one of the DIP switches on the rack, or unplug the DMX lead!!
I hope this now makes more sense.
The control units (as you can see from the pictures above) can be easily disconnected from the wall by unplugging their RJ45 plug from the connector. Each dimmer location in the house has a single run of Cat5e to it all home ran back to under the stairs.
The units themselves simply act as a potentiometer, the variable resistors have 3 legs, looking from the front, the leftmost one is grounded, the middle one (the wiper) is the output, and the right one gets 10 Volts DC.
Notice the use of heatshrink sleeving and a dab of epoxy to hold everything in place, this makes for a more reliable unit I've found Connecting them up in this way means that as you turn them clockwise from off to on, the voltage on the middle leg rises gradually from 0v to 10v - This is used to control the dimmer units manually.
Here are some pictures of how the dimmer control cabling terminates under the stairs, I've used standard Cat5e cabling throughout as it is cheap and good quality, I've also used RJ45 plugs and connectors for the same reasons, this lighting system has nothing to do with ethernet, tcp-ip or the like, I'm just using the cabling and connectors normally associated with this sort of thing.
In the picture above, each yellow patch cord represents a dimmer control location, I've used the RJ45 wall sockets as a means of connecting these cat5e runs up to both the dimmers and the temperature sensor control board.
The dimmers themselves are 4 channel units that support both DMX and 0-10v signal to control their output.
I didn't explain this very well originally, so here is some more information on how the 0-10v signal and DMX work together.
The setting of the 0-10v signal (i.e the setting of the dimmer control unit) will (if brighter) override the DMX setting.
This isn't ideal, as it does mean you can leave lights on by mistake, as turning the dimmer all the way up will force the light to stay on.
However, we don't actually use the dimmer controls manually, the lights come on automatically if it is both dark outside (there is a light sensor in the garden) and if someone is in the room (the PIR sensors tell the server if this is the case)
So there is never any need to turn the lights on yourself!
The other potential problem is if the system turned the light on, and you actually wanted to turn it off, turning the dimmer control down would have no effect either.
In reality though, the dimmer racks have a configuration switches on them, should I ever experience a difficulty where the server did something I didn't like, I could either flick one of the DIP switches on the rack, or unplug the DMX lead!!
I hope this now makes more sense.
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