Howdy from Texas!
This is my first post to a HA news group, although I have been trolling heavily since deciding on doing HA for the house I am building.
I have some scenarios I want to run past those here with experience.
1) I have a long living room (15'x30') that will be divided into two logical sections. There is a front door in the middle of the 30 foot side. In the other long wall are two doors near the corners (one each into the kitchen and dining). So with this logical separation, I want to be able to come in the front door and turn on both sections' lights. Coming in from the kitchen or dining, I only want to have a switch for that section's light. But when I leave each section (say for the evening), I want to have a HA controller that will turn off both of the lights. From what I have read, this should be no problem. Say I use the six button room controller, I could program button A to turn off both fans and both lights (assuming they are all on controllable switches). Specifically using HAI Omni II/Omni Pro and it's corresponding switches, is it possible to program the light switch so that a double tap to the off position does the same thing? 2) In the kids bedrooms, I really like the idea of the 'go to the bathroom' lighting scene. Basically, you get up in the middle of the night and need to go to the bathroom. You have an HA switch that turns on your bedroom, hall and bathroom lights to 20%. You return and press off, and all the lights turn off. My 'logic' question is concerning two children and this function. This same single switch would turn off the main room light when going to bed initially at night. So here's the scenario...the system knows it's dark outside, the bedroom light is on full. The kid goes to bed and they press this switch right next to their bed and it turns off their bedroom light. Later they wake up, press the switch on, the lights rise to 20% in the places listed above. The conflict I see is where one kid goes to bed before the other. So one is in the bathroom showering or whatever before bed. The little one gets up, activates the 20% function, then returns to bed. Just before getting back in bed, they hit the off button. Can the system (again, HAI Omni) be programmed to NOT dim the bathroom or hall light to 20% if they are already on NOR turn off the bathroom or hall light if it queries the switch and sees that it is not set to 20%. In other words, turn on any of the appropriate lights to 20% if they are off, and also turn off the bedroom light regardless of dim level, but never turn off the bath and hall, unless they are at 20%. 3) I also have this dilemma of a wrap around porch and lighting control for it. I will have normal porch lights mounted on the house on all four sides, plus flood lights on the outside of the porch on all four sides as well. Obviously, I do not have a door leading out of the house in all four directions. I have decided on one room controllers for each of the sets of lights at the front and back doors only. I can control each of the four directions with the four buttons and have a master on/off for security reasons. Does this seem like a viable solution? Is there an inline module to power all this remote lighting? How reliable are they? I do not have an attic in this house (structural insulated panels), so will need to put these devices where they are field serviceable. 4) Does anyone know what the laser engraving costs for their switches?Sorry for the diatribe. I am neck deep in high-voltage wiring at the moment and want to get everything in place before I call the sheetrock guys.