On September 13, 2009 at 07:37, yardbird said...
How often does it happen that you go into a home to JUST do lighting control? That happen a lot? As a CI you bring a lot to the table. You know, by constant exposure to this stuff, what works and what doesn't. Best practices when setting up this or that. You make the integration more natural to the way people live. You guys think beyond the simple light switch because you configure this stuff all the time. People who aren't CIs don't think about it. They don't have to. Flip a switch... light goes on. Now when you install a lighting control system.... it needs to work logically... like a human would make it work if they didn't have to think about it.
More often than you might think. I'd say about 20% of my jobs are shades and lighting only.
I would guess that the average lighting system has between 50-75 loads. My personal system has around 60 central loads and 6 decentralized.
One of the goals of lighting control is to clean up the walls. Home and Away buttons on keypads are nice but only a DIY would desire the techie benefits of a lighting system without the aesthetic.
If Lutron follows their history Radio Ra2 will remain restricted for 2-3 years while the system is perfected. Then it will be released into the electrical distribution market, with very slight pricing or feature restrictions.
I employ conditonals on perhaps 10% of my lighting jobs. Typically a toggle is a toggle, a scene is a scene and KISS the best paradigm. DIY are not the issue. Electrical contactors are. A DIY is not going to heir a CI but the EC may be competition. More importantly are the way manufacturers setup their pricing structure and the electrical distribution works on very small profit margins. We cannot exist on those margins.
One of the neat segways from Raido Ra to Homeworks was the limit of 32 loads and 16 keypads. Expansion via Chronos was a mega-kludge and brought the price into Homeworks territory but with few of the benefits of Homeworks. The new Homeworks QS will be a VERY differernt animal. But if the only difference is the absence of conditionals Lutron may be instroducing a situation where this product could canibalize Homeworks sales.
Alan
