Legit Reviews

Was thinking about adding some RF dimmer switches for my home theater room so I can use it with the Logitech Harmony 890 remote. Anyone know much about RF switches? I was looking at www.SmartHome.com and they look to be $90 a switch. I checked with home depot and lowes locally and no one sells them.

I looked at them before the remodel, decided they were too much money vs the benefit i would have gotten. But having them in a home theater would be real sweet. I found them cheaper at several sites but never researched the sites since i decided against them. from what i read at the time they required a propietary controller the would have run me about another $150 on top of the switches.

http://store.homeseer.com/store/VRS15-1 ... 75C63.aspx

http://xponenta.com/cgi/shop.cgi?page_t ... &sku=45001

Nate,

I'd really direct this to the Home Automation forum on AVS Forum. They can tell you everything you'd want to know about Lutron or any of the other lighting systems. Most of the good ones work on a RF network like Lutron's Radio Ra product.

Were my co-worker here today I'd ask him as he does those types of systems on the side but he's off for the Christmas holiday.

- Skip

Popular Mechanics January 2009 magazine has an article about similar ones. One is from a company called INSTEON and uses RF and power line to be controllable, and they mention Z-Wave, Lutron Homeworks, and Vantage Controls, but the latter 2 are for professional installers they say.

I could not find the article online, but they basically can use the pwer lines in your home to communicate so you can have a panel (instead of a light switch) to turn multiple lights on and off, etc.

At the end of the article he says he is going to show how to expand the system next month.

Mike

Nate, are you wanting to just control one room in the house? Or are you looking to control the whole house. For a whole house solution from a good company you could be looking at a grand or better. If you just want one for your theater room I know Lutron makes a couple that should be available at your local hardware store.

Skippman wrote:Nate, are you wanting to just control one room in the house? Or are you looking to control the whole house. For a whole house solution from a good company you could be looking at a grand or better. If you just want one for your theater room I know Lutron makes a couple that should be available at your local hardware store.

was just looking for the theater room... it has a dimmer for the main ceiling lights and then another for the back hallway, so I just need two RF dimmers. Also what local stores would have something like this as I have looked and found nothing.

Really? I would think Lowes would have IR ones. But you need RF and that's going to get pricey. Most of that stuff is designed to act as part of a whole house system like the Radio Ra thing I mentioned earlier.

Not to sound stupid, but did you check out X-10 to see if they have anything?

I was thinking that I might just want to keep everything RF and not mixing RF, X-10 and IR signals for my setup. Home Depot does have X-10 dimmers (like this one) and they are $20 less than RF switches, but none are in stock locally.

Should i save some money and go X-10 or spend some more and get RF? Not sure about the pros/cons and if I might get signal interference with X-10.

Thinking I'm going to get this:

http://www.smarthome.com/2476D/SwitchLi ... ite/p.aspx