Hi guys,
sorry … my first post here and I hope that I have posted in the right place Forgive me if not.
I am at the beginning of a new build of a new house here in Australia. I have renovated another house before and centralised all the Ethernet in a switching cabinet which worked absolutely fantastic. I will repeat that.
I want to take a step further and integrate home automation and OpenHAB. There are a lot of topics about hardware and some on wiring but I have not really found a good article helping me with all my questions.
Here in Australia we have a switchboard standard AS3000:2007 which does not state that you cannot have 230VAC and 24VDC in the same switching cabinet. So this would allow me to centralise all my lights and switches into a switching cabinet and switch the lights with a 24VDC / 230VAC relay. So cabling for lights is std 240 VAC electrical cable.
If I go with 24VDC to my switches I could just simply run Cat 6 Ethernet cable to all my switches. So later if I go for full blown wifi or smart switches (e.g. Mr SUPERHOUSE).
I am looking at Phillips Hue lights atm … but as other article mention that gets expensive quickly and if bridge goes down the light doesn’t work.
So could you please help me with the following:
- Is Cat6 to switches, 240VAC to lights, relays a recommendable approach?
- A lot of people seem to be concerned that they can’t switch lights on if WIFI breaks down … This really mostly happens when power out … then the lights don’t work anyway … thoughts?
- Any guides on sizing the switching cabinet? At this stage I would cater for relays, safety switches / circuit breakers, 24VDC PSU.
- If you centralise lighting to switch board how do you handle dimmers? Any good suggestions?
- I plan to use Synology NAS as OpenHAB platform. Better to use Rasberry PI?
I have so many more questions but that’s a good start. Thanks a lot for your help.
Cheers