Fire Side Chat: Benefits of Home Lighting Control
Home Control Enhances Life Safety
From a crime prevention and personal safety standpoint, lighting is an absolutely essential component of home protection. Homeowners are often glad to add it to the mix once they understand that would-be criminals do not like to target well-lit homes. Many of them will, in fact, target a darkened residence where the chance of discovery is greatly reduced.
Outdoor and indoor lighting during nighttime hours reduce the amount of time criminals can safely spend outside a home trying to access an opening. For many years, vintage alarm panels have had the ability to turn on a string of lights inside the home. Most of the time this capability was limited to one address using X-10 power line carrier (PLC) technology.
Many of today’s alarm panels are able to perform the same feat, but they can take it several steps further than vintage systems can. For example, through an elaborate software program built into an alarm panel, alarm technicians can program multiple lights inside and outside the home to come on at certain times of the day and night, as well as certain appliances.
Using a number of PLC technologies, these alarm panels are able to provide enhanced lighting control. Because these software programs are able to accommodate multiple PLC addresses, the potential for multiple lighting control and life safety is enhanced. Alarm panels can also be programmed to turn lights on when CO or smoke is detected in the environment.
2 Ways to Integrate Lighting Control
There are two ways to integrate most lighting control systems with an alarm system. Hardware integration offers a limited set of capabilities where software/data integration widens the scope of control.
“There are two ways to marry a rudimentary security panel with a couple of voltage outputs. The other way is to connect the panel’s serial output to the lighting control system,” says Jay McClellan, president and CEO of Home Automation Inc. (HAI) of New Orleans. The company’s Lumina system will do both, McClellan says.
The serial method offers the most versatile set of options for security dealers. This is because tapping into the data coming out of the serial output of the panel allows the lighting control system to monitor just about everything that goes on in the alarm system. This includes individual detector activations as well as arming/disarming level and scheduled events.
“We’re taking the ASCii text and interpreting it in the Lumina. This enables us to turn lights on during entry delays based on door openings or motion detection,” says McClellan.
“In the case of the Apex interface, the ICM reads the ASCii output. But in reality, the ICM will handle any [data] protocol,” says Aaron Myer of Salt Lake City-based In2Networks, a Honeywell Security technology partner. “Honeywell’s ICM interfaces the [home devices] to the Vista panel’s keypad bus. The Apex panel connects through an on-board serial port.”
A third method is to use an alarm panel with home automation capability, like the Omni by HAI and Apex by Honeywell. There are other alarm panels with home control features to choose from in the marketplace. When lighting control is implemented in this manner, there’s a whole new set of capabilities that security dealers and their clients are able to realize.
Using the power of software, this type of installation will enable the dealer to allow events by day of week, time of day and by security system event. In most installations, outdoor lights are extinguished at a certain hour of the night to save money. In an integrated home control system where the alarm panel is designed specifically for home automation and security, these lights can be dimmed instead, thus saving money.
Another benefit realized by the integrated approach is the reenactment of activities while the family is away from home, such as on vacation.
No matter how you sell it, home lighting control will earn you extra dollars. At the same time, it will provide the homeowner with a number of valuable benefits that may even contribute to the saving of a loved one’s life. Savvy dealers will automatically offer lighting control as an option with every home security bid, in addition to back-up central station reporting.
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About the Author
Al Colombo
Al Colombo is a long-time trade journalist and professional in the security and life-safety markets. His work includes more than 40 years in security and life-safety as an installer, salesman, service tech, trade journalist, project manager,and an operations manager. You can contact Colombo through TpromoCom, a consultancy agency based in Canton, Ohio, by emailing [email protected], call 330-956-9003, visit www.Tpromo.Com.
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