I’m visiting my parents for thanksgiving and they need a fix for the exterior light at the front door. The desired behavior is on at dusk and off around midnight plus local control with a switch at the door. The catch is they want the switch for local control to be a traditional white toggle switch.
The light is actually wired to the basement, so right now this is implemented with a pair of old Insteon X10 toggle switches (the one in the basement actually controlling the light, the one at the front door signaling it) and a Leviton 6308 X10 photocell outside signaling on and off at dusk. The X10 photocell has gotten flaky (only sometimes turning the light on and rarely turning it off) and of course it’s long since discontinued to just replace it.
The exterior lighting in the rear of the house is controlled through a professionally installed Lutron RadioRA2 system, so my immediate suggestion was they get the electrician back to tie the front light into that and put a button pad at the front door, but they want a toggle switch, not a button pad.
Does anyone have suggestions for solutions? The simplest thing would be a new X10 photocell or timer that could just take over control. My overkill solution is putting in something like a home assistant green to do the astronomical timing, sense a smart toggle switch at the door, and control any random smart switch for the actual switching in the basement. Although I don’t know what that smart toggle switch would be.
Thanks!
Did the photo cell get flakey or is it possible there may be some new device causing interference?
If the unit is bad you could open it up and see if you might find a bad component, maybe an old leaky capacitor. I have a pile of old x10 parts but sorry, no photocell units.
Hmm, interference is certainly a possibility given all of the different systems going on in this house plus really old wiring. But whatever the source of the problem, I think I need a new solution for them.
I’ve been poking at this some more myself and am wondering if shelly relays are the answer. Put one at the light to turn it on and off and one at the front door switch as a transmitter. I’m presuming the shelly app (which would be needed for the dusk control) allows one switch to trigger a different relay.
I moved from X10 to Hubitat. I am not sure but I think Hubitat supports shelly directly. Might be an option. You could even replicate the photocell with one of the sensors that includes an ambient light level sensor. Many of the motion sensors have this feature.A couple of rules and you would have it.