Lighting Control Overview:
A complete lighting control system from Connect Home Theater and Automation offers many benefits to the homeowner.  Lighting control systems are extremely reliable and versatile.  We can integrate a lighting control system in with other systems in your home.  For example, if it’s integrated into your security system and you arm your security system as you’re leaving, the lights automatically turn off throughout your house.  Conversely, selected lights can be programmed to turn on as you enter your dark house in the evening.  Lighting control systems offer “scenes” at the touch of a button.   A button labeled “artwork” can adjust all of the lights in your home so that all of your artwork is highlighted.  A button labeled “clean” can turn all of the lights up for housecleaning purposes.  A “good night” scene can turn all of the lights out except for leaving a few pathway lights dimly lit in case you need to use the bathroom during the night (or get a midnight snack).

Lighting Control vs. Conventional lighting
In a conventionally wired house, the light switches are all “hard-wired” to each light or set of lights.  In a lighting control system, the keypad buttons are assigned through software.  This is a major difference.  If you decide that a conventional light switch should really control a different light than the one it now controls, you’d have to have sheetrock ripped open so that the electrician can re-route your wires.  In a home with our lighting control system, we simply reassign the button to a different light with a laptop and we’re done in a few minutes.  Any button in our system can be assigned to any light or group of lights of any size.  We don’t even charge for this service during the first year (please see the FAQ section about our warranty).

Another advantage of lighting control is the elimination of “wall clutter.”  With conventional wiring, every light or group of lights has to have its own switch or dimmer.  This creates long, ugly rows of light switches in your home.  With lighting control systems, all you have is a single, small, elegant keypad on the wall.  A single button on that keypad can control one light or 100 lights. 

Lighting Control Saves Energy
Lighting control systems are also very popular for saving energy.  Lighting systems are typically programmed so that the brightest setting is 80 to 90% of its full operating voltage.  Even though you can’t tell the light is only operating at 90%, you’re saving energy and doubling the life of your light bulbs at the same time!  Soft start is another advantage of lighting control.  The lights don’t “snap” on to full brightness (which is very hard on the bulbs).  Instead, they “ramp up” to full brightness in as little as one second.

Lighting systems have an astronomical clock which can be leveraged as well.  For outdoor lighting and landscape lighting, the system is programmed in terms of sunset and sunrise instead of time.  This way, the system automatically adjusts every day to actual sunrise and sunset based on the latitude and longitude programmed into the lighting controller.  Now, your landscape lights turn on at dusk, precisely, every day.  Interior lights can also turn on dimly as the sun starts to set and automatically brighten over the period of a few hours as the sun is setting.  By the time the sun has set, you haven’t even noticed that your house lights were gradually brightening the whole time.

Convenient Living
We have integrated lighting in many other useful ways.  Some people need to get out of bed during the night.  We can install a pressure-sensitive pad under the carpeting alongside the bed so that as soon as your feet hit the floor, a pathway is instantly lit to the bathroom or the kitchen.  Of course you don’t want the pathway lights coming on at full blinding brightness, so they come on at 25% which is just enough for you to easily see your way.  The lights then turn themselves off a few minutes later.

Lighting can also be integrated into door contacts.  For example, having the closet light turn on automatically when you open the door.  It can even be programmed to turn the light off automatically if you forget to close the closet door!  The door from the garage into the house can be set up so that the lights come on as you enter a dark house with your arms full of groceries.

We also integrate lights into outdoor motion detectors so that selected exterior lights come on when movement is detected around the perimeter of your home.  These detectors are immune to small animals so they will normally only trip if a person walks past.

A lighting control system from Connect Home Theater and Automation provides security, energy savings, and convenience.  You’ll also prolong lamp life and your walls will look 500% better without all of the clutter of conventional light switches.