Hello all,
Long time lurker and gatherer of information from this site, thank you to all for your knowledge.
I've started a landscape lighting project recently, and while I feel I have a solid plan in place, I haven't been able to come up with a good plan for control.
The general gist of the plan is LED lighting for a driveway I'm installing. The drive is 450' long and will be concrete. This project is starting from scratch. I intend to line both driveway edges with 3W, LED, flush mount fixtures, that are dimmable. My plan calls for 60 fixtures, spaced 20' apart, and offset by 10' from each side to avoid the runway effect. Each side of the driveway will have its power source from the middle, then run in both directions to keep the wire runs to 225' or so. So in other words, the power supply will run to one side of the driveway and split to go towards the home and the street. The same main source will also go under the drive and split again to power the other side of the drive in both directions.
My total wattage is 180w. The fixtures are rated at 12-24v. I intend to use a 24v PSU to help with volatage loss across my long runs. My question comes when involving the power supply. I want to be able to dim the lights for everyday visual indicators, but would like to leave myself the option to trigger the dimmer with a sensor, so when a vehicle pulls into the drive, the marker indicators will dim up while the drive is in use, then return to the lower setting after a timeout period. Is it best to do the dimming on the front side (120v) of the PSU, or on the back side (24v)?
I currently run a pretty extensive insteon package in my home and out buildings. Unfortunately they do not have an outdoor dimmable unit, only an on/off unit. I'm also open to other solutions, as I've recently been having difficulty with the insteon hub, and plan to make a move to Home Assistant this winter to control the insteon as well as all the other devices in my home. The property is well covered in Wifi from my unifi system with an AP within 200' of the middle of the drive.
The Shelly units look interesting. The dimmer unit says it's rated at 200w, but I'm concerned I may be too close to the top at 180w consumption.
I have found PSUs that are dimmable on the front end, but still not sure what the best method is to accomplish this.
Any and all comments/questions are appreciated. I've successfully installed two other LV LED landscape packages around my home so I'm not a total noob, but the dimming has me stumped. Thanks again.
Heyroadie
Long time lurker and gatherer of information from this site, thank you to all for your knowledge.
I've started a landscape lighting project recently, and while I feel I have a solid plan in place, I haven't been able to come up with a good plan for control.
The general gist of the plan is LED lighting for a driveway I'm installing. The drive is 450' long and will be concrete. This project is starting from scratch. I intend to line both driveway edges with 3W, LED, flush mount fixtures, that are dimmable. My plan calls for 60 fixtures, spaced 20' apart, and offset by 10' from each side to avoid the runway effect. Each side of the driveway will have its power source from the middle, then run in both directions to keep the wire runs to 225' or so. So in other words, the power supply will run to one side of the driveway and split to go towards the home and the street. The same main source will also go under the drive and split again to power the other side of the drive in both directions.
My total wattage is 180w. The fixtures are rated at 12-24v. I intend to use a 24v PSU to help with volatage loss across my long runs. My question comes when involving the power supply. I want to be able to dim the lights for everyday visual indicators, but would like to leave myself the option to trigger the dimmer with a sensor, so when a vehicle pulls into the drive, the marker indicators will dim up while the drive is in use, then return to the lower setting after a timeout period. Is it best to do the dimming on the front side (120v) of the PSU, or on the back side (24v)?
I currently run a pretty extensive insteon package in my home and out buildings. Unfortunately they do not have an outdoor dimmable unit, only an on/off unit. I'm also open to other solutions, as I've recently been having difficulty with the insteon hub, and plan to make a move to Home Assistant this winter to control the insteon as well as all the other devices in my home. The property is well covered in Wifi from my unifi system with an AP within 200' of the middle of the drive.
The Shelly units look interesting. The dimmer unit says it's rated at 200w, but I'm concerned I may be too close to the top at 180w consumption.
I have found PSUs that are dimmable on the front end, but still not sure what the best method is to accomplish this.
Any and all comments/questions are appreciated. I've successfully installed two other LV LED landscape packages around my home so I'm not a total noob, but the dimming has me stumped. Thanks again.
Heyroadie
