ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area SmartHouse help

Does anyone have any experience with a Molex/AMP SmartHouse system? I have been asked to "dumb down" a house that we "assisted" in the installation of years back. Everyone else involved in the installation back then is gone (including the GC who folded owing everyone money), so the owner called us from a brochure printed up about the house listing us as EC.

I have a call into Molex, but they haven't returned my call yet. I think making the receptacles "dumb" won't take much, (most already are) but all the switches are programmable, and most were programmed. (The house was a home tour house, so making the lights do tricks was more important than doing anything with the receptacles.) Can I make the switches "dumb" by bypassing the smartblock, and using only the 18/2 run to each switch from the smartblock, and using them as plain LV switches?

Hopefully, I'll hear from Molex this week, but I thought I'd check in here first and ask.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Sorry, I can't help since I know very little about smart house wiring. I do know that we were going to delete Article 780 from the NEC when we found out that somebody was still using it.

Good luck.

Hmmm...

I always called that a dumb house. Those owners are finding out the hard way what happens to junk like that after a few years- manufacturer doesn't support it anymore, contractor went bankrupt, nobody knows anything about it, yada, yada, yada.

You don't have that problem with conventional wiring and besides, who cares that you can turn on your washing machine from the next county. Stupid!

-Hal

I would love a fully automated house. If I were building, I would attempt one but I would go with commercial, off-the-shelf hardware and use a standard PC for control. I like the idea of things like the computer checking to see if I left the lights or compressor on out in the garage and turning off lights in the house after a couple of hours. That coupled to the HVAC also could save a lot in utility costs. You just want to be sure you future-proof the design.

The house really does has its up sides. The TV in the master bedroom flashes a small warning when someone rings the doorbell (front or back door), and the the picture-in-picture small screen on the TV pops up showing a camera view of the door. Many of the room lights are tied to the PIR sensors, so in some rooms, as soon as you walk in, they come on. When they programmed the house for the home tour, they only did some minor glitzy stuff with the lights. (The front hall light comes on when the doorbell is pushed, that sort of thing). This was one of two even done in Indiana, and I thought I might get in on a ground floor sort of deal with them. Problem was, energy in the Midwest was too cheap to create a demand for a system touted as energy saving, with a higher initial installed cost. Boy, did that job go sour from the get-go. What a white elephant for me.

So no one has any experience with this type of system? I sure hope Molex calls soon then.

The house really does has its up sides. The TV in the master bedroom flashes a small warning when someone rings the doorbell (front or back door), and the the picture-in-picture small screen on the TV pops up showing a camera view of the door. Many of the room lights are tied to the PIR sensors, so in some rooms, as soon as you walk in, they come on. When they programmed the house for the home tour, they only did some minor glitzy stuff with the lights. (The front hall light comes on when the doorbell is pushed, that sort of thing). This was one of two even done in Indiana, and I thought I might get in on a ground floor sort of deal with them. Problem was, energy in the Midwest was too cheap to create a demand for a system touted as energy saving, with a higher initial installed cost. Boy, did that job go sour from the get-go. What a white elephant for me.

So no one has any experience with this type of system? I sure hope Molex calls soon then.