Landscape lighting conrol

[brokersteve]

I'm planning to install some wired low voltage lighting around the house, yard and shop. I would like string lights from the house to the shop and down to the dock. More string lights around the fire pit and play court. Lots of uplighting around the house and on trees, hardscape lights on steps down to the lake, and lights on the dock itself. Maybe path lighting out front as well. I would love to be able to control every light through an app, Alexa or something similar. Problem is, the "smart" lights I find online have their own app they use. I don't want to have to open several apps (and try to remember which app for which component) to turn on something. Is there a company that provides something that will tie everything together, or provides all components? I have read about the Ring Smart Lighting system, which we use for the house, but I don't know if it will control everything. It says it can be added to any low voltage transformer for smart control, but I doubt the string lights would be run through the transformer. I may not be describing this well. Just confused about how to buy right the first time. Any input is appreciated.

 

[nadogail]

All of my landscape lighting is controlled by Photo Cells.

 

[cybrdyke]

You've stepped into one of the lingering issues of the lighting industry. Lighting control has been around for a long time, but in the USA, it's never been widely accepted. This is still true today, but upcoming building code changes aim to make them mandatory. So, what we are seeing is that each large manufacturer is trying to climb to the top of the mountain by providing their own controls, operating system, and app. If you're old enough to remember when PC's were becoming popular, you'll remember that there was Wang, Gateway, Dell, and more all vying to be top dog. Same thing is going on in lighting right now.
Even with that going on, most customers dont put lighting control in their buildings for a lot of reasons. Complexity, cost, functionality and reliability are the most common reasons. But the biggest reason is because any building will have lighting fixtures from several different manufacturers, each having their own control system and app. You'll end up with multiple apps on your phone, each functioning differently, some more reliable than others, and so on. It's a mess. On a smaller scale, the same is true in residential settings.
Another thing that's happening is that we are finding out that there is such a thing as "app overload". Too many things have apps that dont really need them and people are starting to realize this. While it might seem really cool to be able to control each light individually, I doubt that there's any real use for that and it sounds like more of a PITA to me.
Your description sounds like an ambitious project. Be aware that any of the lighting products that you find on Amazon, etc., are complete garbage. You might want to talk to a professional landscape lighting company in your area. Be sitting down when you see some of the pricing.
Good luck,
CD

 

[mrVanagon]

My family biz is designing, installing, and maintaining landscape lighting systems. You can use the Ring smart outlets to control any 15A, 120V device. If you want to use them to control your landscape lights you would plug your transformer into a Ring smart outlet and switch it with their app. You would need more Ring smart outlets to separately control 120V bistro lights. Since you already use Ring stuff, this is likely the easiest way to do what you are planning. There are some interesting pro-level devices that will let you, for example, control the color, brightness, and scheduling of each light individually. I've seen them at trade shows but never paid too much attention because our customers generally won't pay more than $500/light, no matter how cool they are.

The big question for customers who want very granular control of their lights: is this level of control needed enough to warrant the cost?

 

[Metal-Marc]

Lucky you. I just installed 300ft of string lights in my backyard yesterday. Bought these for cheap on amazon. 2700K dimmable string lights and a dimmable control socket.

The Treatlife app is dead easy to use, and it's also dead easy to integrate with other apps. They claim Alexa/Google integration, which I don't use, so I wont comment. However, I was able to integrate the dimmer with SmartThings in a matter of minutes. I can control the string lights with SmartThings on a schedule, on/off and whichever intensity I choose (1%-100%).

The dimmer is on an outdoor GFCI socket.

It's fantastic.







Dimmer set at 75% ^^

 

[flyingblind]

What I use for the hardscape lights, Only downside is it uses 2.4ghz. This is the 110 power plug for the fountain. runs the bug zapper too. Also 2.4ghz, All controlled from the same app on my phone.