recommendation on light controller

[laser3kw]

I am on the board for our fire department. In an effort to reduce operating expenses, we are looking at energy savings. We just converted to all LED lights, now I want to add a controller that shuts off lights when no one is in the area (motion detection). And when we get a tone, turn on the appropriate light (equipment room, equipment bays). Along with that, a smart system that can modulate the heat and maybe control the doors so if they are left open to long, they close them.
I have done some research on the internet, but I would like to tapped into the experience here at GJ.

Thanks in advance!

 

[klassenl]

Phone your local electrician. Talk to him about what you want to do. Then phone another local electrician and talk to him. They may have different solutions for you but you will have a place to start.

 

[AntonLargiader]

For lighting, you may have already gotten the low-hanging fruit by going to LED and further tweaking may not really have a payback. If the lighting component of your electric bill is only $30, and all of the automation in the world will only get it to $20, go no farther, right?

Heat control seems like a way more likely candidate for improvement. But if your existing process is pretty close to ideal, there's little to be gained. What do you know about the costs that you are trying to reduce? How great are they, and how low can they reasonably go?

 

[laser3kw]

For lighting, you may have already gotten the low-hanging fruit by going to LED and further tweaking may not really have a payback. If the lighting component of your electric bill is only $30, and all of the automation in the world will only get it to $20, go no farther, right?

Heat control seems like a way more likely candidate for improvement. But if your existing process is pretty close to ideal, there's little to be gained. What do you know about the costs that you are trying to reduce? How great are they, and how low can they reasonably go?

I am just starting to explore this and those are the questions I try to answer - bang for the buck.
I frequently find lights all over the station on with no one in sight. As much as the chief encourages people to turn off lights, they just don't do it. If we can keep 80 or 100 tubes from burning 24/7, I think that will have a good impact on our bill.
Same with heat. If we can manage zones more efficiently, big pay back. No reason to keep the equipment bay any higher than 55° in the winter. Day use (office areas) comfortable vs night use cool.
Auto overhead door closer, same as above. People just seem to leave them open (even just a few feet) driving the heater into over time.
In today connected environment, this should be "easy" to accomplish. The residential market has systems already where you can turn on lights, lock door or adjust heat / cool form your phone. I am hoping to find that there are commercial systems out there that I can start some discussions with.

 

[nadogail]

You might consider spring wound "twist timers" where the user turns the knob to enable the circuit to be energized. I have an electric space heater in the garage my wife uses, it has a 30 minute timer, she can have the heater on any time she wants; but at 30 minutes it will turn off if left unattended. Should she walk off and leave it on, it will turn itself off when the time runs out.

At the union schoolhouse, the classroom lights are on 3 hour timers.

 

[jeepxj]

I am just starting to explore this and those are the questions I try to answer - bang for the buck.
I frequently find lights all over the station on with no one in sight. As much as the chief encourages people to turn off lights, they just don't do it. If we can keep 80 or 100 tubes from burning 24/7, I think that will have a good impact on our bill.
Same with heat. If we can manage zones more efficiently, big pay back. No reason to keep the equipment bay any higher than 55° in the winter. Day use (office areas) comfortable vs night use cool.
Auto overhead door closer, same as above. People just seem to leave them open (even just a few feet) driving the heater into over time.
In today connected environment, this should be "easy" to accomplish. The residential market has systems already where you can turn on lights, lock door or adjust heat / cool form your phone. I am hoping to find that there are commercial systems out there that I can start some discussions with.

just put everything on motion sensing and the first light by the doors when people come in at night on dusk-dawn. no need for automation. "keep it simple stupid"

auto door shutting is a bad idea even with sensors. put a camera on it and chastise the guy.

 

[AntonLargiader]

Disable the heat when the door is open... that might be all the door control you need.

 

[Fasthotrod]

The lighting part is relatively easy... with the addition of some smart switches, motion detectors, and a smart hub, you could have full control of the system and have programmed times for the lights to be on/off as well as remote control of them.

My only 'concern' is how you would take the signal from the "tone." I assume that's when the fire house gets a call and the alarm/klaxon goes off to alert everyone to get their gear and head to the trucks? What does that system look like?

Here at my house I had a similar requirement. I have lights on the house and the shop that I wanted to turn on at sunset, and stay on until later in the evening. (9 p.m. for the shop outdoor lights, 10 p.m. for the house outdoor lights.) I picked up a Samsung SmartThings hub for integrating everything, which uses ZWave technology to connect to remote devices such as light switches, motion sensors, etc...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FJGGWJL/?tag=atomicindus08-20

Then I went out and got some GE smart switches. You can get them as simple on/off devices, or as dimmer controlled switches. (I have both.)

Switch:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M1AHC3R/?tag=atomicindus08-20

Dimmer:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MUCZA1C/?tag=atomicindus08-20

I turned off the lighting circuit and removed the existing light switch, and replaced it with the GE smart switch. I powered the circuit back up and then told the SmartThings hub to find the switch. Once it did, I had control over the switch via the SmartThings app on my phone. I told it that I wanted the outside lights to turn on at sunset, and to turn off at 9 p.m. at the shop and 10 p.m. at the house.

Then I decided that I also wanted the lights to turn on/off based on motion detection. I bought this remote indoor/outdoor sensor to hang just outside of the garage door on the house to capture motion approaching the house.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KP4T3MS/?tag=atomicindus08-20

I connected it to the SmartThings hub, then told the hub to turn on the outdoor lights on the house and the shop if it detects motion, and then turn off 10 minutes after motion was last detected. It worked great... except that it would turn the lights off before 9 p.m. / 10 p.m. like I had originally wanted. Oops... I just had to re-program the motion sensor to work within a certain time window... in my case I told it to only listen for the motion sensor starting after 9 p.m. for the shop lights, and 10 p.m. for the house lights... and stop listening for it at sunrise. It works perfectly now.

So for your application, you might be able to do something similar. Use multiple motion sensors to cover the area in the firehouse that you will control for lighting, and have them report to the Smart hub. Replace the existing light switches for those lighting circuits with the GE smart switches, and you can have them operate normally (typical on/off from flipping the switch) as well as turn on/off based on motion detection. Even if someone turned it on manually and walked out of the room and forgot to turn them off, the motion detector would sense them in the space and then turn the lights off 10 minutes after they left. (Or whatever time you specified in the programming. It could be a minute, 10 minutes, and hour, etc...)

I'm sure that you could also have different motion detectors than the one I listed above... it's battery operated, and you may prefer to have one powered by 120 VAC instead. (Which would require an electrician, conduit, permit, etc...)

I did a quick look for sensors and found this little guy:

https://www.zwaveproducts.com/colle...ff-zwave5-eco-ecolink-z-wave-plus-firefighter

It appears to be a ZWave activated switch that picks up on a loud sound from a smoke detector. If you have a loud siren/klaxon when you get a 'tone' then this might be able to detect it going off and send a remote trigger to the Smart hub, which could be programmed to tell the lights to turn on in those areas you mentioned.

There are also ZWave garage door tilt sensors that you could use to let people know that the doors were left open. You could even setup a routine that if it were open for a certain time period that it would send a status update to you, or flash a light, turn on a buzzer, etc... There are also garage door opener replacement switches that can control the doors automatically, but we'd need to know what we're working with before going in that direction.

I'm sure that there are a lot of ways to accomplish what you want to do... and I'm making a lot of assumptions based on limited information, but hopefully it's helping to get some ideas going.

Hope this helps.

Mark

 

[jeepxj]

You can just get a 12v signal from the bell alarm in the station and convert to zwave:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B6RZ7MM/?tag=atomicindus08-20

 

[laser3kw]

Thanks guys, that is some great information! It gives me a starting point and know what questions to ask.