I'm new to this site, but the reading I've done here already tells me that I'm in the right place!
My (new to me) home has a lighting system that is 100% low voltage controls, with 5 relay panels around the house, each containing 24 120VAC relays, switched by 24V system that goes to all the switches. It is a GE system like you might find in a school or business. When I bought the house, there was no wiring diagram or map to show what relays go to what switches or what lights etc... and with 120 of them, and close to 200 light switches in the house... very time consuming to do the mapping.
So, being an engineer, I would like to put an indicator light on every relay to show which are energized and which aren't. In the ideal world, I'd also include indicators on the low voltage side so that if a switch is pressed, I would get an "On request" or "Off request" light at the box (and even more ideal, have it lit for 5 seconds, not just the length of the momentary actuation).
I looked at 120VAC LED indicators with pigtail wiring, which would be great, but at about $3 each, a fairly expensive project, not counting the low voltage side.
I also considered making a real project of it, and putting an I/O processor that looks at all 24 AC lines and all 48 low voltage lines and outputs something to 7 segment displays or something like that. This idea is pretty interesting in that I could put an old, low power computer somewhere and route a serial I/O to each box and write an application that monitors the whole house. This is much sexier, but not sure that I have the time to do this.
So the question to my esteemed colleagues, any ideas on how to do the monitoring in an inexpensive way?
Much appreciate the collaboration!
My (new to me) home has a lighting system that is 100% low voltage controls, with 5 relay panels around the house, each containing 24 120VAC relays, switched by 24V system that goes to all the switches. It is a GE system like you might find in a school or business. When I bought the house, there was no wiring diagram or map to show what relays go to what switches or what lights etc... and with 120 of them, and close to 200 light switches in the house... very time consuming to do the mapping.
So, being an engineer, I would like to put an indicator light on every relay to show which are energized and which aren't. In the ideal world, I'd also include indicators on the low voltage side so that if a switch is pressed, I would get an "On request" or "Off request" light at the box (and even more ideal, have it lit for 5 seconds, not just the length of the momentary actuation).
I looked at 120VAC LED indicators with pigtail wiring, which would be great, but at about $3 each, a fairly expensive project, not counting the low voltage side.
I also considered making a real project of it, and putting an I/O processor that looks at all 24 AC lines and all 48 low voltage lines and outputs something to 7 segment displays or something like that. This idea is pretty interesting in that I could put an old, low power computer somewhere and route a serial I/O to each box and write an application that monitors the whole house. This is much sexier, but not sure that I have the time to do this.
So the question to my esteemed colleagues, any ideas on how to do the monitoring in an inexpensive way?
Much appreciate the collaboration!
