Here is a quick way that I reuse some of my lighting equipment depending on the season using individual components. For example right now unless you order via the internet you can not find a good purple spot light. And what I’ve experienced here in our FL weather many times your spot spike can rust and your investment is gone.
Also many of the spots are 100Watts which are real energy suckers and not to mention can get very hot.
So doing some searching and testing here is what I do.
Using a standard spike spot and cheap Daylight CFL bulbs, covered by a aluminum reflector and top it off with a colored lens. 🙂 Simple right?
Disclaimer: I am not a electrician and I only provide this info for entertainment, anything you do is at your own risk.
Green Spray Paint. To cover the outside of the reflector to hide its appearance.
or the spike which you can find at any hardware store.
* Due to the size of the CFL’s, when building you may need to put lens last.
Interchangeable parts, bulb goes out, swap the bulb and your set. The spike/reflector/lens you can use over and over.
‘You‘ control the intensity adding the desired wattage bulbs. If you lights are computer controlled you can even control dimmable CFL’s.
For me only one really, No really designed for outdoor use, I used clear shipping tape to secure the top lens and has worked fine so far from water getting in, of course I don’t turn on any decorations or lights if its raining.
Do a search for the following items in Amazon and pick your colors!
Finished product with the outside of the reflector painted green.
Sorry forgot to take the pic of the Green one… 😦 Enjoy!
Here is a quick breakdown of a Insteon TriggerLinc I use for notifying me upon mail arrival using a external ‘normally open’ contact.
Normal Open contact (These come in all shapes and sizes) i chose a minuature one which I spray panted black to match the color of the box.
You really dont need a fancy Pc system for notification since you can attach this to any insteon device using the tap/tap method if you like but be aware the light will go off when it closes. But you do need a access point to capture the signal. In my case the closest access point is a good 100 feet!!!
As seen in the picture, The TriggerLinc comes with its own contact/magnet but you have the limitation that you need to have the base unit near by. Good news is that the device allows you to attach external contacts like I did here. The box opens very easily.
at places like Home Depot under lighting section. They run for around $7 for 4 double ‘A”s.
For my mailbox the device sits comfortably underneath but you can also use Velcro to hid the device if needed.
What you will get on your side will be the traditional ON/OFF insteon commands.
In my case I have a notification sent to a PC console as well as emails sent to myself.
We’ll after receiving back some of my hard earned money thru 2008. I shelved out the $159 for the Insteon T1700 thermostat.
The device is quite small, which is fine and thinner that my orginary Honeywell one which was a real plus. To install was also very simple.
And technical support was awesome!!! Who expects to call a company and receive a live person and be able to troubleshoot on the phone in less that 3 min. And to top it off the rep even called me back since he had to leave. At the end it was a simple dip switch due to my model. So if after you install it and when you turn on cool and heat comes out and vice-versa, just turn on dip switch two and your set! Thats Again Mike from Venstar!!!!
The only thing would be the ‘light’ on the side of the Insteon module. so in dark areas it does stand out.
Like mentioned above the device is very small and the insteon module even smaller.
Ok, enough Pictures and talk, lets see how to control this device.
For the examples my PLC is # “0D 51 32” and my Thermostat is “01 02 03“.
So in this case 0x02 Means the device is on COOL.
that by two and you get 77 degrees!!
Here insteon of 0x6B we will be using the 0x6C for Cool and 0x6D for HEAT. So lets say you’ve set your device to Cool and want to lower it to 75 Degrees. Just like when we read the temperature, when we set it we need to multiply the requested value * 2 and convert it to HEX. In the sample below the variable Set_Temp holds what we want it to. The next statement converts it to HEX and *2 and presto!
'This is the temperature we want to set Cool to!
'This is the temperature we want to set heat to!
Hope this works for you and its working great for me. Each hour I poll the temperature and as part of that routine I poll my thermostat to keey the information up to date. I’ll post more as I find out!
These were done using a InkJet, I still need to try using a Color Laser to see. Since I got this one off of ebay it was only the 6 key’s which I got the conversion kit off of SmartHome for $5 to 8 bottons.
5th- Not linked to any device but when pressed the PC will turn off all the lights in 2 min’s and set the house state to off, which includes bumping up the thermostat to 80 Degrees.
6th- Linked to my I/O Link to open/monitor the garage.
7th -My Children s room both have a main light and a night light switch, this button is linked to both of them, only thing is the Main Switch has a on – level of 0 which causes only the night light to turn on. The best way for this is to link them manually then go back the the program for Smarthomenet’s and change the turn on code to 0.
8th -Linked to my T1700 Thermostat. Its linked by setting your thermostat to the desiered state then link like any other switch. Very simple and clean. I also link this button back to my PLC so I know its been pressed.
Finally my first Insteon Motion sensor arrived!. The box is average size and has a pretty big label showing SkyLinc and SmartHome technologies.
Out of the box, cool white color.
The device even comes with its own 9V battery so you can start up quickly. Linking is the done the same was a other devices.
Like most of the Insteon device it has its traditional SET button, In this case the ‘SET” button is inside the battery compartment.
For this reason you can see the PIN #2 is on all others are ‘off’ which are not connected or on the top.
2.Turn of LED (It will still flash if there is a incorrect link or the device you link too has been removed.
4.On-Only mode, so it doesn’t tell you when the device hasnt seen movement in 1 minute.
The linking was very simple, press the link button and press the link of the device you want to turn on/off. In my case its the PLC so I can see the ON (0x11) and OFF (0x13) commands and act accordingly.
I haven’t found any way to change the default re-transmition time which is 1 minute, so unlike the Eagle eye which transmits every 10 seconds, this will only t ransmit if the status changes for example from ON to OFF. So this means if you have movement in the area you will only see ONE – ON command until one minute after when there is no movement. You wont get a message each minute. Also there is no way to poll the device, but it does seem to have already hard coded its ‘address’. So its considered a device which status changes from On for occupied to OFF to no motion detected in 1 min.
Among my findings the RANGE is great!. In my case I have 4 access points so even in the back yard the reception is great!. The white color is a plus, fits in anywhere , this was something I never understood with the eagle eye’s. (brown) Plus includes its own mointing kit which you can swivel the device. I used double side tape before using the screws this way I can find the best spot before making it permanent.
02 11 8C F0 00 00 01 CB 13 02 - Which is for Dusk end start / Dawn Start?