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Originally Posted by mtlakejim
I am a technology geek and love electronics. I still run a mobile disco just to dabble in it. All my lighting is wireless DMX which is a vast improvement on the old 110 volt systems of yesteryears. I don't want to totally rain on your parade but I do see the wisdom of a mechanically switched system over the totally electronic switching for both RV or house wiring during new construction.
When a central "brain" circuit board goes haywire it takes out the entire system all at once. If that "brain" is specialized and in limited supply, then your ENTIRE system is down until such time as you can get a new one. And as is typical with all specialized products with only one mfg./supplier those types of parts can be hard to come by or even disappear if the mfg goes out of business or just deems the part outdated and no longer supports it. While someone with an electronics background may be able to diagnose an issue with a smart system it is not something that the average handyman/RV owner would be able to tackle.
By contrast the old tried and true mechanical switch type systems have inexpensive and very easy to source parts. In most cases, when you have an issue it is fairly easy to diagnose and it typically only affects a small part of the total system.
The best of both worlds I suppose would be to have a combination system where you have both electronic and mechanical control over all your systems but that requires a lot of extra wiring and expense on a new build.
In fact, expense is one of the reasons I suspect that RV builders are interested in moving us to the fly by wire type systems. It is a LOT less labor intense (cheaper) for them to centralize the switching and run wiring directly to devices as opposed to having to run mechanical switching wires from the power source to the switch then to the device. From a labor perspective going from source to central board to device is much more efficient.
Have you considered a 10X smart house type system that uses "smart" mechanical switches (IE: both mechanical and digital control of device)? Since that is an existing system that will work with a conventional wiring system it has the advantages of both as suggested above. It is also very commonly available with multiple suppliers. Can be retrofitted to existing systems and won't shut down your entire system when the brain goes out. And it is readily available with a wide variety of remote controls. The RV industry could have used this technology but did not. That lends credence to my theory above that they were more interested in the build savings than actually delivering a reliable system!!!
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The way we are designing this it goes inline with the existing mechanical controls and you can use either. Physical Panel Control, Wireless Button Panel that can be placed anywhere and hopefully a phone app. When you go with something like the incommand from keystone then you lose the physical aspect but that's not what we are designing.
While looking at existing systems and something that runs 12v vs a home wiring setup which is more plentiful. Most of them we found were older RF Tech with large remotes and antennas and then of course no potential app or control through your phone or you would end up with a ton of remotes if they were smaller add-in line systems
I am mainly doing this as a fun project for myself. The main board will be using some Mini 12v Power Relays and we already have components for the transceivers for wifi and bluetooth on hand.
We've built lighting control boards for costumes and photo lighting setups that you can program with an App and things of that nature. The office to is wired up with similar designed boards that with a push of a button by the door opens all the blinds and turns on the lights
We love home automation stuff so this is just a fun project but I could see it being useful out for other folks as well if there was interest.