Low voltage transformer for landscape lighting

Hardware
1

Hi,

Do you know any low voltage landscape lighting transformer which could be controlled via HA or at least it has WIFI and an API?

I spend like 30 minutes finding one, the only I could find is the Philips Hadco ZoneScape1-A for like $600 which is fairly expensive compared to what it is capable for and you can only buy in a very few specific websites, but not even on Amazon or HomeDepot, Walmart etc.

I cannot imagine there are no smart landscape transformers available on the market in 2018.

How did you automate low voltage landscape lighting? My other idea is to use an outdoor smart switch, but I am not sure if the transformers will work properly that way. It might need constant power for its own sensors and settings. (Almost all the basic ones come with light sensor and few zone settings when the lights should turn on.)

THANK YOU!

1 Like
2

Not sure of any out of the box WiFi enabled landscape lighting transformers but your question got me to thinking.

Why not use a Sonoff 4CH coupled with something like this

That would give you 4 controllable channels and if you flash the Sonoff with Tasmota firmware you could easily add any additional sensors that you want.

I only briefly looked so that 120VAC-to-12VAC unit may not be the best but I’m sure there are plenty of other options available. I might just have to add this to my list of projects. A couple of my transformers are outside so I would need to get a water tight enclosure to house these units but I think you still might be at the same cost or lower and with more functionality.

3

Seems to be you are right, it will be much cheaper and way better (I mean more options/features) if I will build it based on your suggestion. Any good advises are very welcome. I will definitely update here on the progress.

4

Maybe have a look at the Sonoff SV (and a waterproof box) downstream of a vanilla outdoor transformer. You can add sensors easily to it, after a Tasmota flash.

5

@PianSom, @GeorgeIoak - could you give me examples what sensors and how could you connect to the Sonoff? As I understand this is only a smart relay (switch) which is by the way exactly what I need. I am just curious what sensors and how could be connected to it…

Thanks in advance!

6

Google is your friend! :slight_smile:
eg http://tinkerman.cat/sonoff-th10-th16-sensors-displays-actuators/

The SV - unlike most Sonoff boards - has pre-soldered pins (three sets iirc) to allow relatively easy connection of external components.

7

Sorry I missed your question. I currently have a BME280 and a Ws2812 LED ring attached to my Sonoff 4CH PRO. The sensors.yaml has this:

- platform: mqtt
  name: "Garage Temperature"
  state_topic: "tele/sonoff/SENSOR"
  value_template: "{{ value_json['BME280'].Temperature }}"
  unit_of_measurement: "°F"

- platform: mqtt
  name: "Garage Humidity"
  state_topic: "tele/sonoff/SENSOR"
  value_template: "{{ value_json['BME280'].Humidity }}"
  unit_of_measurement: "%"

- platform: mqtt
  name: "Garage Pressure"
  state_topic: "tele/sonoff/SENSOR"
  value_template: "{{ value_json['BME280'].Pressure | round(2) }}"
  unit_of_measurement: "hPa"

and my lights.yaml has this:

- platform: mqtt
  name: Garage Status Light
  effect_list:
      - 0
      - 1
      - 2
      - 3
      - 4
      - 5
      - 6
      - 7
      - 8
      - 9
      - 10
      - 11
      - 12
  state_topic: "cmnd/sonoff/power5"
  command_topic: "cmnd/sonoff/power5"
  brightness_state_topic: "cmnd/sonoff/Dimmer"
  brightness_command_topic: "cmnd/sonoff/Dimmer"
  brightness_scale: 100
  rgb_command_template: "{{ '%02x%02x%02x' | format(red, green, blue)}}"
  rgb_state_topic: "cmnd/sonoff/Color"
  rgb_command_topic: "cmnd/sonoff/Color"
  effect_command_topic: "cmnd/sonoff/Scheme"
  effect_state_topic: "cmnd/sonoff/Scheme"
  state_value_template: "{{ value }}"
  brightness_value_template: "{{ value }}"
  effect_value_template: "{{ value }}"
  rgb_command_mode: hex
  retain: false
  qos: 1
  payload_on: "ON"
  payload_off: "OFF"
1 Like
8

I have a Kichler 15DC200 landscape lighting controller:
http://www.kichler.com/products/product/200w-dc-led-controller-15dc200.aspx

I got a good deal on it as an open box return, otherwise it would be really expensive new, but Kichler makes quality landscaping hardware.

If you’re willing to fork over the money, its been running rock solid and survived a Minnesota winter. It has Z-Wave built-in, but since its not Z-Wave Plus it requires periodic polling.

If you’re willing to wait, Philips Hue is coming out with outdoor landscaping lights in July. You’d just need a basic transformer to power that.

9

Hi,

What went wrong? I got the Sonoff 4CH PRO, tried with a small charger, it was working properly, I was able to pair it with wifi etc. I thought I will do the firmware flash later and build the prototype first. I connected to the following transformer I just bought and nothing happened, the device did not turn on. Maybe I connected the wrong way the + and - and provided -12V to the Sonoff from the transformer. The device smells a little bit (typical burned electric smell) but not soo bad. I measured the transformer output and it provides 12V exactly.

Honestly, I have no idea what did I do wrong, the Sonoff is totally bricked cannot turn on anymore, no matter what power supply I use. Any help would be highly appreciated to understand what should I do not to burn the next Sonoff I am about to order :). This transformer should be OK, right? Am I a noob with electronics? yes :slight_smile:

Transformer: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XW76584/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

10

Hey @a_ndy, how did you get the 15DC200 to work with HA in the end? I bought a 15DC300 and I can’t seem to attach it to my Z-Wave network. In fact, I think it can only run as a primary or secondary controller, and the Z-Wave implementation for HA doesn’t seem to support adding controllers. Any pointers would be much appreciated! :slight_smile:

11

Sorry, must’ve missed this.

Yes I did get this to work and its been working fine. I added to the network in a much older version of HA (don’t remember which version off hand), so not sure if newer versions may have a problem adding the device.

These controllers are designed so you can run it as a primary and then add additional units as slaves.

This should be what you need to do to add it as a slave:
Main Menu > Network > Join Network

If you already have the unit mounted outside, it might be a signal issue since it needs to go through the exterior walls.

Might try putting a powered repeater at a halfway point.

I remember having problems with that initially, but added an outlet for my coffee maker in the kitchen and that did the trick. Have added more powered Z-wave stuff so the network is more robust now.

These units are unfortunately standard Z-Wave, so they do require polling. Wish they’d come out with an updated version.

12

Couple of other thoughts.

Before joining the network, turn off any pre-programmed schedules on the unit. You can’t edit them later.

You might try resetting the device completely first, then try joining.

Each of the zones show up as individual switches.

There are 2 additional switches. Power (switch 0) and All Zones (switch 1), those might be flip flopped. Just ignore those as you don’t need to use them for anything.

13

Thank you, @a_ndy! This is great information and definitely jives with what I experienced too. After posting, I ended up going down exactly the same path as you with similar findings.

After trying to “Join Network” with two different Z-Wave sticks and failing miserably, I went and bought a VeraEdge for $50 as Kichler say that it’s supported. That didn’t work at first either at first… until I brought the unit very close to the Kichler controller and then the process worked fine. I’m able to control all zones individually, which is great.

This was probably the same problem I was having connecting from the two different sticks i.e. being too far away or beyond an exterior wall without another Z-Wave device in between somewhere.

One thing I did find during this is that Home Assistant doesn’t seem to have the options to set up a secondary controller seemingly, so I would have had to use the OpenZWave Control Panel (https://github.com/ruimarinho/docker-openzwave) to connect to one of the sticks and have the Kichler join once it was in the right mode.

Thanks again for the information!

14

Hi @a_ndy and Simon,

I also just purchased a Kichler 15DC300 and am attempting to get it fully functional with Home Assistant (hassio). I’m using an Aeotec Gen5 z-wave stick with a Pi. I added the unit fairly easily by simply using the Configuration-> Z-Wave tool in HA, choosing ‘Add device’ and then going over to the Kichler and telling it to “Join network”. I did a ‘heal network’ for good measure and watched the OZW log via Tail for a few minutes thereafter to see everything report.

I got 8 switches added as described above. They are all named the exact same thing and by clicking each one, and watching the ozw log, I am able to see the ids of each individual endpoint:

Turning on a switch produces the following:

2019-06-28 09:24:57.404 Info, Node006, Value::Set - COMMAND_CLASS_SWITCH_BINARY - Switch - 0 - 4 - True
2019-06-28 09:24:57.404 Info, Node006, SwitchBinary::Set - Setting node 6 to On
2019-06-28 09:24:57.405 Detail, Node006, Queuing (Send) MultiChannel Encapsulated (instance=4): SwitchBinaryCmd_Set (Node=6): 0x01, 0x0e, 0x00, 0x13, 0x06, 0x07, 0x60, 0x0d, 0x01, 0x03, 0x25, 0x01, 0xff, 0x25, 0x24, 0x56
2019-06-28 09:24:57.405 Detail, Node006, Queuing (Send) MultiChannel Encapsulated (instance=4): SwitchBinaryCmd_Get (Node=6): 0x01, 0x0d, 0x00, 0x13, 0x06, 0x06, 0x60, 0x0d, 0x01, 0x03, 0x25, 0x02, 0x25, 0x25, 0xa9
2019-06-28 09:24:57.405 Detail,
2019-06-28 09:24:57.405 Info, Node006, Sending (Send) message (Callback ID=0x24, Expected Reply=0x13) - MultiChannel Encapsulated (instance=4): SwitchBinaryCmd_Set (Node=6): 0x01, 0x0e, 0x00, 0x13, 0x06, 0x07, 0x60, 0x0d, 0x01, 0x03, 0x25, 0x01, 0xff, 0x25, 0x24, 0x56
2019-06-28 09:24:57.414 Detail, Node006,   Received: 0x01, 0x04, 0x01, 0x13, 0x01, 0xe8
2019-06-28 09:24:57.415 Detail, Node006,   ZW_SEND_DATA delivered to Z-Wave stack
2019-06-28 09:24:57.432 Detail, Node006,   Received: 0x01, 0x07, 0x00, 0x13, 0x24, 0x00, 0x00, 0x02, 0xcd
2019-06-28 09:24:57.432 Detail, Node006,   ZW_SEND_DATA Request with callback ID 0x24 received (expected 0x24)
2019-06-28 09:24:57.432 Info, Node006, Request RTT 26 Average Request RTT 26
2019-06-28 09:24:57.432 Detail,   Expected callbackId was received
2019-06-28 09:24:57.432 Detail,   Expected reply was received
2019-06-28 09:24:57.432 Detail,   Message transaction complete
2019-06-28 09:24:57.432 Detail,
2019-06-28 09:24:57.432 Detail, Node006, Removing current message
2019-06-28 09:24:57.432 Detail,
2019-06-28 09:24:57.432 Info, Node006, Sending (Send) message (Callback ID=0x25, Expected Reply=0x04) - MultiChannel Encapsulated (instance=4): SwitchBinaryCmd_Get (Node=6): 0x01, 0x0d, 0x00, 0x13, 0x06, 0x06, 0x60, 0x0d, 0x01, 0x03, 0x25, 0x02, 0x25, 0x25, 0xa9
2019-06-28 09:24:57.441 Detail, Node006,   Received: 0x01, 0x04, 0x01, 0x13, 0x01, 0xe8
2019-06-28 09:24:57.441 Detail, Node006,   ZW_SEND_DATA delivered to Z-Wave stack
2019-06-28 09:24:57.459 Detail, Node006,   Received: 0x01, 0x07, 0x00, 0x13, 0x25, 0x00, 0x00, 0x03, 0xcd
2019-06-28 09:24:57.459 Detail, Node006,   ZW_SEND_DATA Request with callback ID 0x25 received (expected 0x25)
2019-06-28 09:24:57.459 Info, Node006, Request RTT 26 Average Request RTT 26
2019-06-28 09:24:57.459 Detail,   Expected callbackId was received
2019-06-28 09:24:57.500 Detail, Node006,   Received: 0x01, 0x0d, 0x00, 0x04, 0x00, 0x06, 0x07, 0x60, 0x0d, 0x03, 0x01, 0x25, 0x03, 0xff, 0x41
2019-06-28 09:24:57.500 Detail,
2019-06-28 09:24:57.500 Info, Node006, Response RTT 68 Average Response RTT 55
2019-06-28 09:24:57.500 Info, Node006, Received a MultiChannelEncap from node 6, endpoint 3 for Command Class COMMAND_CLASS_SWITCH_BINARY
2019-06-28 09:24:57.500 Info, Node006, Received SwitchBinary report from node 6: level=On
2019-06-28 09:24:57.501 Detail, Node006, Refreshed Value: old value=false, new value=true, type=bool
2019-06-28 09:24:57.501 Detail, Node006, Changes to this value are not verified
2019-06-28 09:24:57.501 Detail, Node006,   Expected reply and command class was received
2019-06-28 09:24:57.501 Detail, Node006,   Message transaction complete
2019-06-28 09:24:57.501 Detail,
2019-06-28 09:24:57.501 Detail, Node006, Removing current message
2019-06-28 09:24:57.501 Detail, Node006, Notification: ValueChanged

I put in custom names on the switches to prevent HA from constantly moving them around (making it appear that certain things were on or off). Because the Kichler doesn’t have Zwave Plus, I’ll need to set up some sort of not-too-often polling to get the actual status of things.

My current issue: I need to monitor the ozw log to be sure, but often times clicking a toggle in HAs UI doesn’t produce the desired results on the Kichler LED Controller. Random zones appear to turn on/off and they aren’t correlating directly to the right switches in HA.

@a_ndy, did you have any issues with this?

-Jakob

15

No I can’t say I had any issues like that. Just the initial getting signal outside of the house to the transformer.

You might go outside and verify that each zone on the transformer correlates with the switch/instance that’s shown in HA. The transformer will show which zones are active on the display screen.

Outside of polling it every once in a while, has been pretty trouble free and straight forward for me.

I had a thought on the polling.

Some regular Z-wave devices will send out a broadcast signal when a change is made to the device, which will tell the controller to poll the device, so it will send a status update. But the device needs to be connected directly to the controller and cannot be a hop away. I can’t test whether the transformer does that because of where my Aeotec Z-Stick is located in the house as it requires another powered device to make a hop to the transformer.

16

@jakobi Hey just checking in to see if you’ve had any luck on getting this sorted out?

17

@tiszavolgyi it looks like the Sonoff 4CH Pro requires 5-24VDC, a transformer goes AC-AC. The low voltage lighting runs on 12VAC. You probably hooked up 12VAC when it required 12VDC which is probably why you got your fun burnt smell.

1 Like
18

Yeah, that is probably correct. Thank you!

19

How bout this puppy right here?

https://www.amazon.com/DEWENWILS-Transformer-Compatible-Weatherproof-Landscaping/dp/B08HRJ16HF?th=1

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