Why Would you Need it?
When you are at your nightstand, you might want to have the ability to turn the light in the entire house without leaving the bedroom. Besides, it’s possible that you’d like to repel would-be thieves by turning lights on, being away on vacation or on a business trip; or you just don’t want to run around adjusting lights when you have guests.
You will be the master of your home electrics. You will be able to control different lamps in your bedroom separately, not just turn everything on and off at once. For example, you will be able to dim wall sconces and shut off track lights or instead turn the sconces off and make the track lights glare. All this will be possible without wandering around the bedroom and clicking numerous switches.
How Could you Get it?
There used to be two ways of making it possible. The first was resetting all the wiring in the entire house which was a very expensive decision. The second was using so-called X-10 automation technology which tended to malfunction because of electrical interference.
What is the Modern Option?
The best solution is to coordinate all sources of light in the building into a unified scheme, capable of controlling electrics conjointly. With this, you can for example, instantly bring up all ceiling lamps and fans with lights to illuminate an entire hall for a party, dim all lights to create a romantic environment, or easily kill all the lighting before you go to sleep. Moreover, you can program the control unit so that it turned lights on and off on schedule (or at haphazard intervals) if you would like to imitate presence inside the building.
How to Make it Work?
To make it work, you’ll have to replace wall switches with special automated devices and mount special adapters on sockets to plug freestanding lamps in. Then you can exercise control over the lights either with a wireless remote control unit (e.g. Z-Wave), or with a stationary control panels like Insteon or UPB, that can communicate with the switches and adapters throughout the house sending signals via existing wiring. But, unlike X-10 system’s, those signals are uninterruptible and reach target lamps for sure.