Whole house LumenCache install - Eastern Colorado

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lpott6
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Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2020 10:35 pm

Whole house LumenCache install - Eastern Colorado

Post by lpott6 »

As a follow up to my introduction, here is the 1st post and summary of the LumenCache system that is installed in our Colorado home. I have included a few photos, more to come.

As I stated in the intro, energy efficiency was a key requirement for an off-grid home. Our solar system consists of 28 315w solar panels, 2 charge controllers, an AC/DC inverter and 24 6v lead acid storage batteries. There are 3 banks of 8 batteries in series totaling 48v and the banks are then in parallel. There is also a 14kw propane generator that runs automatically when the sun doesn’t shine. The system produces between 30 and 40 kwhs per day and the house consumes between 22 and 26 kwhs per day.

The LumenCache system components are divided into 3 locations in the house to minimize the wire runs to lights. Each light fixture and keypad is homerun wired to one of the 3 control locations.

Here is a brief summary of the installed equipment:

5 Enclosures with 13 PDMs
Accessory Power Regulators on each PDM
98 recessed ceiling lights
20 gimbal recessed lights
15 converted light fixtures with 42 filament LED bulbs
22 outdoor fixtures with filament LED bulbs
46 Wall TouchPads, 35 – 6 button, 2 – 4 button, 5 – 3 button and 4 – 2 button
4 Occupancy Sensors, 2 Wall, 2 Ceiling

Now for some pictures.
House Front.JPG
Front of the house
House Rear.JPG
Rear of the house
Front Door.jpg
Front Door

lpott6
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Re: Whole house LumenCache install - Eastern Colorado

Post by lpott6 »

Some more pictures.
Solar Array.JPG
Solar Array
Solar Batteries.jpg
Battery banks

lpott6
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2020 10:35 pm

Re: Whole house LumenCache install - Eastern Colorado

Post by lpott6 »

Some interior pictures.
Entry Chandelier.JPG
Entry chandelier converted to 12v DC LEDs

Master bath vanitys.JPG
Master bath converted vanity fixtures.
Lighting Keypad.JPG
6 button keypad
Last edited by lpott6 on Wed Dec 16, 2020 11:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

lpott6
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Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2020 10:35 pm

Re: Whole house LumenCache install - Eastern Colorado

Post by lpott6 »

And finally, here are the LumenCache panels.
Basement main panel.jpg
South panels
Basement sub panel.jpg
North panel
Office Panel ReDo 2018-08-14.JPG
East panels

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dc
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Re: Whole house LumenCache install - Eastern Colorado

Post by dc »

With the new L2-CC drivers, the silver 48-24V DC/DC are not needed. The L2-CCB were slightly more efficient but the Boost topology of the CCB is not as flexible as the boost/buck of the new CC drivers. The CCU are buck drivers with 95% efficiency. Ideal for 48V solar battery supply. The new socket bulbs are also 20-60V input, so no need for the 48/24V step down unless you have E12 candelabra bulbs. We could not squeeze the 20-60V driver inside so they are 20-40V (24V)

lpott6
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Re: Whole house LumenCache install - Eastern Colorado

Post by lpott6 »

A quick update.

I have been working with another LumenCache user, Ken, who created an interface to LC using an MQTT broker and Node-Red. You can see his write-up in another post on this forum. He created it on a platform called OpenHAB and he has now modified it to work with Home Assistant, which is what I am using.

It works great, full control of my LC system with on/off control, dimming. Over the next few days I plan to add automation using motion detection and an internal clock to get sunset/sunrise control.

I have been watching YouTube videos from a very prominant Home Assistant user, DrZzs, and now he is looking to use LC in his Hobbit Hole. I can't wait to see what he comes up with to further automate LC.

That's all for now.

Larry Ott

klf
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Re: Whole house LumenCache install - Eastern Colorado

Post by klf »

Here are some comments about how we interfaced LumenCache with Home Assistant.

Larry already had a working install of Home Assistant OS on a Raspberry Pi. This install was also running Node-Red and an MQTT broker.

We imported the flows into Node-Red from my latest "Using MQTT-Node-Red to communicate with LumenCache" post in this forum.
After importing the flows and deploying them, we had to install the missing nodes that were reported missing during the deploy. We did this using the Node-Red "Palette Manager" tool.
Once we cleared the missing node errors, we had to configure the MQTT nodes to access the running MQTT broker.
The serial port nodes needed to be pointed to the Raspberry Pi's USB port that was connected to the LumenCache serial (RS485) communications bus.

We tested this configuration using the Node-Red Dashboard UI provided in the "MQTT/Node-Red Interface" flows.
During this testing we determined the the LumenCache level setting commands were returning with multiple serial responses rather than in a single response. My flow expects a single serial response to work correctly with the Home Automation system. To work around this, I added a temporary function node in the flow to report the assumed state change back through MQTT to notify Home Assistant of any changes.

Note for Derek:
We're not sure if the fragmented serial response issue we had was due to serial port configuration, serial port adapter, or LumenCache firmware older version issues.
Any ideas on why this is happening?

Next we had to determine how to get Home Assistant to communicate with MQTT Broker.
It was determined that Home Assistant had the MQTT Light integration which provides a gateway from the Home Assistant Web UI to MQTT. By adding entries to the configuration.yaml and adding a Light card to the user interface we were able begin controlling LumenCache lights from Home Assistant.
Ken Fickas

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dc
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Re: Whole house LumenCache install - Eastern Colorado

Post by dc »

The LumenCache comm bus is similar to Ethernet in that all the DMs are listening to the bus and if two talk at the same time there's a collision and they need to re-try. The firmware still on the bench has a few updates and that's one at the transport layer that dramatically reduces collisions. The EGW "driver layer" does a little of this too but it's difficult to implement on the Pi in the EGW. However, the nature of the fast command/reply rate and relatively slow time between commands seems to avoid most of this. There's also new single command raise/dim functions. I'll publish the EGW Driver Layer and the REDIS API to interface with it at high speed shortly.

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