CBus GPO Control

I am just designing a CBus plan for my new house.

I am looking for as much as possible CBus controlled. Including all/most GPOs.

Looking at the 12 Channel Relays for example, they say: "Units available with 10A rated relays (resistive, inductive or fluorescent loads)"

• Will this satisfy the need of any normal household GPO (fridge, TV, lamp, vacuum)?
• What about Garage based power points (drill, electric saw, garage door opener, battery charger etc)?
• Pool Pump Control?

ALso, is this the sort of socket you then put in place (i.e. without a switch) -
LINK

Thanks for your help.

 

Sounds a bit dangerous to me, even if the relay was capable.

Imagine remotely turning on a power outlet (especially accidently) and an empty electric jug or an iron was left plugged in. Could start a fire.

If you are close enough to see if the power outlet is safe to turn on, why not just use a normal outlet?

 

Give us an idea as to why you want to do this, as it is very unusual to want to put relays behind every GPO.

Also if they are double GPO's how would you differentiate between what is plugged into each side?

The only time I have seen GPO's controlled were for specific lamps, and the GPO's had round earth pins to denote the difference.

I can see the logic in wanting to control something like a pool pump, but the fridge has got me perplexed.

You also need to consider others (or visitors) in your house that don't understand how the power points work. I know somebody that had UPS points in their house (which were marked correctly) and a visitor plugged an iron into one and caused the UPS to shutdown under overload. This also took out all the servers as well, which turned on and off as the UPS cycled with the iron.

There is also the default power on state after a power fail to consider.

I know your case is somewhat different, but you have to allow for the lowest common denominator.

Cheers

Rohan

 

I am with the other guys, interested in why you would want to do this? Its gonna get expensive real fast..

I much prefer gpo control utilising the concept of essential and non-essential power circuits.. So have an essential circuit wired throughout the home for fridges, washing machines, etc, the essential items which need to be left on.. Then for the rest of the power circuits have them wired up through a contactor to only be on when cbus says its ok, ie, when the alarm is disarmed, or when the house is occupied..

This generally only requires 1 ch off a relay unit to activate the contactor.. Also it can be bypassed later easily if the customer no longer wishes to have this..

 

I am a IT person who has played with Arduino, and thought C-Bus would take it to the next level of control v simplicity.

Why, well to be honest, I had not really put much thought into it. On reflection I guess I would not want to put everything on C-Bus (given the cost and like you say practicality/convenience). But I also like the idea of controlling some things for varying reasons.
* You could stop the kids watching too much TV by cutting off its power supply
* A water fountain pump only going during the day
* A master turn all off, to stop Standby Power at night (though not sure how this compares to C-Bus power draw) of certain appliances
* Lamps
Just ideas.

I see the round pin seems to be a standard, but it also seems very annoying, especially if you move things around.

 

Thats a pretty good idea, and decent compromise. Do you have the points marked different?

 

Have you considered the wireless plug in modules? Not sure if it is still being manufactured or not.

There was an Aussie company trying to get a smart outlet onto the market (for the US market as well). I thought they were on kickstarter but I cant find it now.

It has local controls as well as remote capability - pretty much what you are looking for. They claimed that they were going to produce an API to allow for integration, so using C-Bus to control them should be within reason.

This is where we need Clipsal to come up with a C-Bus outlet (as previously discussed on this forum)