Details

What is scene lighting? All lights have at least two scenes - on and off - so a room with two lights offers four “scenes”. Throw in the capacity to dim each light and the combinations achievable in any one room start to multiply.

In reality, most people only need three options - bright for reading or cleaning, soft for entertaining and near darkness for watching a movie. And having to fiddle with lights individually is a chore, like retuning a radio every time you want to change station. Radios overcome this problem with pre-programming buttons; basic scene lighting controllers such as Lutron's GRAFIK Eye do much the same on a room-by-room basis. The system can also be switched by remote control so that changing light settings is as easy as changing TV channels.

In a scene lighting installation, the power into the light fittings is wired in the normal way, in series on a standard lighting circuit. But the switch cables are run back to a control unit (Grafik Eye’s is about the size of a brick) where the programming is done. This unit can be wall mounted or hidden in a cupboard. The switch plates are replaced by keypads which connect to the control unit with Cat 5 low-voltage cable. The Lutron keypad has a number of buttons, each activating a different scene. There is also a manual dimmer control which overrides pre-programmed scenes.

By introducing a control unit between the light and the switch plate - which is basically what this is all about - you are are building in a level of intelligence which enables the user to issue a whole series of commands beyond ON and OFF. If you've experienced digital TV, you will be aware of the range summoned up with a remote controller. Lutron's systems - of which Grafik Eye is the most basic - introduce something similar on a whole house basis. Light pathways can be created through the house and master switches easily configured to turn some or all of the house lights on or off from the bedside or the front door. The Lutron Homeworks Control System allows you to control a great number of actions beyond lighting. In fact, anything that is hard-wired back to the control unit can be programmed and switched by remote control. Windows, blinds and curtains, garage doors, entrance gates and security systems can all be configured to be switched via the control system.

What we have here is the intelligent home. ”Nothing new,” you think, “it's all that old anoraky stuff that has never caught on in homebuilding because there is little point in doing it.” Hmmm. The phenomenal growth in business Lutron is experiencing suggests this long-held scepticism is fast being overcome. Scene lighting and intelligent switching is riding on the back of two other recent developments in homebuilding. One is the widespread acceptance of structured cabling (albeit just for phone and computer networking); the other is the increasing popularity of home cinema and multi-room audio. Homebuyers - particularly affluent young males - are easily seduced by these toys and several developers have cottoned on to this and started fitting them into show homes. Another driver is the improved security offered by such a system - typically every light is configured to come on when the alarm is triggered.

While a single room Grafik Eye can be fitted for less than £1000, a whole house control system is likely to cost more than £10 000 which clearly restricts the range of properties it is likely to appear in - until the price falls. But with more and more people spending this much on a Plasma TV screen, scene lighting and intelligent control have left the laboratory and entered the market place.