Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Remote Control Lighting

Well, X-10 is what I chose. Got a 16 piece kit with some software and it works pretty well. They still have a nice setup here, but I couldn't find the 16 piece kit for you. I got some extra remotes that mount on the wall as well.

Anyhow, the phase coupler is not specific to X-10; it works for anything crawling through your powerlines.

What kind of plate are you getting that you have to order? Home Depot had quite a selection of plates when I was there in stock.

Home depot and lowes both didn't have one.

I'm getting a four gang plate with 3 regular switch openings and one more on the end for the new dimmer.

Or I could just link to it

First one showed up broken. A new one is on the way.

My thanks to all of you for this very cool (and easy) retrofit to my HT. I installed the Lutron Maestro IR last night and that is the best $40 I have spent in the HT. I added it to my Harmony 880 this morning and now have a nice 10 second light fade when I select the movie activity on the Harmony. Thanks again guys, here are some pics:

Dimmer installed:

Screen Down

Room and PJ

Wow, thanks for the pictures. I'll save you all the double-post and tell you mine looks exactly like rmk's. (though the room pales in comparison).

I couldn't agree more about the impact to dollar ratio of the lighting upgrade. My family is down for Easter and was incredibly "wow'd" with the remote light fade.

RMK - is that a bass trap under the projector, or what is that?

Thanks again for the tip on this great product.

That is a 2'X4' acoustic panel like the others in the room. The bass traps are in the front R/L corners.

rmk1, once again great looking room. It's funny how something as simple and inexpensive as these Lutron dimmers can really add that little extra touch, to make the room that much cooler, as well as more technologically advanced.

Has anyone tried the Insteon programmable dimmers from smart home? They have an IR adapter and the ability to program multiple lighting scenes.

gmeyer - I have the Insteon products from Smarthome. I do not have the IR adapter so I don't know how well that works. I use the Insteon remote from Smarthome. They work really well for me. The cool thing is that you can control pretty much any other Insteon device (or multiple Insteon devices) from a single Insteon switch. It worked really well where I needed to turn lights on/off from two different doorway entries. No tricky wiring necessary. You can print out a .pdf of their installation guides to see what I mean. One thing I did notice is that their dimmer switches seem to get pretty warm so I would recommend staying below the recommended wattage of the switch. You cannot use two of their 1000W dimmers side by side since they have cooling fins that interfere with each other. You can break off the cooling fins but I wouldn't recommend that because you are esentially lowering the switches rating then. The Insteon switches also have interchangeable color bars for the lights that indicate how bright you have the swith set. Since my HT is basically all blue, I changed the color bars to be blue also. It's a minor detail but I think it looks nice.

I have had some experience with the X10 switches/controllers and the Insteon switches seem to work better for me. That being said, they are also more expensive. My installation was pretty spendy since I needed 16 switches, 2 lamp controllers, an appliance controller (for the ceiling stars), and the remote.

Thanks - NDinUSA I think I will be using them in the theater and maybe the rest of the house. I am planning on painting my theater blue & black in the next few weeks. I hope to be in by May. Do you have pictures of your theater?