Lighting Products are Green, Stylish and Wire-free

On-Q and Vantage are going European, as well, thanks to their French-based parent company Legrand.

New designs from these two companies are inspired by Bticino, an Italian-based designer of door-entry systems that is also owned by Legrand.

"No longer are plates and devices on the wall a visual afterthought," says Dan Tarkoff, On-Q vice president of product management. "These products are creating an entirely new conversation around home décor in an area where homeowners historically had little to no options."

For its part, AMX has come out with its first-ever line of traditional hard-button keypads. The Metreau keypads bring an affordable element to AMX's high-end control systems, including lighting and audio.

Retrofit, Wireless Solutions Abound

With the soft construction market, the lighting-control industry is helping to bolster the home systems business with more and more no-new-wires solutions.

CentraLite is already on its second generation of Zigbee-enabled lighting controls. The Jetstream system requires no central controller; the switches and dimmers can communicate directly with each other.



"It really takes everything to a different level being controller-less," says Diane Davis, vice president of marketing. "You can just replace a couple of dimmers for starters."

Colorado vNet, Crestron and Control4 also have adopted the Zigbee wireless protocol for lighting control. Meanwhile, the competing Z-Wave technology has a booth of its own at EHX, highlighting a variety of products that exploit the low-cost two-way wireless solution.

Cooper Wiring Devices and Leviton are among the many Z-Wave partners at EHX.

Vantage, meanwhile, is introducing its next-generation wireless lighting control system, Enspire, based on the Miro RF solution from sister company Watt Stopper/Legrand.

Not only is it wireless, the system offers a European styling that seems to be all the rage these days.

When thinking about wire-free lighting control, don't forget about powerline-based technologies offered by Powerline Control Systems. PCS's Universal Powerline Bus (UPB) technology is supported by a number of popular home-control systems.

At EHX, PCS will show its own home-control system -- an IP-based gateway that allows remote access to a home's lighting and other UPB systems.

"A lot of our dealers don't want to roll a truck just to tweak some lighting scenes," says PCS's Scott Klodowski. Now they can do it straight from any Web browser.