A Lighting Control Rescue Story: Process Dealer Services Group

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On a warm Friday afternoon at about half-past two, we received a call from an out of state electrical contractor named Ed asking rather desperately for help.

He had been working on an installation and was having some serious lighting control issues.

The home, which had just been occupied by the owners two weeks earlier, was nearly 20,000 square feet in three buildings. It was located only 150 miles from our offices in Paso Robles, Calif., but 700 miles away from Ed's homebase in Orem, Utah.

Ed's situation was urgent, as he was on the receiving end of a great deal of pressure from the general contractor about the malfunctioning lighting control system.

The Problems: Light Times and Location

The malfunctions described to me sounded simple to correct in the system programming, yet were causing significant inconveniences to the owners.

Ed described two items that were the cause of the stress that day:

1. All of the perimeter soffit lights and exterior sconces were coming on at full brightness in the middle of the afternoon and turning off sometime in the overnight hours. This functionality was apparently implemented at the request of the general contractor for security purposes during the final stages of construction. Now that the home was occupied, this functionality was not desirable especially since the 45 lighting control keypads throughout the home were not engraved or labeled. For the owners, each evening included a full tour of every room in the home along with a series of guesses and presses to determine which blank button would turn off the lights outside the room.
2. The lights in the Main Staircase could not be turned on or off from any known location in the home, but had been found to be on at random times during the day. No lighting in the stairs was a significant safety hazard and only increased the urgency which caused the call to our office.

Ed did not program the lighting control system and he didn't have access to the program file. He was told to install the lighting control system by the general contractor after being awarded the project.

The system was originally engineered for conventional switching and not for a lighting control system, and while the homeowner's A/V contractor including programming services for lighting as part of the install, he walked off the job before the home theater was completed with a six-figure deposit.

With the lighting control system program files and programmer missing in action, Ed turned to the local lighting control system manufacturer representative who referred him to us, as we welcome rescue work and abandoned projects.

After explaining to Ed what we believed would be the best case scenario and the potential risks, he agreed to our service rates and we were soon on the way to help.

(As a sidenote, Ed and his crew did an outstanding job wiring and terminating the 200 load lighting control system equipment without any engineered plans, load schedules, or panel reports. Ed wanted to help his client, and that made me want to help Ed.)

On the Job Site: Preparation and Promises

Just as dusk was settling in around Somis, California, we spotted our rescue project on a distant hillside, impossible to miss with nearly one hundred perimeter lights around all three buildings fully lit.

Waiting on-site for us was our new friend Benny, a local electrician that Ed relied on to perform much of the work during construction as well as service after the project's completion. Benny showed us where the vital parts of the lighting control system were located throughout the home's three buildings.

The house and property were amazing to see. After our tour, we met the owners and explained what we were going to do and how long each step would likely take. We also explained to Benny and the owners that we could not know if the system's program was password protected, which would prevent us from working with the existing program in any way.

Finally, we explained that until we attempted to extract the program from the lighting control processor, we could not know if the last upload to the processor was fully synchronized during compile. If it was not, the homeowner would have to decide if they wanted us to proceed with correcting the cited issues and upload the corrected program.

This might then contain issues previously corrected by the original programmer, resulting in the two cited issues being corrected and an unknown number of old issues being reintroduced into the program.

Addressing the Issues

Within our first 30 minutes on-site, we managed to connect to the system processor and extract the program to our computer.

No passwords were used and the program was previously uploaded with full synchronization, which made for some happy faces. Communication is the most effective tool we deploy during a rescue in order to set client expectations and build confidence.

With the system program file open, we began to address the first issue: the lights turning on and off at the wrong times. We found that the project location was still set to the factory default of Pennsylvania.

This explained why the astronomical time clock had all the perimeter lights turning on in the middle of the afternoon in California!

Moving on, the owner requested that about half of the 30 loads that were coming on with the "Exterior On" event be eliminated from automatic activation and that the "Exterior Off" event be rolled back to 10 PM.

Accommodating this request is where we began to see that the weak link in this system was the framework and organization of the system program.

Inside, Outside: Which is Which?

This screenshot shows a partial list of the 75 rooms defined within the three buildings of the home.

Software-based lighting control systems are essentially databases. The database engines are typically coded to sort user configured information like room, load, and device lists within the program alpha-numerically.

To ensure accuracy in selecting the proper lighting load for use in a scene or pathway when programming a device in a system, careful consideration must be given to the naming conventions of areas, rooms, loads, and devices when setting up the program.

The names of the areas and rooms within a home should match the project plans and what the homeowner calls them. Numbering and naming areas and rooms on the plans and in the program allow you to control the order that the areas, rooms and loads appear within the program and quickly identify rooms that are located within specific areas from their number.

In the program we extracted from the processor, we found many rooms assigned to incorrect areas. For example, the room named "EXFountain' (which really is a load description and not a room name) was assigned to the area "MainHouse" rather than to the area "Exterior".

On our initial tour of the house, we learned that the room "Entry" was also an exterior area, yet it was assigned to the area "MainHouse". Spelling counts, too, as the room and load names are queried for use in the program's engraving reports that are used to order engraved buttons for keypads.

The loose approach used to organize this program made understanding and servicing this system very inefficient. Within this program, there were 75 different rooms and 250 lighting loads named.

This is like having 250 tools in 75 separate drawers of a large toolbox!

When each drawer and tool is labeled properly and the tools are placed in the correct drawers, finding the right tool is easy.

The 15 loads that the owner wanted excluded from the "Exterior On" scene were not easily discernible due to the inconsistency in room names and load descriptions.

The Name Game

This screenshot of the "Exterior On" scene shows a partial list of the room names and load descriptions used within the program that were applied to this scene.

The inconsistencies are rampant. "Recess" is a common reference to lighting fixtures that are often called downlights (DL). Looking at the loads within this scene, we see "Recess" "DL" and "LVLights" all used to describe the same type of load.

Imagine walking into a room with 24 identical recessed fixtures in the ceiling on six separate loads and your task is to make changes to the brightness levels in a scene!

Looking at the loads in the program and the fixtures in the ceiling, try to identify which are the "Recess", which are the "DL" and which are the "LVLights" and then make your changes.

Imagine doing this remotely after selling the benefits of remote support!

Looking closely at the program and knowing that this scene is called "Exterior On", we questioned why the scene would contain a load in a room named "BreakFastRoom" that's not on the exterior of the house?

We learned that "Entry" was actually a room outside the main house, and that "EX" preceding a room name indicated an exterior location. At this point, the overall accuracy of the entire program was put into question.

Our objectives for this service call needed to be adjusted. We showed the owner the issues that prevented us from making accurate and efficient changes to the program.

They agreed with our recommendation to delete all loads from the "Exterior On" scene and add back in the primary loads at the primary entry points to each building. We were able to identify these three loads after activating the "Flash" function for six individual loads we suspected may include the three target loads.

Exterior lighting loads are easy to identify at night using the "Flash" function. Since rescue work on large projects is most efficient with two people and a pair of radios, we had all of these elements and tools, so this process went rather quickly.

In The Gallery

With 90 minutes logged on-site, we tackled the second issue: locating the lights in the Main Stairs that no device in the home could turn on.

The Main Stairs were located at the end of the West Gallery in the Main House, and the Gallery was divided into two sections on the plan: East Gallery and West Gallery.

Using the "Flash" function again, we identified that all of the lighting loads in the East and West Gallery were assigned to one of three different rooms within the program: Gallery, Main Hall, and Garage Hall. We then began to "Flash" loads in groups of three until the Main Stair Chandelier and Recessed Lights alternated between on and off.

After two hours of testing and troubleshooting, we identified that the missing load in the program was assigned to the room named "TheaterHall" and was called "Grand-S Sconces&Chandaliers".

In this screenshot of the program's load schedule, the empty cells of information, including Load Number, Feed, Fixture Wattage, and Quantity, reveal that the lighting control system manufacturer's software was not used to engineer the project in advance of the rough wiring and installation.

This likely cost everyone involved in the system's installation valuable time and needless additional expense.



With the missing load identified, we edited the load name and entered the missing wattage and quantity information to accurately reflect the load's actual fixture types and quantities -- crucial information used to identify loads accurately within the program.

Finally, we assigned the load to the top button on the keypads located at the top and bottom of the Main Stairs and proceeded to upload the revised program file, concluding the evening's mission with four hours on-site.

And the Winner is…

Having won the confidence of the owners, we were asked to take over completion of the lighting control system for the home and schedule a return trip in four weeks.

The system was only partially programmed for occupancy purposes at this point and was not leveraging the aesthetic, safety, convenience, and energy saving benefits that the system could provide.

In order to implement full functionality of dramatic scenes, illuminated pathways and timed lighting events within the lighting control system, development of a new program file was the most efficient solution.

We have identified four distinct phases within the discipline commonly referred to in the lighting control space as programming. These phases include: Engineering, Programming, Commissioning, and Tuning.

For efficiency, it is best to perform as much of the work in these four phases off-site, before wiring is installed. With an accurate lighting plan for a project, our standard operating procedure is to perform all of the work in Engineering and Programming categories without going on-site.

Plan B

The lighting control system on this project was already terminated, addressed, and commissioned, so the new program would have to follow the existing device addressing and load wiring assignments established in the original program file in order to avoid any rewiring and readdressing of installed equipment.

Our standard process of engineering the lighting control system off-site using the lighting plan would not work, so we crafted an alternate plan and proposed to the owners a phased approach and a fixed fee for the rescue of their lighting control system.

Phase 1 - Engineering

• On-site audit and verification of all lighting control devices and load assignments
• On-site development of new lighting control program using Process DSG standards within the current version of lighting control system manufacturer software
• On-site review and documentation of client requested whole house scenes, pathways, and timed events for use in initial program development

Phase 2 - Programming

• Off-site development of initial program within current version of lighting control system manufacturer software, based on Process DSG standards and client requests determined in the phase 1 client review

Phase 3 - Commissioning

• On-site upload and testing of initial program
• On-site revision to initial program after testing
• On-site client review of controlled lighting levels scenes, pathways, whole house scenes, and programmed events, limited to the specifications defined in Process DSG standards
• On-site revision to program after client review session

Phase 4 - Tuning

• One on-site client review session for revisions to lighting level adjustments and button assignment changes prior to issuance of control point button engraving schedule
• Submission of control point button engraving schedule to electrical contractor for procurement and installation of engraved control point buttons
• Phase 4 to be performed within 30 days of Phase 3 completion.

Phases 1-3 were performed during a ten day window with five days between the commencement of Phase 1 and the completion of Phase 3.

During the audit we performed in Phase 1, we corrected some minor addressing and device wiring errors that we discovered. Thirty days after completing Phase 3, the clients requested that no changes be made to the programming that we implemented.

We were able to submit the engraving schedule and omit billing the client for Phase 4, which was approximately 10 percent of our total fee to rescue this project.

We attribute the client's high level of satisfaction with the system functionality to our preparedness, our communication with the client, and the standard methods we have developed for baseline programming of simple to use lighting control systems over the past 15 years.

Kevin Mikelonis is Owner and General Manager of Process Dealer Services Group. Process DSG delivers unsurpassed Lighting Control Engineering, Programming, and Commissioning Services to Digital Home Technology Integrators, Electrical Contractors, Architects, and Homeowners world-wide. Process DSG is a Lutron Homeworks Authorized Programmer, D-Tools Certified Partner, and CEA-CompTIA DHTI+ Certified.