Help pls - home automation for lights only

maumau

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We have a click-on system which was great but one by one the individual units have stopped working. Click-on support is non-existent so replacing the broken items would be stupid.

The system consists of a "control unit" into which instructions are programmed to switch lights and other things on and off at specific times. It also has GSM capabilities and sends me an SMS when there's a power failure. I don't want anything that needs to be permanently connected to a router or a computer.

Is there some unit that can be set to switch certain house lights on as well as back and front garden lights? On at sunset, off at sunrise. The lights must also work off a remote. Preferably expandable to more lights, maybe a plug point etc.

There's qwikswitch but i gather they want R250 per year for GSM. When they go bankrupt i sit with a useless qwikswitch :(

Even if you can point me to a reputable manufacturer/installer i'd be grateful. The z-wave looked interesting but they don't have a phone number on their website???????????????? Why do that?

Thanks if you can help.
 
OK, so nobody answered :)

anyway the click-on replacement wall switch is R900 and i have to pay an electrician to instal it. nobody seems able to programme it into the controller.

sooooooo, there's an X10 system available:

small manually programmable controller MT10E @ R375, 2 x wall switches AW12 @ R750 each AND it's modular so i'll add a TM13SA transmitter @ R454 and a KR22E keyring remote @149 after i'm sure everything works. problem solved!

there's also a computer programmable controller CM15 which Ultech suggest, but then i'm back to having to ask someone else to do the programming :-(

as the click-on things collapse i'll replace with X10 stuff. wish me luck.
 
I bought a X10 kit a few years ago and played around with it but have not really used it as I intended to. The x10 programming is dead easy so you should not have issues with that.

I am keeping an eye on Android @Home but it sort of fell flat and was going nowhere but Google bought out Nest Labs in January for a couple of billion which is a automation company so I am hoping they make a big push this year with their home automation system.
 
I'm also keeping my eye on Android@Home...

Its gone quite, but I think thats more because its becoming a seperate line rather than an addition to Android.
 
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