Chapter 3 · Programming in Config
The Lighting Controller
A room can have well chosen fittings, perfectly wired, and still feel wrong to live in. What turns a set of lights into lighting is the programming: grouping the circuits sensibly, and building moods the customer wants to use every day.
In LOXONE this is done by one block, the Lighting Controller. Learn it properly and you can light any room in any project.
By the end of this lesson you will be able to:
- Program a room's lighting with the Lighting Controller block
- Create light moods and decide which ones the wall switch moves through
- Explain to a customer how one switch gives them every mood in the room
The situation
An open kitchen and living area has ceiling spots, a pendant over the dining table, and an LED strip behind the media unit. The customer wants bright light for cleaning, a soft setting for watching television, a warm setting for dinner, and one press to turn everything off.
That is four moods from three circuits, and one switch on the wall to reach them.
What the block does
The principle is simple. The Lighting Controller holds a set of lighting moods, and a LOXONE Touch on the wall moves between them.
The block has 18 light circuit outputs. Each one can be switched, dimmed, fully color controlled, or controlled by daylight, depending on what is connected to it. Everything else, such as naming circuits and building moods, happens inside the block's settings.
| Connection | What it does |
|---|---|
| Touch input (T5) | Wall switch moves through moods |
| Off input | Pulse turns all off, constant signal locks |
| Lc1 to Lc18 | One output per light circuit |
| Mood output | Shows the active mood |
| Click outputs | Pulse on double and triple click |
Programming the block
The basic programming takes only a few steps.
- Insert a Lighting Controller block onto the programming page of the room.
- Connect the LOXONE Touch to the T5/1 input, so the wall switch moves through the moods.
- Connect the light circuits to the outputs Lc1, Lc2, Lc3 and so on, one output per circuit.
- Double-click the block to open its settings, where you name the circuits and build the moods.
Actuator types
The Lighting Controller needs to know what kind of light it is driving. All LOXONE light control components are Smart Actuators by default, including the LED Spot RGBW Tree, the RGBW 24V Dimmer, the Dimmer Extension and the DALI Extension. A Smart Actuator supports dimming, color control and white control at the same time. The exception is switched lights on relays.
Auto Configuration chooses the correct type based on the light. You only need to set the actuator type by hand in special cases, mainly for third party fittings.
Light circuits and lighting groups
In the block settings, each connected circuit appears in the light circuits list. Its name comes from the connected device. Rename it if the name the customer sees in the app should be different from the name you use in programming.
Where a room has many spots, combine them into lighting groups before programming, for example one group for the ceiling and one for the spots above the sofa. A group is then programmed exactly like a single light, which keeps the logic easy to read.
To create a group, find lighting groups in the periphery list and create a new group from the ribbon. Groups can be changed at any time. If one spot shines into the wrong place, move it out of the group.
Create a mood
Build each mood in the settings of the Lighting Controller.
- Create the mood, and give it a name the customer will understand, such as Television or Dinner.
- Set each circuit for that mood: choose its brightness and color, or switch the circuit off.
- Decide on rotation. Tick the mood if the wall switch should reach it. Leave it unticked to keep it in the app and available to automation, but out of the wall switch cycle.
- Order the moods by priority, with the one used most at the top.
How the switch moves through moods
The middle button of the LOXONE Touch steps through the moods. Only the moods ticked for rotation appear. The others are skipped, but stay available in the app and to automation.
A mood can also be tied to a specific input. Triggering that input jumps straight to that mood, wherever the rotation is.
An example makes this clear. Suppose the Television mood is tied to the T5/1 input. The first click turns on Television. The next click moves to the next mood in rotation, skipping every unticked mood, including Off if it is unticked. The rotation then continues in a loop.
What the customer sees
In the app, the customer sees the list of moods, can adjust each circuit with a color picker for RGBW or tunable white, and has one control for all circuits at once. They can reorder the moods and choose which ones the wall switch reaches, without calling you.
Favorite colors saved in the app are shared across all Lighting Controller blocks, so a color the customer likes is available in every room.