Transition to LED with older Z-wave hardware

[martinisoft]

Dear fellow forum members,

Six years ago my Wife and I purchased the home that we are currently living in.
At that time I was new to home automation, but I was certain that this would be something that I wanted introduce in this new home.
Since I needed to replace the most of the electrical system and all the power sockets and wall switches this was the ideal moment to go for it.
After doing a lot of research I concluded that It was going to be a Z-Wave based system.
At the time the only real players on the European market where Act Homepro and Duwi.
We went for Duwi, and from that time all our wall switches (Mostly dimmers, some switches and some wall controllers) are in Duwi Everlux. (later on I purchased some Zwave.me but the vast majority is still good old Duwi).
We also used Duwi Everlux for our power sockets to get a clean consistent look.
We used Duwi dimmers for every light in the house with the exception of the toilet and the outdoor lights (those are controlled by Duwi Zwave switches).
This means that we really have a lot of Duwi dimmers in the house.
Almost all the lightning fixtures that we have are for GU10 spots, and those fixtures are housing 50W GU10 Halogens at the moment.
This all works very well.

Now I am looking at the transition to GU10 LEDs and would like to ask you to think with me on this one.
I think there are a few options, al with their own pro's and cons.

- Replace all dimmers with fibaro or qubino inserts.
pro's: Led Capable dimmer with instant status report.
Cons: expensive to replace all my existing dimmers and no double impuls switches available for the duwi everlux series. This would mean that I need to buy more duwi or zwave.me wall controllers to control the new dimmer trough Z-Wave even when they are in the same wall box. So that seems a bit of a strange setup to me.

- Leave Duwi Everlux and go for a more common switch program and z-wave inserts from fibaro or qubino.
pro's: Future ready, instant status report, and no problems with LED's
Con's: The costs would be enormous since I need to replace everything, including the zwave on/off switches, powersockets and wall controllers.

- Intruduce Zigbee by using Philips Hue, Innr or Osram Lightify
pro's: no worries about compatible dimmers since every GU10 has its own dimmer.
cons: Expensive because I need to replace all my dimmers with zwave wall switches and get them to trigger Homeseer Events so It can instruct the bridge to turn on the lights. This would mean that if my controller is down the lightswitches are not working anymore and I would be unable to control the dim-level from the wall switch.

- Keep the situation as it is and find led's that can cope with this dimmer.
It would be ideal If I could find a led that can be dimmed by the Duwi dimmer. I was thinking that If I would go for GU10 Led's with 7 watts I could overcome the minimum load of the Duwi dimmer when I have a minimum of 4 Leds in every fixture (which is the case).
I am wondering if the dimmer bypasses that Fibaro, and now Vision make could do something positive in this senario.
Does anyone here have some hands on experience on this one so I do not have to reinvent the wheel?
I can only find a few negative stories about blown fuses and Led's when trying to do this, but I cannot find if this had to do with not having the minimum load connected.

When I review my options only the last option would give me a bit of a normal return of investment when I would go LED. So my question to you is, am I missing ovious options to transfer to LED? What would you do? Did anyone use the Duwi/Zwave.me dimmer successfully with LEDS with or without a Dimmer Bypass?

thanks for thinking with me..

Martijn.



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