control4 switch questions?

[gooch]

hello everyone. my name is gooch and im an electrician. today i was doing an electrical trim in a house and the low voltage guy showed up and told me that they were going to use control4 switches throughout the house. this was the first time i had ever come into contact with or even heard about these switches. the low volt guy said that he knows nothing about line voltage and told me i had to be the one to install them for that reason, but he had no instructions or information about how to hook them up. i think that this whole control4 system is pretty cool and would like to learn alot more about it but for now i am mainly concerned about these switches. on the switch it has a tag that says if its hooked up wrong and it will damage the switch so i was hoping someone could answer a few questions or point me in the right direction or tell me if im way off base.

most of the lights that the control4 switches control are on 3-ways. the low volt guy had two different types of switches, regular switches and dimmers. he told me that both of these could be used for a 3-way. the regular switch has four wires coming out of it: black, red, white, and green. this doesnt seem to be enough wires to hook up to a 3-way switch. i would imagine the black would be the hot, red would be the switch leg, the white would be the neutral, green for ground. so my question is:

1.) can i hook this switch up somehow to make it work as a 3-way, or do i need an actual 3-way switch to make this work?

2.)and if so do i need a control4 switch and both ends of the 3-way?

i have questions about the dimmers also. the dimmer has the same wires coming out of it except it has one extra wire which is blue. my questions about this is:

1.) how do i hook this up?

2.) can these dimmers be used and 3-ways also and how would i hook that up?

if anybody could answer these questions that would be awesome, or maybe give me a website that would point me in the right direction. i tried doind a search to find some sort of installation guide or something but had no luck. any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks

-gooch

[zipperman19]

NEVERMIND just read Ryan's explanation below! It's 100 times better.

[RyanE]

Welcome, gooch.

Control4 dimmers and switches aren't all that hard to hook up, and I doubt you'll fry any of them.

I'm not an electrician, but I wired my previous and current homes, and have hooked up a lot of Control4 dimmers.

First of all, there isn't any way to do a 'traditional' 3-way hookup with Control4 dimmers. The low-voltage guy was a bit incorrect in saying that you could use either the switch or the dimmer for a 3-way circuit.

Let me explain: There are actually 3 different devices used in hooking up Control4 lighting.

First, there's the Control4 Dimmer. It actually has 5 wires: Green (ground), Black (hot), White (neutral), Red (dimmed load), and Blue. You can basically ignore the blue. It can be used to power additional keypads, but you shouldn't need that. There is an air gap that can be pulled where the top LED is located. If you put your fingernail in the top LED, you can pull up on it to break all power going to the dimmer (and the load).

Second, there's the Control4 Switch. It looks like the dimmer, but has no air gap to pull, and doesn't have the blue wire. It has Green (ground), White (neutral), Black (hot), and Red (switched load).

Lastly, there is something called a 2-button keypad. It looks just like the switch, except that it only has 2 wires, a White (neutral) and a Black (hot). The 2-button keypad does not control a load, it is only used to control a load located elsewhere, either on the switch or the dimmer.

3-way 'circuits' in Control4 are wired with the dimmer or switch at the location where the load is wired to, and as many 2-button keypads powered in the other locations. This means that in some cases, you'll have to use the red traveller wire to carry the dimmed/switched output of the controlling device through the box where the 2-button keypad is, if the line and the load are installed at different boxes.

If the line and the load are both installed in the same box, just wire the dimmer as normal, and wire the white and black going to the other box as neutral and hot, and use them to power the 2-button keypad. In this case, you don't use the red traveller wire.

The 2-button keypad can't talk directly to the dimmer, so a Control4 controller may need to be installed and the 2-button keypad linked in the software to the dimmer before final.

If you have any additional questions, please feel free to ask or Private Message me.

RyanE

[RyanE]

Oh, and one more thing:

Control4 dimmers are rated at 1000W, but must be derated to 800W (if you take off one side of the heat sink) or down to 600W (if you take off both sides of the heat sink).

That is, if you gang more switches / dimmers in the same box, you must break the tabs on the appropriate sides, and derate the dimmers appropriately.

RyanE

[gooch]

thank this helps out alot. so i guess i need to get ahold of my low volt guy and tell him he needs to get me some of those 2 button keypads. he must not know much about this whole system either. or maybe he doesnt know about the line volt part. that blue wire on the dimmer was screwing me up too. i knew it must be simple but with out a set of instructions or nobody to point me in the right direction it left me pretty confused. thanks again i appreciate your help.

-gooch

[RyanE]

gooch:

No problem. Glad to hear I could help.

If your dealer had brought you a dimmer and switch in the 'box' packaging (instead of the 10-pack), they have wiring instructions included.

RyanE