For years we’ve performed the lighting dance every evening when we retire to our bedroom: turn on the bedroom light switch as we enter, turn on the bedside light from our headboard, and go back to turn off the bedroom light switch. This has always struck us as silly, but seemed to have no good solution. Until Monday.
On Monday, I replaced our bedroom light switch with a dimmer that includes a remote. Now we can turn off the bedroom lights with the remote. We can also turn the lights on and adjust their brightness with the remote. All it cost was $35, and installation was as easy as any light switch.
I wonder how many other household absurdities have easy technological solutions. I suspect there are many problems that I don’t even recognize as problems because I don’t know about the available solutions.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
And to all a good night
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3 comments:
Our back bedroom has a dimmer with a remote, but a somewhat annoying misfeature: If you turn the light on from the switch, and then turn it off from the remote, you can't then turn it on again from the switch. Similarly, if you turn it off from the switch, the remote doesn't do anything until you turn it on again from the switch. It's basically (perhaps EXACTLY :^) like having two switches in parallel, instead of like having two controls for the same switch. Is yours less stupid?
Ours works correctly. Yours sounds insane.
When you install two wired switches (such as at both ends of a staircase), you need to use 3-way switches to avoid exactly that problem. With a simple single-pole switch and a remote, you should never get that behavior. Makes me think there's an extra wired switch in your setup somewhere that the remote is talking to.
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