Home Cinema - Lighting?

[Ste]

Hi

I have recently turned a spare room into the start of a home cinema. It's being done on a budget, but so far I have a BenQ 1070, 100" EliteScreens SabreFrame, with fully blacked out walls and ceiling etc. and a carefully setup MadVR the result for the money is really quite impressive

Sound wise I have Dali Ikon 6 speakers for the fronts, currently running in stereo powered by an Audiolab M-DAC and 2x 8000MX mono blocks. I have an Ikon Vokal 2 in reserve and keeping my eye out for a pair of Ikon 1, 5 or on-wall's for the rears. Then I can get a receiver and get the Audiolab gear back downstairs powering the hifi!

Starting to think about the lighting and wondered whether anyone had any experience or thoughts. The screen I have is really sensitive to ambient light and whilst it's fine to watch in darkness on my own I'd like to be able to have different light moods etc. for when others are around. Mainly for the learning exercise to be honest but the end result would probably be cool too

What I think I want is -

A pelmet / coving type setup with dimmable LED string type lighting around the edge
A couple of separate halogen down light circuits on dimmers (probably 6-8 bulbs in total)
Possibly a separate set of dimmable LED string lighting behind the screen

Possibly not dissimilar to this (not sure about the stars though!) - http://www.starscape.co.uk/Images/infinity/UK_home/UK_home_cinema_star_ceiling.JPG

HOWEVER... I want to be able to control it all remotely. Ideally I want to program light settings via something like IFTTT so that the whole lot fades and rises when you play/stop/pause films via Kodi

Any ideas where to start looking? I can see lots of "smart home" type resources, but not sure what about the interoperability of it all and what combination of dimmers would work with both LED string lighting and regular halogen circuits...

Am on a budget and want to do all of the work myself rather than getting someone in. Any pointers?

Cheers!

 

[Amp34]

Smartthings (or a similar system).

Forget halogen as well, use LED bulbs.

I'm doing something similar, but more basic. I basically have my room separated into three lighting areas, all dimmable:

Bar Area
AV/TV area
Other (basically an area with a pool/football table)

I have 11 pot lights of various sizes and will be connecting a variety of under cabinet lights as well (halfway through the build). Get some smart light switches that works with Smartthings (I'm using GE paddle dimmers, but am in North America, not sure what is available in the UK) and you can control them with an app on your phone.

The next step is to get a Logitech Harmony Remote, which you can connect up to the Smartthings hub. You can also connect things like blackout blinds to the hub. Once all connected and configured you can set the Harmony up to do ITTT like actions, such as setting an action to turn the TV on, PS4/XBox/Blu Ray player on and dimming each set of lights to what you want as well as shutting the blinds and any other multitude of smart devices. If you use lighting like Philips hue then you could change the colour of the lights as they dim.

The interpretability is the annoying bit. Various smart hubs work with other smart hubs and devices, but you need to pick carefully to make sure they are actually compatible. Cost wise I think the Harmony remote and hub is the best bet to start with in this instance, then find out what light switches and other smart devices you want. Once that is done see if you can find a hub that will work with both the Harmony Hub and the devices you are interested in. For me that was the Smartthings Hub.

There are other systems like Control4 but they are stupid expensive and you will be forced to get someone in to design and build it for you.