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I am working on a Home Automation system that I inherited from someone who didn't really know what he was doing. There are dozens of light circuits, but only three of them can be controlled from the system (Leviton/HAI OmniPro 2).

Here is a picture of four of the switches: light switches

The leftmost switch works, and the other three in the picture do not.

I know that the left switch is a Leviton model that speaks HLC, Leviton's proprietary extension on top of UPB. However, I cannot figure out the model (and capabilities) of the other switches.

Can anyone tell me what they are (brand, model, etc) and/or what protocols they support?

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    Can you pull them out? Perhaps there's a model number labeled on them... – ThreePhaseEel May 24 '17 at 1:06
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    I don't think knowing the brand of switch will really make it safer to work on. That is, they're likely smart switches with both hot and neutral connections; maybe not. The situation you describe sounds dangerous; if you aren't comfortable turning off breakers to the box and opening it up, you should call in an electrician. – Robert Nubel May 24 '17 at 3:53
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    Those wall plate screws... What a hack! Just for reference those should be 6-32 oval head screws colored to match the cover plate, they come with the cover plate. I suspect those are sheetmetal screws and the threads are now gored. If the rest of the work is like this, this job will be easy because the guy was a moron. However, this is not a job you can "lightly touch". The cost of entry is that you will have to take apart everything, even to really know what you're looking at. So if you're not willing to follow the job through to the end, don't start it. – Harper May 24 '17 at 15:03
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    @Harper Yes, those screws are a perfect example of all the rest of the work that the last guy did. I am assembling a crew of four (including two professional electricians) to make major fixes to the system, but I need to be able to give them instructions. We plan to take apart everything and likely will have to redo large portions of it. – Moshe Katz May 24 '17 at 15:23
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    You need to take everything apart for an initial survey, you just do. Get used to taking stuff apart i.e. opening everything up 2-3 times. For that reason you might want to get a supply of the correct screws so the first time you open it, you can put it back with the correct hardware for the convenience of the next person to work on it. Mostly 6-32 dome (comes with the plates), 6-32 flathead 1" long, some 8-32 round head 1/2" long, and an occasional short 10-32 typically a ground screw. – Harper May 24 '17 at 15:31
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These are really old HAI switches (from before Leviton bought them) which use the ALC protocol over separate signaling wires.

I finally found someone who could tell me that the original switches were put in around 2005, so I used The Wayback Machine to look at HAI's website as it appeared at that time. From there, I found pictures that match these switches perfectly.

UPDATE: I finally got into the controller cabinet for the system and discovered that it has an ALC controller already hooked up with lots of wires that appear to go to these old switches all over the building. It appears that we should already be able to control the old switches from the system because of this board, so I'm guessing that something is just misconfigured in the settings.

ALC Controller

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  • Perhaps you could post how you figured that out? – ThreePhaseEel May 25 '17 at 2:13
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    @ThreePhaseEel currently posting on my phone. Will add more details from the computer later. – Moshe Katz May 25 '17 at 2:14

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