Automation Keeps Monsters Away

Does this sound familiar?  Little ones get scared at night and come running to Mom and Dad’s room for comfort at 3am.   This is sweet and they need you but it can get old the after the 4th night in a row.  Here’s how automation can help.  Get yourself Insteon or X10 switches / dimmers for the room.  Then give your kids remotes for their rooms.  Now when they get scared they can turn on the lights from bed and see that there are no monsters.  You can even set buttons for different light levels so they can leave the lights on a tiny bit to get back to sleep and don’t have to go full-on in the middle of the night.

We can do this with several technologies.   Here’s what you need for X10 or Insteon:

INSTEON: 2440 or 2440BK remote and 2477D dimmer.  Or 2476D or 2476S and a 2443 access point.

X10:  HR12A remote, RR501 transceiver and WS12A or 2876SB wall switches.  2876SB is a much quieter on/off switch than X10’s and can be programmed to work with X10

Of course you can expand on this idea but in our family this really helped our youngest feel better and more confident about his room when he went through a spell of bad dreams and monsters.