You could rewire your house so a separate circuit takes care of all lighting. If I lived in a mansion this might have some use but I might have left some other small appliance on to bug my capability to get some peaceful sleep. Since I live in a one room apartment I have no problem sleeping. You seem to have a maniacal devotion to saving minuscule amounts of electricity.

They make network light switches, if you really want to do this.

My kid would have a lot of fun with this. If you really want it check out some of the X11 devices that are out there. You can program them to turn off and on everything in your home. Judging from your post, I think I guy like you would have a good time with it.

I agree with bkeene12. Younger children would misuse this feature. How about a slight modification. A clapper that turns off/on all of the lights! Clap on! Clap off! Not only would you be able to turn off the lights from anywhere in the house, you could also give an unsuspecting burgler a bit of a scare when suddenly all of the lights came on. It would be important to consider dog barks. You wouldn't want a yelping dog to cause the lights to flicker on and off...although this could be a lot of fun during halloween.

Maybe you should stop suggesting separate ideas here and look into home automation systems, like X10.

The problem with X10 is, although it's been around for years now there is very little take-up except among techno-geeks.

The problem is because it is too general and not specific enough. A technical person like you or I can make it do anything. The average home-owner drowns in confusion before he can do anything.

What is needed for home users is a kind of application level gateway, a cheap affordable gadget that X10-ises your appliances in some specific way.

Unfortunately, there are two additional hurdles to this:

a. X10 adapters are expensive enough -- typically in the ball park of $30 each for a simple adapter -- that adding one to each off-the-shelf device you want to control soon becomes quite expensive. For example my small suburban house has 27 lights in total (between indoor, outdoor, fixed and table lamps), so controlling them all at once by X10 would cost over $800.

b. Secondly, X10 is quite slow, about 3/4 s per command per address. This isn't too bad for simple functions, but greatly limits the flexibility one might hope for from such a powerful and general system. In the above example, I could give all 24 lamps the same address and turn them all off in 3/4 s; but then I have spent $800 to create a glorified on/off switch. If I wanted to address lamps individually so I could, for example, make my computer simulate occupancy, then it would take 20 s to turn the lights on, even in an emergency!

That system already exists if you wanted to make your house a "smart house" (a PLC controlled system). this requires you to basically require the whole house (which can be pricey).

If you were to do it with your existing circuit, it would still be pricey. they lighting in your house usually is powered through a dedicated circuit from your mains, with all lights connected in parallel branches and with a switch in series with each light's parallel branch: ________________________________________________________ and so on... | | | | | | | \\ switch1 \\ switch2 | | | | light1 light2(source) | | | | | | | | --------------------------------------- | ground/earth

i.e when a switch1 is open and switch2 is closed, electricity can not flow past switch1 to reach light1 but can still flow through switch2 to get to light2.

knowing this, one could either:a) put a switch in series with all of the above parallel branches (i.e. above the source on the diagram above). which would stop electricity from going to any of the lights regardless of whether their corresponding switches where on or off. this would not require too much electrician work, and is already done using circuit breakers in your main switchboard, however it means that while that new switch is open, NO switch can turn on ANY lights, i.e. the switch would HAVE to be closed while you want to operate any lights which may become an inconvenience.b) less likely option (you may as well get a smart house, but it is a possibility). you wire that new switch in series (inside the parallel branch) with every light that you want controlled by the switch so that the effect of a) only occurs to the lights you choose.

there ya go :)

they make rf decora light switches. you hit one button, and it will do what ever you want, hit another and it does other things.

you could either spend the $50 a pop on switches for your house, or not be lazy and do it the old fasioned way