I was just daydreaming a bit about my wife's school's "cafetorium" and thinking of the many similar types of spaces that you might find at elementary schools. Her lights are controlled by a number of single-gang residential-style dimmer switches that are in a "booth" where the only window faces toward FOH and nowhere near the stage.
With all the advances in tech with smart home stuff, I was wondering why no one had come up with a product to solve this problem. Almost every elementary school I've been in has a similar setup. How hard would it be to take your regular dimmer switch and replace the pot with a controller that decodes RS-485? You could even put in a throughput so you could network the 8-12 dimmer switches together and then wirelessly control it from a cheap laptop setup. It'd be a great solution to the cafetorium problem.
With all the advances in tech with smart home stuff, I was wondering why no one had come up with a product to solve this problem. Almost every elementary school I've been in has a similar setup. How hard would it be to take your regular dimmer switch and replace the pot with a controller that decodes RS-485? You could even put in a throughput so you could network the 8-12 dimmer switches together and then wirelessly control it from a cheap laptop setup. It'd be a great solution to the cafetorium problem.