Just bought a house and it’s super dark at night so I need to line my driveway for safety and my walkway up to the front porch. This is my first time doing anything like this and I don’t know what I don’t know. What types of things should I consider? Solar? Automated? What are your lessons learned? If you could do it all again, what would you do now? Is there something cool I can do other than on at dusk and off at dawn? Thank you in advance!
Are you able to get power to the locations where you want lighting, or does it need to be battery or solar powered?
As for automated or not (and how much automation you need), that really depends on whether you want lights that just turn on at dusk/off at dawn, or if you want lights on from dusk until late in the evening, and then off again unless you 1) Open front door, 2) Drive car into driveway, 3) sense motion anywhere in the front yard, etc.
Do you have some general parameters regarding what you are looking for in terms of things like above?
Oh snap, that looks awesome
There’s an exterior outlet near enough I’m sure I could bury an extension cable, but I might prefer solar/battery. Either way not a deal breaker. I don’t actually have parameters yet. Well, all that matters is that we can see when backing out and down a hill. There’s two driveways, one on either side of the house and so I park in one side and my girlfriend on the other. Her side needs lit up for safety too. I haven’t gotten into automation with sensors yet. I’m new to there whole automation game so I’m really a blank slate here.
Thanks...if the house is a long-term commitment (e.g., not planning on selling/moving too soon) then going with powered lights will give you the greatest reliability, broad choices, and the lowest maintenance required. So absent any obvious "musts" other than needing reliable lighting on the two driveways, I would start with looking into powered lights if I was in your shoes. I've never been fond of mucking w/batteries (they die at the least convenient moment), and I've found solar in some outdoor lighting I've used in the past to have too short a usable life-span.
I currently don't have any automated landscape lighting in place myself (other than some Ring floodlight cameras), so can't help you with specific options, but I'm sure others will drop by w/suggestions. An obvious appraoch is find a "dumb" lighting option that you can then control on/off/dimming via smart plugs and motion sensors, etc. I'm actually interested in this subject as well, so I'll keep an eye peeled on this thread. 
Just found this...wow.
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I, for one, overwhelmingly recommend powered landscape lighting as well. Solar kinda sucks IMHO. Also, please do not bury an extension cord...that's all kinds of not safe. Fairly cheaply you can get into low-voltage landscape lighting. I highly recommend Volt Lighting as they have great products, good prices, and excellent support. They cater to DIYers as customers unlike a lot of the landscape lighting brands that only want to deal with pro installers. If you have a Costco nearby, they often sell rebranded Volt landscape light kits. You can bury the lines between the low voltage transformer and the lights themselves easily and safely. You can automate everything together by simply using a smart plug where the transformer plugs in.
The link about using Zooz ZEN16 for multizone off a single transformer would totally work as well. I rigged up something similar in the past that was a lot more janky. The ZEN16 would work beautifully for it. Zooz even has it as a suggested use case with a How-to Document for using it that way.
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My solution was direct burial 120 volt wiring going to lamp posts. This gets the light showing the ground rather than your eyes.
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I have a particular issue for my application...power is available at the front corner of our front yard where we used to have a light pole (installed when the house was fist built years ago). So I need to have the transformer and something like the Zooz ZEN16 relay down in that spot in waterproof housings placed in a way that is not obtrusive/obvious or WAF will be very poor. Possibly in a buried sprinkler valve box...I want to run to three locations from there.
You could maybe do some decorative rock thing also...I've seen those hollow designed to aesthetically cover other things in your landscape.
One potential issue depending on where you live is the ZEN16 is spec'd for 32F to 100F... I have a similar issue where I have existing transformers that would work perfect with the ZEN16 but they're mounted outside and would be exposed to the temperatures. I could easily protect from dust/moisture but it's gonna get cold as heck.
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Missed that...I'm in SoCal about 20m from the coast but it can, surprisingly, get cold enough to create frost on the ground, but not very often. The upper end should be OK, but I may have to think about ventilation if I use the rock option. If I put it into a buried valve box I think that could help keep the lower and upper temps a little less extreme.
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I have a question into Zooz support about just how critical that temperature spec is...I'd have a similar issue using one in my garage for the doors...
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To close the loop, here’s the support response:
The ZEN16 device will operate best within its specified operation limits (32-104 F) but you can try and see how it behaves in weather outside these temperatures, since these requirements are standard for any Z-Wave chip but we have customers using the products in more extreme temperatures.
It's possible that in freezing temperatures the unit will simply not respond via Z-Wave.
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For reference, I’ve had a zen16 in a detached non-insulated garage in the north east for close to two years now without issue. No issues with the cold or the heat.
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Awesome. Great to hear from someone who actually tried it.
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So Zooz has the Zen 16 and 17 on sale for memorial day...wondering which would be the "best" for low-voltage lighting control in the front yard. I'd likely have two lighting zones that I'd want to control.
Any reason to choose one over the other?
The ZEN16 would give you three zones of control. The ZEN17 would give you two zones and two dry contact sensor inputs. So if you are going to setup two zones, which is more likely useful to you for future expansion...a third output or two sensor inputs?
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Zen 16 it is... I'm going to control the lights via time and motion automations, so that seems like the best way to go. I like having the option of creating a third zone if needed.
Note that Zen 16 is 500 series and 17 is 700 series chip - not sure it matters, but can be good to know…
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A keen observation good sir. 
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