Any advice is appreciated on how to set up a new Caseta whole home system with Pico remotes and regular hard wired switches. Based on what I have read, the thing to do is set up the Picos in one "room" and not connect them via the Lutron app, but instead connect them through HE to Caseta devices and then expose them through HomeKit for exposing the platform remotely. Let me know if this makes sense and would appreciate any and all advice to improve the install. Thanks in advance!
Hopefully you already have this covered, but you want the PRO version of the Caseta bridge for integrating with Hubitat -- the more commonly available version of the bridge that's sold off-the-shelf at big-box stores like Home Depot is not the Pro version.
I'll let other folks smarter than me on Caseta chime in for integration-related best practices -- welcome to the community here!
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Not sure what you mean about regular switches, meaning are they smart devices?
The way caseta works is if you have a pico and a caseta switch and place them in the same room in the caseta app, it will connect the pico and the switch together, by placing them in separate caseta rooms they do not automatically bind together, allowing you more control within Hubitat where you would then use the pico to automate lutron as well as any other devices in Hubitat.
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Not sure what you mean by this. However, this is not what I would do. For any Pico Remotes being used as auxiliary switches for your Caseta Smart Switches/Dimmers, just let Lutron handle this. Do NOT use Hubitat to handle the Pico remote events to then try to control Caseta Devices - there will be a perceivable delay due to the way Lutron's Clear Connect RF protocol is implemented.
For HomeKit, I would recommend simply using the native Lutron Caseta HomeKit integration.
With the Pro bridge and Hubitat, Picos can be used a couple ways... In all cases, they will need to be integrated from Caseta, so they need to be added to your Caseta bridge to start.
I have a couple Picos that I just leave wholly within Caseta - they simply control certain Caseta switches and there's no reason for me to bring them into Hubitat.
But many of my Picos are added to Hubitat and they don't control anything at all related to Caseta - they are just super-handy, pretty inexpensive and long-lasting remotes for all my other Hubitat devices.
For those Picos, I created a room in my Caseta app called "Hubitat" and that's where I add them to -- that way, they don't automatically get associated to a Caseta switch when initially adding.
Got it - Thanks!
So, I want to be able to use the Hubitat to enable either a double press or long press to turn the scene off. My plan is to order the likes of the L41 4-button picos, use the HE to assign a scene to each of the 4 buttons, and then use the HE to allow for a long press of the button to turn off the scene. I don't think I can do that with just using the Lutron pro hub.
Also, I am not clear on when you say a preceptible delay -- how noticeable is the delay if I use a scene a pico and customize its functionality and then expose it to HomeKit for use on my phones and iPads as well? I find the Caseta default configurations of the buttons on Picos to be very limiting, and want to use the HE to give the Picos higher end Lutron functionality.
In my experience, 2-5 seconds. Definitely perceptible.
You can get around this by pairing your Picos to a RadioRA2 main repeater that is configured to use a slightly different radio frequency than the one used by the Caseta Pro bridge.
You will also want to use the Hubitat driver Lutron Pico (not the Lutron Pico Fast) in order to get the double click or held to work, and that also adds a bit of time to realize that the button isn't going to be pressed a second time. Overall, I find the total time to activate devices to be acceptable.
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Apologies -- I should clarify a bit of exactly what I am trying to do, based on some of the comments here. I am replacing an old and now malfunctioning Homeworks 4 series processor system with Caseta. I liked the 6 button switches on Homeworks, but I don't want to spend $20K+ to replace it.
That being said, I will be using 4 button Picos to replace the 6 button keypads in place today. Their functionality is press once to turn a scene on, and press the same one once again to turn that same scene off. I am trying to duplicate that type of experience using HE and Picos in concert with the Lutron Caseta light switches.
Consequently, I am thinking that I will put in new Diva and Clara switches, and some of the original Caseta light switches as well, to replace the existing paddle switches connected to the Homeworks system. I will simply add these through the Lutron app into each room they are in/support.
To replace the 6 button scene switches I have, I will be using 4 button PICO switches like the L41, run through the HE to give me a similar capability as I had before, i.e., 4 scene buttons which both turn on and turn off the scene.
To do that, I believe I add the Picos to a room with no other Caseta light switches (in my case, "Pico Room") and don't associate them directly with any of the switches through the Lutron App. They will only be "Scene" buttons that each control a number of lights in a room or rooms.
Then, I push back to the Pro Bridge/Hub the Hubitat custom button programming/scene setup (with the added "off" functionality in each of the 4 buttons), allowing the keypads to respond in kind, and also expose this to Homekit to allow for use on iPhones and iPads in an online dashboard/control panel of sorts for these scenes, all my Caseta switches, and other scenes I create that I don't assign to a button on given Pico.
In this thread, this is the first I have read of people not being happy with HE response times in a use case like mine. I would welcome more feedback on that and anything else I am proposing here. Thanks again for all the thoughts presented so far.
What exactly do you want to expose to HomeKit? The Pico remotes?
I am not sure if Hubitat’s HomeKit integration supports Pico remotes???
One option to eliminate the perceptible delay of using Pico triggered Hubitat “Scenes” to control Lutron lighting, is to add a RadioRA2 main repeater just for the Pico remotes. The RadioRA2 controller allows one to change the ClearConnect RF frequency, which allows two distinct ClearConnect RF networks to coexist without causing any conflicts. This has been the only way Hubitat users with a design like you’re proposing have been able to avoid the delays.
Just in case you’re wondering if 2 Caseta Pro hubs would resolve the issue, it will not. Users have tried it and it does not solve the issue. Although it does allow 75 Caseta devices per hub, in case you need more than 75. Although, I’d opt for the RadioRA2 main repeater as my second Lutron hub/controller.
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Thanks. I want the HE button scenes to be playable through HomeKit, so if the scene kitchen (which turns on 4 switches at 100%, 70%, 70%, 70% ) is pressed on a Pico button or pressed on the iPhone through HomeKit, the same action is achieved.
Yes this definitely is the way to go.
About 2 years ago I picked up a RadioRA2 main repeater on eBay for this express purpose. I think it was about $150-175, but it makes it possible to use Picos to control Caseta devices via Hubitat automations without any delay.
Strongly recommend it.
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Understood. In that case, while I do not believe you can expose the Pico remotes to HomeKit in any manner, I know you can still achieve your goals. When creating a "Scene" on Hubitat, using the built-in "Groups and Scenes" app, it will create a 'switch' device that acts as an "activator" for your scene. This virtual 'switch' device can then be exposed to HomeKit, allowing these 'scenes' to be activated.
Here is an example 'Scene Activator' switch device for my Kitchen Lights during the "Day". I have others for "Evening" and "Night". I use these scenes based on motion activity in the Kitchen, where each scene is activated based on the current 'Mode" of my hub.
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Thanks for seconding that. Do you know where I can find instructions on how to set it up for that purpose?
This is a great help. I will dig into this after my Hubitat arrives. Thanks.
Yes. Here you go:
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Thanks!
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