Something to consider: If you want simple, why have them touch the switches at all? I never touch a switch in my house. Unless something has malfunctioned or misfired. (which can happen). I strive to have my house interact with us. Enter a room light turns on when illuminance is below a certain threshold. Off when you leave. Turn on the tv, lights dim.
It is beyond me why people spend so much time and money customizing something only to complicate it. The idea behind the term of "smart home" is to have it look like you don't have to do anything to make things happen. Make it seem natural or that your home is reacting to you. If I had to press a button for lights and such, I'd have left the same darn switch and saved myself a ton of money. With the flexibility of the rule now, anything is possible. Even scenes that just miraculously happen with seemingly little effort. Just an opinion, but something to consider.
Agreeing with April. My primary reason for installing Lutron Caseta dimmers and switches is so if someone completely unfamiliar with the house needs to turn a light on or off there is a switch.
@april.brandt thanks for the suggestion, yes ideally I'd have the lights on automatically. In that case I guess I could use any smart switch/bulb. That's true for me for some rooms.
Better if I describe what I want to do, (and maybe I'm not in the right forum):
In the kitchen we have a 3 gang box with 2 controlling canned lights and one for island pendants. I'd like add smart bulbs for some canned lights and replace the other 2 switches with smart dimming switches. That leaves a free space for some buttons. Those buttons would do scenes and provide physical controls for people in my house who need those ("I just want to push a button"). Scenes would be movie time, party time, deck at night, that kind of thing.
So I was thinking that I'd use Lutron. I like the Pico buttons (you can have 5 with HE) but I worry that it'll be hard for others to get used to which buttons do which with that configuration. So I'd rather have the 4-5-6 button configurations in the "RA" setups.
I have a similar need in the master bath where I'd like some buttons for scenes.
So alternative suggestions are welcome! I was thinking Caseta decora switches plus those fancy "RA" buttons, but not sure that's possible.
Also I'd rather replace switches as I can, one room at a time.
Thanks as always for the help!
Unfortunately you cannot do that. If you want even 1 RA2 Full product (hybrid keypads) you need to use ALL RA2 Full stuff. Unless you want to buy a separate hub for 1 device but that would be a waste. Don't get me wrong I use them and I love them, but know what your getting they are not cheep.
Also know that the writing on the buttons will be small. You more or less need to know what they are, as they are hard to read (unless you have 10/10 vision)
The keypad below is zoomed in pretty close and still not easy to read.
In my house you double tap the wall switch to override the motion lighting. That isn't obvious to anyone that doesn't know that is a thing, though.
I call that the "wife override", as I never take naps. When I was growing up on the farm, getting sleepy during the day just meant you need to get up off your butt and get something else done. You don't fall asleep standing up / working.
But there is no one way of doing it that meets everyone's activity schedule or routine. I just know what works in my house.
Good point, but this presents another issue. If it's a stormy day the lux levels outside are going to be low, meaning if your rule only runs during the night you will still need to turn the light on if you want.
Also, if you buy an outdoor HUE motion sensor/lux to base these off lux levels you will still run into issues that maybe the light will turn on during the day when you want to take a nap.
On a more serious note, I always have the lights on during the day, so I don't use outside lux (even though I have a very good outdoor lux sensor on my Weatherflow). I like it very bright, so even with shades open I still like lights on.
Very good! So what wall switches are you using, Lutron? I didn't realize HE recognizes double tap on standard decora smart switches. Are you hitting the top/bottom?
Nope, GE/Jasco zwave plus. Those support double tap up and doubletap down. So I set one to override on, the other to override off (but also have a time out on the override that turns it back off regardless).
I have homemade phone chargers fitted with contact sensors that engage with the weight of the phone and determine mode based on whether one phone is docked or two. Or none. This controls home, quiet time, and night. My lights are based on mode as well, so when one person goes to bed and docks thier phone, then the lights will only light under the bed at 20% in blue. Keeps lights from shining in the room. HAF. I have a temperature sensor that controls the fan speed in an attempt to keep the temperature a constant while we sleep. The closet is controlled with a contact sensor. On when open off when closed. My modes are home, away, quiet, and night. This covers our house adequately as if both phones are docked, then everything is turned off or doesn't interact or interacts in a muted manner. I have very few rules that need to be controlled with mode, but they are important ones. To keep up the HAF, I've promised that he will not have to press a button or say a command to get something to happen in our house. I've stuck to that pretty well. The only button we have is if we're working on something in the kitchen, like a project, we can tap a button to keep the lights from interacting until it's turned back off. Otherwise everything in our house happens with natural movements. Docking/undocking phones. Opening/closing doors, using the harmony remote to watch a movie/tv/ps4. Everything reacts as if the house knows what I want. This took plenty of planning and an appreciation for being a creature of habit.
[EDIT]
and if you want to take a nap in the day, you merely need to dock your phone to keep the lights from turning on every time you roll over. I noticed this question before.
I did two versions. The first worked, but was ugly. The second is still in use today. And I love it. The Qi charger actually died (cheap knockoff) so I plug my phone in and lay it on top of it until i address a version 3. The first version is linked in the story. Enjoy
Thanks @JasonJoel I really like the idea of double tapping a switch to do something slightly different. I assume HE treats one tap as different from 2 taps. Is this 14294 or 14292 (first is paddle second is toggle switch)? I'd like to get the 14294 but want to be sure it has double-tap. Also Enbrighten has Zigbee models (without GE label) now, #43080, I wonder if they will support double tap (I asked on diff. forum but not sure anyone has them yet). More zigbee in my house than wave. Enbrighten-Zigbee-In-Wall-Smart-Dimmer-with-QuickFit™-and-SimpleWire™-White-Almond
Both zwave models should support double tap. In zwave the GE are the same except form factor (no features I can thin of that are different between the toggle and paddle versions).
Don't know if the zigbee report doubletap/tripletap (the new enbrighten zwave models added triple tap). If they do it would almost certainly require a custom driver - probably a user made one as I haven't heard anything about hubitat making custom drivers for the zigbee switch/dimmers at this point.
But until a dev gets one and sees if it even reports anything on double tap, it is anyone's guess if it supports that in the device or not. Will be easy to tell, once paired if debug logging is on I would expect that there would be a catchall msg in the log if it is sending a double or triple tap event.
You don't fall asleep standing up / working.
Will be easy to tell, once paired if debug logging is on I would expect that there would be a catchall msg in the log if it is sending a double or triple tap event.
