Sick of Z-wave. Zigbee switches/dimmers seems to be few and far between, and when there is a good one, it's like $120.
So I'm looking at Caseta. However, I'm concerned about range. My house is 3 stories, roughly 80 feet wide, and 32 feet deep. Caseta says it's good for up to 2500 sq ft. I'm clearly far above that. The areas that are going to get Caseta dimmers/switches are at the far ends of the house, not in the middle. When they remodeled the house long ago, they put in a LiteTouch system that covers most of the lights in the house. But, they ran out of space in it so it has traditional switches in a couple of bedrooms on one end of the house, and the mudroom/garage on the other end of the house.
With a Caseta SmartBridge Pro, you can add one plug in dimmer outlet which can act as a Clear Connect repeater device. I have 50 Caseta devices in my home and they have worked every time, without any failures, ever. I believe Lutron’s square footage estimates are on the very conservative side.
I replaced a bunch of older GE Z-wave (non-Plus) switches and dimmers that were somewhat problematic.
Caseta is not a mesh system. So that could be an issue. OTOH, it's frequency is so low (~430 MHz) that it transmits really well. Also, each Caseta network supports a single repeater.
FWIW I have a Pico in my car in the Caseta visor clip that I use to open my garage and other things via button controller. It works at the end of my long driveway so the signal goes pretty far. YMMV but it’s worth a try.
Clear Connect is probably the best out there in terms of transmission through walls and distance it is able to travel. It puts zigbee and z-wave to shame. It isn't mesh because it doesn't have to be. It can do 60 feet line of sight or 30 feet through walls direct to the hub.
I have three stories close to 4k sf, I have two bridges, but this was driven by device count.
Prior to the 50 expansion I had one bridge with multiple devices in every room on all floors, didn't have any issues.
I have a central location for the hub, which means less than 40 feet to each device. I guess at worst I could do hubs at either end of the house if I had problems.
Also each hub can have one repeater. It will be the first plug-in dimmer device you add to the system. I put mine as far away from the hub as I could (I have one upstairs, I don't have one downstairs.).
