Lutron Connected Bulb Remotes

As bad a CEO/Manager as Ben Kaufman was, Wink was better off as part of Quirky than they are as part of i.am+ .....

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I actually found the Wink hub while looking through the Quirky website. I hadn't even remembered Ben's name until your post. I had already left Wink by 2015 so I missed all the biggest upheavals. I did start a Wink group on Google Plus but turned it over when I moved on.

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I did manage to sell the Lutron connected bulb remotes @ a premium, buy Pico remotes and use them in their stead. Button controller-> pico remotes -> run rules... WIN!

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I'm still not sure why people are willing to pay so much money for those (the Lutron Connected Bulb Remote), but I'm glad it worked out in your favor! Picos are cheap and, like any device but especially noticeable here since there are lots of different events this one device is capable of sending, quite powerful on Hubitat. Enjoy!

The reason that they worked well with Wink is that you could use them to as shortcut controls for any of the lights on the Wink Hub, not just connected bulbs. I just started migrating over to Hubitat today. I figured out how to get my LeakSmart sensors to work and then will start on the Lutron stuff and z wave motion detectors.

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I originally bought mine to use with Wink, but they were always slow. I only have a Wink 1 hub I no longer use, so maybe that’s the difference. Anyway, the Pico and Smart Bridge Pro with HE is superior in very many ways.

However,I still use 6 of them with my Hue Bridge. I wouldn’t sell them. Very high WAF. Certain lights just need to work no matter what, barring an outage.

Your post is very meaningful to me, thanks for that.

I have not moved from Wink yet because I have an enormous automation setup to migrate and won't start unless the new system can do at least as well as the old one.

I have 51 ZWave units, a large Hue system, two Ecobee thermostats, a dozen or so sensors of various types, etc.

The WAF and multiple 'robot' (macro activation) use cases for the Wink system here are at least 50% centered on the Lutron Connected Bulb remotes!

This is THE #1 issue I face, and which I must resolve before I order the Hubitat unit and start the conversion. Marking this thread to see if others comment in ways that are helpful.

We do not have any plans to support the Lutron connected bulb remotes.

@NCSteve.. while this might seem like a challenge, I made the move & loving every bit of the instantaneous response from the HE/Lutron-Pro combo. With the Lutron Pico remotes, now, I have 5 buttons instead of 4 (on the LCBRs) on each remote. Best part is, I have a few GE Zwave Fan switches - which I now control with Lutron Pico remotes & made them function like a regular Lutron Fan remote! The options are endless

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Those Lutron Connected Bulb Remotes still seem to command a very high (>$50 each) resale value on ebay. Depending on how many you have, you could probably recoup the cost of the Lutron Smart Bridge PRO2, and the Pico remotes by selling your existing Lutron Connected Bulb Remotes. The Pico remotes go for about $15 each, so selling 2 LCBRs will net you 6+ pico remotes. Sell another 2 LCBRs, and you've paid for the Lutron Smart Bridge PRO2.

The Pico remotes on Hubitat work incredibly well. I have replaced all other "button devices" with Pico remotes because they work so well, and are so reliable.

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@NCSteve I recommend considering this route. I moved ~130 devices from Wink to Hubitat earlier this year. Pico Remotes are incredibly versatile. Unlike Wink, Hubitat lets you use a Pico to control non-Caseta devices.

However, I recommend keeping one Lutron CBR around. They are very useful to reset zigbee bulbs.

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I took the leap. The Lutron smart bridge pro to Hubitat is great. I did figure out how to use Pico remotes in Rules to control some functions of Hue and Cree Bulbs. I am pretty sure that I can create rules to use Pico remotes to control scenes or non Lutron devices once potted into Hubitat. The connected bulb remotes are Zigbee and I can get them to join the hub but the don’t do anything. I am still playing around with it. I have all my Leaksmart sensors and the valve working as well. The only performance issue is Z-Wave range compared to the Wink Hub 2 that has a bigger antenna. But, installing the Z-Wave products going from nearest to furthest solved it. The last two projects are the connected bulb remotes and rooting the Wink relay. I might sell the Wink 2. People are paying a premium for them. Even if the don’t go belly up, they haven’t updated device compatibility in a long time.

As indicated by @mike.maxwell, there are no plans to support these. And as others have remarked, they're going at a premium on eBay. I'd recommend you take advantage of the demand!

Thanks for your reply.

Thanks for your reply. Having more buttons per remote is actually not a positive thing for me, so, I will look into this further.

Thanks for your reply. I no longer sell on eBay, so, if I were to do this I'd try to find some other way to recover the value of the five Lutron Connected Bulb remotes my system replies upon.

It appears I need to buy another hub (of some type, it's not clear to me what it does, a Telnet gateway for Hubitat?) plus all new remotes to make this setup work. Doesn't seem worth making the jump, based on the cost and complexity. Still trying to find a simple diagram to help illustrate what's going on here.

I have 51 Zwave devices ... many of which are well within sight of the hub location, so I am feeling that my centrally-located hub site should 'mate' well with the Zwave mesh, getting around any issues of Zwave range.

Even if you don't do that, the Hue Dimmer ($25 USD) or Eria Remote ($20 USD)--or even the remote that came with this $8.88 bulb I got for actually $4.88 at Home Depot, probably on clearance and soon to be not availalbe--can also reset Hue bulbs. I'm guessing most Touch Link remotes can, too (probably Ikea's cheap ones, but I've never tested).

I was convinced that the mistaken belief that only an LCBR could reset Hue bulbs was the reason they commanded such high prices in the used market, but apparently Wink users also like them, and they're getting harder to find after the discontinuation. :slight_smile:

Anyway, my point is that you could probably sell them all and still come out ahead--and have something that works natively with the Hue system that can still reset bulbs if you ever happen to have that need (the Hue Dimmer), though any of the options above will do. I second everyone above who is a fan of how well Picos work on Hubitat (sans a small issue I have where they can be slow to respond the first time I use them after a reboot).

They make 4-button (2BRL: "two button plus raise/lower", as well as true 4-button, usually engraved for on/off of two different lights) Pico remotes. You can certainly find some that look like the LCBR or a Caseta dimmer. But just because the fifth button is there in the middle of the 3BRL model doesn't mean you have to use it. :slight_smile: It is usually a bit cheaper than the others for some reason, but you can still usually find "four-button" models for not much more.

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That's interesting. My Wink system uses robots, activated by each button on the Lutron Connected Bulb remote controls. These robots activate a variety of devices that are not Caseta switches ... which I have only one of!

For example, my wife's nightstand has a Lutron Connected Bulb remote. She taps the top button to turn on the bathroom lights, another to shut all the house lights off when she retires, another button that turns on all outdoor floodlights (if she hears something and I'm not there) and the fourth button turns on the upstairs hallway and staircase lights at 50%.

Other 'LCBR' units in different rooms have similar duties.

It appears I can replace these LCBR units with identical-sized Pico remotes, but what isn't clear is if doing so still requires yet another hardware hub or not.

Further uncertain is if buying the additional hub would actually enable the LCBR units as-is, anyway.

I very much appreciate your sharing your experiences.

It does. The CBRs are Zigbee touchlink devices. The Picos are ClearConnect devices. Integrating them with Hubitat requires Hubitat's Lutron Caseta/RA2 integration. The cheapest option for the latter is the Caseta Pro Bridge, which is around $100.

The CBRs are not supported by either Lutron's Caseta or RA2 systems. I don't know of any hub outside of Wink that supports the Lutron CBR. SmartThings might - I know there was an effort to get them working, but I don't know what the current status of the effort is.