Lutron has introduced its latest Pico remote 'Lutron Pico Paddle Remote'. It works like any 2 button Pico in your Hubitat hub (Lutron Smart Bridge Pro Required).
What makes this revolutionary is;
It looks like a real Decora switch and matches the latest Caseta switches
It has a 10 YEAR battery
The list price is $19.99. Soon you will find even lower prices when it becomes mainstream
It can replace an existing wall mounted Pico switch
It works with existing wall mount Pico brackets
Hit the switch once for a dim level set on the Diva switch and a second time for full brightness
Lutron legendary reliability
Those Lutron product folks are nothing short of visionary! It took those plastic engineers painstaking years to build a Pico that looks like a switch! Just imagine what is coming next!
Note: I use Lutron but think their marketing/product development people make a lot of head scratching decisions.
Their product development team can cause some head scratching events but lately they are taking Caseta more seriously. In the past I felt like they were pushing you to upgrade to RA2.
Product line differentiation is fine, even if sometimes frustrating. There's still plenty of reasons for some customers to choose RadioRA 2 or RadioRA 3 over Caséta. The device head scratcher to me is that the new RadioRA 3 Sunnata dimmers are less versatile than the RadioRA 2/3 Maestro dimmers.
That is part of the head scratching events. I like Caseta over RA2 because of the cost and also my customers actually like those switches the best. I avoid RA3 because of the compatibility issues with Hubitat.
It would be nice to keep the intial "oh a new thing what does it do?!" conversation in one topic so I can save my fingies the effort of clicking through multiple topics. Yes, I am that lazy.
I'm not a fan of losing functionality. I personally use hold for the Off and On buttons of my picos to trigger other functions, and I occasionally program the middle button too. With a two button Pico, I'd have to give up that functionality so it could function as a dimmer. Perhaps double-tap could be used for some things, but I'm not a fan of that since it's too easy for guests to accidentally trigger my special functions by accidentally double-tapping.
The old Pico is going to be around for a while and can be used if needed. The new one is about how it looks but it is a 2 button remote. The double tap and hold would give it even more functions by using it with your Hubitat.
I stopped caring about that long ago. I have Insteon dimmers in my home and these are next to them in many locations. I actually prefer the distinctive look, versus paddles next to each other that all look similar or identical.
I actually was a big Insteon guy in my past; I kind of miss it. I set up homes so the look and feel matters a lot to my customers. That is why I am so excited by the look and feel.
I think I might be excited about the new Picos if I could pair with my RadioRA 2 system and expose pushed, held and released events to Hubitat, the same way current picos work.
Yes they do work exactly like existing 2 button picos. A small thing; if you do a double click on the on button it will also put the Diva remote to maximum dimming level (100% ON).
