I was commissioned to take over the existing lighting system in an 11,000 square foot high end nearly new home. The home had an existing RA2 select system with smart Maestro switches on the main floor and the upper levels and lower levels had dumb Lutron Maestro switches. There were also a few dumb Maestros scatter in the main floor.
About 2/3 of the switches were dumb so all of these switches had to go and be replaced with smart switches. I originally thought about just replacing everything with RA2 Maestros but the cost per switch was $120 per switch. I decided to keep the look and feel on the main floor with smart RA2 Maestros and do the other two floors in Caseta switches.
I purchased an additional Caseta PRO hub and a Hubitat and got to work. I also had to factory reset the RA2 hub. The "three ways" were replaced with Caseta switches and Picos. I really like the Caseta look so it was not much of a sell to the home owner. I will not bore you with all of the little installation issue but I will point out that the previous electrician wrapped every switch in electrical tape. This does nothing but piss off the next guy who has to do work.....if you are doing electrical work do not do this.
Now comes the programming. Lutron programming first; I programmed each switch in to their respective hubs. I also created Scenes in each hub for ALL ON and OFF. I do not put outside lights in these scenes but control them by schedules on each hub (ie at Sunset turn on soffit lights and off a Sunrise). I use the Lutron hub for this because it does it well and reliably and will still do it if I have a failure on Hubitat. I also have an all OFF schedule programmed on each hub at 3AM to catch any light that might have been left on.
There are few things I noticed right away. When I send some commands to both hubs at the same time and I would have occasional failures. The main command that I sent was a keypad command to a scene to turn on or off the all the lights. Originally I was sending that command to both hubs from Hubitat. I solved this by separating the hubs by few feet. I believe when they were right beside each other there was interference. I also programmed the ALL ON/OFF picos like this. I programmed the pico in the hub it belonged to to turn ON/OFF the lights it controls. I then programmed the Hubitat to send the command to the opposing hub after a one second delay. This seems to have solve the problem.
Here is also what I discovered with the two hub setup. First of all Alexa will only accept one hub so the opposing hub is Alexa controlled through Hubitat. HomeKit accepts both which is great. The Lutron app accepts both but you have to keep switching "homes". I do think you want to use the one second delay between hubs for any big jobs like all OFF scenes so that both hubs are not broadcasting at the exact same time.
There are radio contention issues when two Caseta Pro bridges are used simultaneously (because they're using the same frequency). Does RA2 Select use the same ClearConnect frequency as Caseta? I know the RA2 Main Repeater permits selection of a specific frequency; does RA2 Select permit that?
Actually some would consider this best practice especially if the boxes are steel and/or you are installing thick devices like an older GFCI outlet. I live in Chicago where all residential wiring is in conduit and steel boxes. In my newer house some of the electrical installers wrapped, some did not.
For Alexa and HomeKit I'd recommend routing both through Hubitat. Lutron's native integrations and Hubitat's have a setting that works differently. Lutron's integrations will always turn on a dimmer to 100% when you use the 'on' command. Hubitat's integration defaults to the previous 'on' level, but can be programmed to a set level. (Note that this is not an issue if you are always using scenes to control the dimmers.) EDIT: Since you are using RA2 Select and Caséta, their physical 'on' buttons alway are 100%. So you may want to keep dual routing, but set the Hubitat controlled devices to come on at 100%.
In those cases there is a special tape not standard electrical tape. Either way do not use STANDARD electrical tape is such an operation. It turns in to Goo.
Typically I like to go direct to the Hub for HomeKit and/or Alexa. Keep in mind this is not my house and the more points of failure mean the more problems I tend to have. Most customers are very basic and tend not to educate them otherwise.
3M Super 33+ is fine and I'd call that standard. Cheap tape is not fine. But cheap tape is not useful for any purpose.
Most direct frequently makes sense. Just realize that if your customers are using 'on' commands they may get different results if you don't change/set device defaults in Hubitat.
In order for this to work properly, the frequency of the RA2 main repeater needs to be changed from the default, I don't know if this is possible with select or not.
If this isn't done there will be delays (1 second or more) in command execution when commands are sent/received between the hubs at the same time.
Mmmm this is interesting info.. I had a client where I was tempted to implement a solution like this due to an almost out of range Caseta switches in a back garage around 100 (!) feet or so from the hub. Fortunately was able to install a repeater outlet and that did the trick. If I had to do this with two Bridge Pro 2s I'm assuming the contention would be less of an issue the farther apart the hubs were?
Also @silverton38 - sounds like a fun project with some interesting challenges.. have not worked on a house quite that large yet, ~6000 SqFt has been my biggest so far.
As @mike.maxwell indicated above, the only way I know around this in a normal sized house (<4000 sq ft) is to use an RA2 main repeater and a Caséta bridge. Then put the main repeater on a different frequency.
RA2 Select and Caséta do not permit frequency selection.
I did installed a repeater (lamp module) on the Caseta hub but I did not have a repeater on the RA2 hub. I did find an excellent center position for both. I was a little surprised that it worked but it does. Keep in mind the RA2 switches are only on a single floor so that helps. The Caseta is spread over two floors (upper and lower and some on the main).
Oof I don't know if I would intermix like that.. but I guess you had no choice given the requirements. If it's working then great but hopefully no callbacks...
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