Ok took the plunge and bought a bunch of serena roller shades. Had to tell my daughter her to adjust her expectations for college tuition, but it was worth it.
We just completed a new home build, and I ran wire to every window down to electrical room in the basement, and I am powering them with a power panel from lutron. Works amazingly if anyone is interested.
I have the shades setup and working perfectly in Lutron's ecosystem. Lutron Pro Hub connected, with a pico connected to the hub that controls all the shades in the room simultaneously. It is really remarkable how they keep then all in sync. The lutron hubitat app works great, I have all the shades as devices in my hub working now. I tested each one and the hubitat control works great. Up, down, etc.
To attempt to automate, I created a virtual switch, and then just a simple rule that says when switch turns on, open these 4 shades. The problem is each one of the shades gets the command a slightly different time, and they don't open and close in sync. It isn't far off, but it loses a bit of the mojo.
Anyone know the solution? My understanding of the bringing the pico remote in as a hubitat device would be for me to use the pico buttons to execute other commands inside hubitat. But how to a simulate a pico button push, to tell the lutron hub that all shades in the room need raised or lowered, which would keep them in sync? Or is there another way?
As always, super grateful for all your help. I love this community.
Is the culprit device that lags behind the others always the same or is it different each time?
If so, the simplest way to “solve” this is to stagger the commands and time the opening of each blind 3 seconds apart to make it looks like you staggered them on purpose.
The better way to solve it could be as simple as adding a repeater nearby or using a variable based on the state of the problem blind and then syncing the others only to start after the problem window actually begins to move.
In the screenshot below I’m using the value change of a virtual dimmer to update the volume of three Sonos speakers in the master bedroom so my wife can control the sound level all from one app.
It’s a slightly more complex example than it needs to because I am giving the dimmer half the totally volume of the speakers but if I wasn’t doing that it would only be like 2-3 commands.
I find that when controlling multiple Lutron products through Hubitat, it is best to use the Scene function on the Lutron app itself, and then trigger that scene via Hubitat.
I have a few scenes saves on my Lutron App (namely multiple lights on and off) and I find that it works way better. The first 100 spots (buttons) in the Lutron Integrator is for Lutron scenes.
I am using scene for lights on/off and trigger with HE as well. There's no delay or popcorn effect that I could see. This probably is the easiest way for me to deal with.
I was messing with virtual switch, group and various other ways with HE until I saw @philippompili post about Lutron scene.
I can't take credit for it. I forget who, but someone on here pointed me in that direction. It took me a while to wrap my head around triggering scenes from another source, but now its a breeze. And you are right, it also completely eliminates the popcorn effect.
It's the same with Phillups Hue lamps. I have to use the Hue Hub scene to have them come on all at once. I still haven't found a use case for the hubitat scenes because of that but I'm just getting started.
For those that might stumble on this thread, this is how i got it working.
Create scenes in the Lutron Pro Hub. For example, "Open All Dining Room" and "Close All Dining Room".
When you run the integration report in Hubitat, you can see "Device 1" has 100 buttons, and your new scene is in the this list. Mine became Button 3 and Button 4.
For the Lutron Integration app in Hubitat, i added Device 1 as a "keypad", and I labeled the device as "Lutron Scenes". then edited the device to have 100 buttons.
Now i can in Rule Machine i can say If X true, then press button 3 on Lutron Scenes Keypad, and all the dining room shades open together.
Don't know if this is how others have done it, but it worked for me.
I have a use case for Hubitat scenes - Motion Lighting apps with Vacant and Occupied scenes. That way, rather than futzing around in Motion Lighting app which lights to turn on, what color, what brightness, etc., for many lights, you just have Motion Lighting turn on one scene and turn off the other. Then, go into scenes, get the lights the way you want, capture the scene.
Makes it very easy to tweak and recapture the scene, leave Motion Lighting alone.
