What are you doing with Lutron Picos

There seems to be quite a bit of interest amongst this community for Lutron Caseta and especially Pico remotes. I don’t have much experience with them and curious of interesting use cases they solve. I have standard/boring Zwave switches throughout my home with an occasional minimote. Thanks!

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Effectively they can proxy for anything.
For me it's the form factor, model options, mounting options and battery life that make them compelling.

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I'm controlling two different lights on a single pico in my dining room. Long-press for the dining room light, short press for my back deck light. Middle button for a scene.

In my bedroom, there's one on the headboard that controls the room lights, the door lock and I can run my goodnight scene to shut the house down. They're even being used for Fan control. One of the nicest remotes there are in my opinion.

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I am using them to replace Hue Dimmer Switches. They look much better mounted in a switch plate than the Hue switches mounted on the wall. I have all my Hue bulbs programmed via the Hue hub so they come on at different color temperatures depending on time of day, then if I want to override that and manually set pre-defined color temperatures, the Picos can do that with a custom app. And the Picos do on/off/dim/brighten with the same app. Haven't yet decided what to do with the middle button.

Also using them with fans, using the Hampton Bay zigbee controller module. I use the on/off/dim buttons to control the light and the middle button to control the fan speed. We've always just had a switch to turn the fans on and then control speed/light with the pull chains, now we can control the fans digitally.

I have just one Pico switch programmed with a Lutron in-wall dimmer switch, to act like a 3-way. It's not programmed via Hubitat, but nice to have the option to control the light in two places.

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I have similar setups to @SmartHomePrimer and @denise.grider.

Also, use 2 picos to control my Sonos speakers in the Dining Room and Bathroom (Play/Pause, Next Track, Volume and Playlist Cycle).

I have one in my bedroom that control my Bedroom Lamps separately from HE (I have the Caseta plugin module)...but I also configured the "held" option on the bottom button to shutdown all the other lights and devices in my bedroom (Hue Pot Lights, Closet Lights, Bathroom Light, Television).

Their diversity of control, range, reliability, response time, and cost all make them fantastic remotes.
Can't forget Lutron Support as well. The plugin module I have in the bedroom was sent to me as a Thank You for helping them troubleshoot a minor bug when they upgraded the Lutron android app. I didn't ask for anything, didn't complain loudly...they just offered it as a thank you. Can't get better than that.

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I have just started using Pico remotes. The addition of the Hampton Bay Zigbee Fan Controller is the straw that broke the camel's back for me. I only had one dumb switch powering my Hunter ceiling fan/light. To adjust fan speed or turn on/off the light we had to use pull chains in concert with the wall switch.

I hardwired the power to the new Zigbee fan controller and replaced the dumb wall switch with a 5-button Pico Remote. I now have control of the fan's light (now dimmable) and fan speeds independently. With 5 buttons, each with Pushed and Held/Released functionality, I was actually able to control two table lamps equipped with Sengled Element Color Plus bulbs as well.

The crazy part, is that it is not confusing at all and it just works incredibly quickly and smoothly. Huge thanks is owed to @mike.maxwell, @bravenel, and @stephack for their hard work in making this possible. The recent changes to support 'natural push and hold to dim' by these guys is amazing. This has helped with the WAF since these pico remotes now behave like the existing GE Z-Wave Dimmers.

Here is what my Advanced Button Controller for this one Pico remote looks like.

  • Buttons 1 and 5 handle the two Sengled Color Element Plus Bulbs (notice @stephack's recent support for Ramp Up and Ramp Down Dimming, and @mike.maxwell's support for this feature on so many of the generic lighting drivers!)
  • Buttons 2 and 4 handle the Fan Light (no ramp up /down support in this driver yet...@mike.maxwell???)
  • Button 3 handles the Fan speed by cycling through all speeds, including off (thanks @stephack for ABC's support of this!)


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Just a note about the fan...we opted to leave the dumb switch for the fan and expand the switch plate and put in the Pico, no wall mods necessary. That came in handy when trying to get that durn Hampton Bay controller all set up, since power has to be cycled to the controller to make it pair. Also if/when we move, we can put back the single switch plate and take the Pico with us :wink:

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It will be in the next release, but it's risky as I currently have no way to test it....
So YRMV

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Thank you for the replies! This community is great. Will have to purchase a pro hub and a few Picos to try from Energy Avenue as @ogiewon suggested in another thread.

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I see Lutron makes a car visor visor clip. Anyone have a Pico in the car? Curious the range on this as you approach house.

I have one in my car and find it starts to respond when I'm about 3 houses away (about 50m). I also have my range extender on my second floor near the street side of my house so that probably helps.

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I believe @mike.maxwell mentioned he uses the car visor clip, but don't know if he uses a range extender. Lutron also have single and dual table pedestals too. Available in white and black. Picos are available in White, Ivory, Almond, Light Almond, Black, Gray or Brown. However, they do typically cost a lot more for anything but white.

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Bruce uses the car visor clip.

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Order placed at Energy Avenue. Convinced my neighbor to dive into HA and combined into 1 order and got a small discount for bulk order. As my mother always said, never hurts to ask for discount.

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Lutron Caseta setup is complete and I couldn't be happier. Anyone reading this thread that is considering it should. I have done tons of rewiring in my house to put in hard wired 3 ways along with miles of low voltage wire. There were a few cases that I couldn't solve due to HVAC equipment overhead where I couldn't fish a wire that Caseta has finally solved. It took only a few minutes to mount a Pico remote without even cutting drywall and boom I have a 3 way.

And bye bye Minimotes. HE support of them hasn't been the best since I always have to configure them after each reboot or firmware update; sometimes even removing and re-adding them. I will be replacing them all with Picos which are much faster anyway.

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Hey all,

I keep reading about the picos and I am confused when I look into the tech specs. I keep reading that these things use a proprietary RF. If thats the case, how do these interface with HE?

You will need a Lutron Smart Bridge Pro, it is a little pricey but well worth it!

You can get them on Amazon, or you might be able to find a used one on e-bay. Make sure you get the Pro version.

Does adding another hub cause any more delay? I know with my zwave switches seem to have a half of a second delay when turning on lights. Is it any worse than that?

I find it to be incredibly fast. It is a local connection through your LAN.

The Lutron Smart Bridge Pro, coupled to Hubitat functions as if it were one. Lutron devices, like the Pico's, speak their proprietary words to the Lutron Pro and then Hubitat "hears" that a specific button on a specific Pico was touched. (pressed, pressed and held, released)

It's really FAST.
The first time you set it up you'll spend 10 mins laughing and turning lights on and off repeatedly.. calling neighbors over to see it.. etc.

I have at least 8 of them stuck all over the house. One is about 8" from this keyboard, stuck to the edge of my Monitor like a sticky note. It's a 5 button Pico, which means I have 10 things I can do with it.
5 button pushes = 5 different actions. 5 long presses = another 5 actions.

Don't think a minute longer, get the Pro bridge and a fist full of Pico's and enhance your life :smiley: (OK, a tiny bit over the top, but really, there's nothing in Home Automation that is quite as satisfying as a Pico on Hubitat.)

https://www.energyavenue.com/Lutron/L-BDGPRO2-WH
(You didn't fill in your Location in your profile, so I can only guess that a US source is helpful.)

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