Just jumped on the Lutron bandwagon last week. A bit expensive to get setup because of the Pro Hub but the response time is AMAZING! We started with 6 but I already have wall mounts, and more switches inbound! Also the initial setup took about 10 minutes, easiest integration I've done in a while.
The wife and I have them on the sides of our bedside tables, they are mounted in guest rooms and I have plans to mount / place them in hallways, common rooms, and bathrooms! They avoid that awkward conversation about how to use Alexa and keywords and explaining Sleep mode, etc and folks don't even have to know it's a smart home It just works and makes sense to folks. Strongly recommend checking these out.
I have been using the Wink 2 hub to connect everything. I am growing increasingly frustrated because they don't update their product. I have several Caseta switches, z-wave switches, z-wave bulbs, and Zigbee lights. I opted to control the Caseta devices with Wink instead of the Lutron bridge.
Apparently Lutron discontinued the connected bulb remote, which looks just like the Caseta pico remote. This remote has 4 buttons and I could program them to control any device within Wink. With the Caseta pico remotes, I can control them within Wink, but only control Caseta devices.
So now I'm looking at Hubitat with Lutron Pro... I'm not clear where I program the pico remotes - Hubitat or Lutron. I know that within the Lutron app, I can only assign Caseta devices to the pico remote buttons. Does this mean that with the Lutron Pro bridge, I can use Hubitat to program the Caseta pico buttons to control my Z-wave and Zigbee lights?
Also, does anyone know why they discontinued the Lutron connected bulb remote (LZL-4B-WH-L01)? It was so much easier with this remote.
Yes! I only have Pico Remotes, no Lutron switches or dimmers. The Picos + SmartBridge Pro + Hubitat are an awesome combination.
No clue... However, if you have a bunch of them, you could easily sell some to cover the cost of the new Hubitat Elevation Hub. Those things are like gold!
You need to add your picos to the bridge. The app will ask you to add them to a room. Unless they're controlling a Lutron dimmer and I want to keep that native control I add them to a "Remotes" room and I do not associate them with any dimmer. Next in Hubitat you will need to install the Lutron App. There you will add in all of your Lutron devices that you wish to connect to. The app will then create a device for the remote (and dimmers) that you can then use in rules and button controller. It is great to be able to control Hue lights with Picos.
I have 6 connected bulb remotes myself and an old Wink hub I only use to check my August Lock status, but I could eliminate that too since I could just check the status of a virtual switch via Homebridge. I still use my connected bulb remotes in combination with a Hue Bridge, since you can get the Hue bridge to accept them so they can be paired to a bulb at the same time as the bridge. This doesn't allow me to program their buttons, but I can control lights with both the connected bulb remote and Hubitat by way of the Hue Bridge integration. It's simpler than it sounds.
If you do decide to sell some, hang on to at least one. They are one of the few devices that can reset almost any Zigbee bulb by themselves.
I also have a Lutron Pro bridge and pico. Started with them before Hubitat. Was using a node server with ST. An awesome setup that was so much more responsive and programable than the Connected Bulb Remotes with Wink. Much more reliable too. Problem was the Samsung cloud made it unreliable. Then I found Hubitat, and their integration is not only local, but so much more capable. Pico are very inexpensive too and their battery life is 10 years vs 3 years for the Connected Bulb Remotes. Once you have a Lutron SmartBridge Pro and a Pico, there's pretty much nothing they cannot control.
I'm still a bit confused with how everyone is using the Lutron picos.
I'd like to sort my lighting automation out in the next couple of weeks, so looking at what to buy currently. From what I have read on the various forum threads, I understand everyone likes the form factor, battery life, and solid proprietary radio comms of the Lutron picos. But aren't you still reliant on a z-wave or zigbee switch or dimmer of some sort anyway, in order to actually control the lights?
Originally I was looking to add something like a Fibara Universal Dimmer 2, or Aeotec Nano Dimmer in the existing switch boxes or ceiling roses. I understand I am restricted to dimmers as I am in the UK and my light switches don't have a neutral. I was going to have the dimmers controlled by Hubitat making use of motion and light sensors, something like the Aeotec MultiSensor 6.
So I'm trying to understand how Picos would fit into this.
Correct the remote is an additional means to control 1 or many smart switches and dimmers and rules on the HE hub. I have a 5 button Pico beside my family room couch that controls lamps, ceiling lights, and a ceiling fan as an example.
If you’re concerned about reliability, either the Philips Hue Bridge Integration with Hue or IKEA Trådfri bulbs paired to it or either of the bulb types paired directly to the Hubitat hub are winning combinations.
Lutron dimmers are excellent to control regular lights. RA2 are top notch, but those are not inexpensive in the least.
Welp, you guys convinced me. I broke down and ordered a hub and 4 remotes.
I plan to mount remotes on the wall to control hue bulbs, as well as one for fan control. Not sure what to do with the 4th one yet, but I'm sure something will come up. At ~$11 per remote, this could get bonkers real fast.
Mike embedded Aeon Micro relays/dimmers behind wall mounted Picos. So his physical light switches (picos) require his HE hub to receive the button presses and then send out z-wave command to operate the Aeon micros to control his lights.
I have a Pico that I placed in front of a now hardwired connection to my ceiling fan. I added the Hampton Bay Zigbee Fan Controller to the canopy of the Hunter Fan. The only way for me to control it is via Hubitat using the Pico or voice control via Alexa.
I have been a huge ABC fan over the years especially in ST because of its simplicity and really appreciate Stephens efforts on it. I was using ABC early on because it had more features than button controller. After a recent update changing modes stopped working in ABC, at least for me, so that pushed a change for me to button controller and I no longer use ABC.
Button controller has come a long way in the past few releases and can even execute RM actions which is very cool. You might want to explore it.
This isn't a limitation of the app but a limitation of the driver being used. It should work with any driver that supports changeLevel. I dont believe Hue groups support this yet and I cant say for single Hue bulbs...this would be the same in Button Controller. The driver needs to support the function. @mike.maxwell can confirm.
