Updated to reflect Lutron Caseta’s increase from a 50 to 75 device limit.

 

Overview

After a whole home WiFi network, a whole home audio system, and a whole home video distribution system, the next smart home category that you should tackle is lighting automation.1

Until recently, we used a combination of a proprietary home security system, Belkin Wemo Smartplugs, and an iHome Outdoor SmartPlug to control our home’s lighting. Our issues were six-fold:

1. after we switched service providers, our old home security accessories–including Zigbee wall switches–no longer could be controlled remotely,
2. even with a dedicated VLAN and wireless network, we found that our Belkin Wemo Smartplugs couldn’t scale and would regularly have discovery issues in the Belkin, Google Home, and Apple Home mobile apps,
3. the Belkin Wemo mobile app is prone to frequent crashes, especially on our iOS devices,
4. our home lighting was split between three systems, only one of which could be voice controlled (e.g. by Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri),
5. our solitary iHome iSP100 Outdoor SmartPlug for our LED landscape lighting constantly dropped off the WiFi network, and
6. there are few vendors selling smart light switches in light almond, the color of all the traditional switches and outlets in our home.2

Clearly, we needed a more unified, scalable, and reliable solution. So, we swapped out all our switches and smart plugs with the Lutron Caséta lighting control system.

Comparison of Lutron Product Lines

Although we were first introduced to Lutron when we purchased their traditional switches and outlets, Lutron is reknown for their residential and enterprise lighting control systems. Lutron’s residential lighting control systems include Caséta, RA2 Select, RadioRA2, and HomeWorks QS. Caséta and RA2 Select are intended for the DIY user segment while the RadioRA2 and HomeWorks QS product lines are intended for the system installer/integrator segment.

Digging a bit deeper, Lutron’s product segmentation remains rather confusing to me. All product lines use similar smart bridges, the same wireless protocol (Clear Connect, described below), and similar switches and plugs. Caséta and RA2 Select even use the same mobile app and voice assistant integration for control. Apart from  HomeWorks QS, the primary technical difference appears to be arbitrary limits on connected devices and coverage:

• Caséta: 75 devices including Caséta Wireless dimmers, plug-in dimmers, and switches, Pico remote controls and wireless shades + coverage of 2,500 sf + 1,250 sf with a range extender. Uses a local control strategy that doesn’t use wired communication;
• RA2 Select: 100 devices + coverage of 5,000 sf + 2,500 sf per wireless repeater (up to 4 repeaters). Uses a local control strategy that doesn’t use wired communication;3
• RadioRA2: 200 devices + coverage of 5,000 sf + 2,500 sf per wireless repeater (up to 8 repeaters). Uses a local control strategy that doesn’t use wired communication; and
• HomeWorks QS: 10,000 zones with RF coverage for up to 50,000 sf. Can use both local and centralized control strategies. Can use load control modules with multiple load control circuits.4

While both Caséta and RA2 Select share RF wall dimmers and switches, it doesn’t appear that homeowners can easily upgrade from, say, a Caséta system to a RA2 Select system. And, that’s particularly odd because, by the time a homeowner needs a lighting control system with a higher Lutron device limit, they will have already invested–literally–thousands of dollars in Lutron devices.

Personally, I didn’t know the difference (or research the product line distinctions) until after installing a number of Caséta devices in our home. If I could advise Lutron, I would recommend increasing the Caséta device limit to 100 devices and the range to 5,000 sf (essentially eliminating the RA2 Select product line). I would expect that the increased potential volume of an expanded Caséta product line to justify this. Further, there seems little difference in the bill of materials between the product lines.

Lutron Clear Connect RF Technology

If you are going to go through the expense and hassle of replacing your light switches throughout your home, you want a solution that is bullet-proof. Clearly, you don’t want to think about switch and smartplug firmware upgrades, the impact of the evolution of WiFi protocols several years after switch installation, competing uses of WiFi bandwidth, cyber-security, or battery life.

Lutron devices use a proprietary protocol, Clear Connect, and not the more prevalent WiFi, Zigbee, or Z-wave protocols. Clear Connect is intended to be an ‘ultra-reliable’ (“working to specification in every application—at the time of installation and thereafter”).5 As part of the development effort, Lutron investigated 400MHz, 900MHz, and 2.4GHz bands. Because Clear Connect operates in the bands authorized by FCC regulations Part 15.231–which is essentially silent–Clear Connect is not subject to interference like other devices that operate in the 2.4 GHz band (e.g. WiFi, baby monitors, cordless phones, and microwaves, many of which maintain high-data rate, continuous transmissions). With less interference, complex methods like direct sequence spread spectrum, frequency hopping spread spectrum and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing are not needed. There is plenty of frequency room (170Mhz); therefore, frequency overcrowding is not contemplated. Similarly, because Clear Connect operates at a lower frequency, it suffers less reflection through construction materials as compared to higher frequency signals.

Lutron’s LCS protocol is designed to turn lights on and off “imperceptibly fast and simultaneously”. Their design goal was to avoid the ‘popcorn effect’, where lights stage one after the other. This speed is due to a ‘fixed network’ topology, as contrasted with Zigbee’s mesh network design. Clear Connect has a constant coverage area and message route, optimized for speed. Mesh networks have positive self-healing attributes but these add latency.

Implementation of Our Caséta System

When we first moved into our 40-year old home seven years ago, I replaced all the light switches and outlets with new ones from Lutron’s Diva product line. Lutron’s Diva product line are Decora-compatible paddle dimmers. I am not an electrician and all switches are old-build retro-fits.

Now, we have purchased and installed 31 Lutron Caséta devices including a Smart Bridge,6 eighteen dimmers, 8 smart plugs, 4 switches, and 1 Pico remote. These control all of our high-hat lights, our chandeliers, our sconces, our accent lighting, our desk and table lamps, and our outdoor lights including flood lights. Together, these cover our 4,000+ sf home without an issue (so far).

The Lutron Caséta dimmer should be your default switch choice because:

1. the Lutron dimmer doesn’t require a neutral wire,
2. you don’t need to identify the black (“hot”) and red (“load”) wires prior to installation of a dimmer switch,
3. most LED lights today are dimmable, and
4. there is no cost-savings in purchasing a Lutron’s dimmer vs. toggle switches.

Therefore, for our home, we primarily purchased dimmer switches. We only used toggle switches for our outdoor lights.

Adopting a light switch is extraordinarily easy. In the Lutron mobile app, select ‘Settings > Add Device > [Caséta device]. Then, press the ‘off’ button on the switch for over six seconds (until the LED indicator lights rapidly blink). The Lutron mobile app will soon request that you select the specific room in your home.

If you are using network security best practices, then I recommend isolating your Lutron Caséta Smart Bridge on a dedicated IoT VLAN, as further described here (for a Ubiquiti Unifi network).

Pico Remotes & In-wall Keypads vs. Voice Control

Several of my friends have dedicated in-wall keypads with function-specific switches. With Lutron Caséta, it is easy and relatively low cost to add a similar, in-wall keypad for fan control, light control or even Sonos playback control. But, be sure to also purchase the mounting bracket (PICO-WBX-ADAPT) if you wish to embed a Pico remote in a wall plate.

I was initially hesitant to purchase a battery powered switch. However, Lutron claims their remotes have a 10 year battery life. Our old home’s wiring is idiosyncratic. After spending literally a weekend trying to reverse-engineer how our home’s builders connected our stairwell sconces’ three-way switches, I gave up and installed a Lutron PD-6ANS toggle switch and a PJ2-2B-GLA-L01 Pico remote.

If you want a Pico remote with scene controls (e.g. home/away, alert/goodnight, bright/entertain/movie/off or bright/cooking/dining/off) then you apparently need to invest in Lutron’s RA2 Select system instead of Caséta. That said, to me, advanced function-specific keypads feel like an outdated solution. You can still trigger scene control and geofencing within the Lutron mobile app. Moreover, given the advances in voice-control technology in the last three years, it is far easier to use Google, Alexa, or Siri to accomplish a similar goal of invoking a custom function. And, you don’t have to get off your couch to do so.

Window Shades

Lutron Caséta supports Sivoia QS, Triathlon and Sivoia QS Wireless shades. We have not tested this yet because we just use traditional window blinds.

Wireless Occupancy Sensors

Similarly, if you desire to use Lutron’s occupancy sensors, then you will need to buy RA2 Select instead of Caséta. In our home, we prefer a combination of Nest Secure’s Detect sensors and Nest Protect. This eliminates the need for third party occupancy sensors like Lutron’s.

Temperature Control

Lutron offers a compatible wireless thermostat. However, we prefer Nest Learning Thermostat gen 3. If you prefer Alexa or Apple Home over Google, then I recommend the Ecobee3 thermostat. Regardless, you will likely control your thermostat using Amazon, Apple, or Google’s app–rather than Lutron’s app.

Claro Wall Plates

Claro is Lutron’s ‘architectural’ line of wall plates. They consist of two parts: a glossy, screw-less front, and a back-plate with the screws. Installation of the Claro wall plates is different from traditional wall plates:

• With Claro, you loosely screw your switches into the outlet box, leaving enough room to manipulate their relative position in the outlet box.
• Next, you tightly screw your switches into the back-plate.
• Then, you hand-tighten the switches’ screws into the outlet box, pulling the back-plate flush with the wall.
• Finally, you snap on the front.

After swapping out our existing face plates for Claro, I never would go back. The back-plate makes it much, much easier to align your switches (particularly, outlet boxes with three or more switches).

Integration with Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit

As described below, we use Google Assistant and AppleHome Kit, rather than a proprietary hardware hub from Wink or SmartThings.

Lutron Caséta can be integrated with a number of smart home services including Google Assistant, Apple HomeKit, Amazon’s Alexa, Nest, and Sonos. You can even control your Lutron LCS via an Apple Watch. It is possible to program them in the Lutron app and then use the Lutron app to control third party devices like Sonos and Nest. However, this is generally limited to very simple controls: you cannot use time-based or scene-based controls across third-party devices.

The nexus has shifted in recent years to using either Amazon Alexa, Google Home, or Apple Home as the central “hub” for your smart home, including control of home automation.

I provisioned our Caséta system in both Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit. HomeKit automatically maps your lights and electrical outlets to a particular room. With Google Assistant, you must first adopt a home and then identify a room for each Lutron device. Google also requires that you say “resync all devices” each time you add/remove a Lutron device whereas Apple’s HomeKit automatically updates. Unfortunately, it is not possible to say just, “resync Lutron”.

We have Google Home Hubs throughout our home and expect that Google Assistant will soon work with our Sonos whole home audio system. After going through the laborious mapping process in Google Home, it has the intelligence to know that “turn on the lights” means turn on all Lutron lights in the room where the Google Assistant was triggered. Google also has significant leeway to correctly interpret things like “turn on the kitchen table” or “turn on the table lights”. And, “turn off all lights” will shut off all Lutron connected devices.

Simple, Sample Automations

Whether you use Alexa, Google Home, Apple Home, or the Lutron mobile app, you can easily create automatic rules (a/k/a “routines”). Ours include:

• Exterior Lights: we have a dusk and dawn rule to automatically turn on/off the outside lights.
• Energy Savings: we have a ‘sweep’ rule that automatically turns off all lights after midnight.
• Proximity-based Triggers: automatically turn on/off lights based on who is coming or leaving the home.
• Lutron Smart Away: you can also enable a randomization scheme to turn on lights when you are not home.

Cost Considerations

Lutron Caséta requires the purchase of a $80 Ethernet “Smart Bridge” before any Caséta device can be controlled. Further, each of the Caséta dimmers, switches, and smart plugs are approximately 2x the cost of a comparable Belkin Wemo, TP-Link Kasa, not to mention Amazon’s whitelabel smartplugs.

Further, if you need more than 75 devices, then you must purchase Lutron’s RadioRA2 Select Ethernet bridge and associated devices. RadioRA2 Select devices then cost approximately 2x that of Caséta devices cost and ~4x that of Belkin, TP-Link , and Amazon’s devices.

Less impactful, Lutron’s Claro wallplates costs ~4x what traditional wallplates cost at Home Depot.

Issues

• As discussed above, the Lutron Caséta product line is limited to only 75 Lutron devices7. Some homeowners work around this limitation by using two smart bridges and unifying their lighting system at the HomeKit or Google Home level;
• The Lutron Caséta smart plugs only support two conductor, not three conductor, plugs unlike the smaller profile Belkin Wemo Smartplugs;
• While Lutron will soon release a Caséta fan control switch, it doesn’t combine light and fan controls like the lower-end Diva switches;
• Lutron defaults to on (i.e. 100%) rather than the last used lighting level; and
• There is no comparable Lutron Caséta outdoor smart plug like the iHome iSP100 Outdoor SmartPlug

 

 

Updated on August 21st, 2019