I am looking to add a smart lighting setup for a house I am building a new house I would like some recommendations for smart lighting. Any ideas, opinions and advice would be greatly appreciated. I might just do the main level. Is Caseta Pro enough, do I make the jump to RA2 select. Thanks very much for the help and support.
Caseta works really well, there are a few limitations. 75 device limit, including the pico remotes, they bumped it up from 50 a while back. Switches and dinners can’t control each other, so if you want two circuits to come on when you press a button, have to use a pico. Except, if you use something like home assistant (or maybe Roomie? Just haven’t tried it that way) you can have the first switch on event trigger the second switch to turn on. There’s a couple second delay imposed by Lutron for the second switch but it works. If you have shop led fixtures that aren’t dimmable, the 5A switch will cause flashing as the bulbs turn on due to inrush, I have some of the 6A switches and tested briefly but haven’t hooked up, it’s an issue when it’s hot outside, works fine all winter.
The plug modules are great for Christmas trees etc, the dimmers and switches are very reliable. Reliability is huge, others who aren’t geeks in your house don’t care why the lights don’t work.
You can automate lights to turn on for instance when the garage opens turn on outside lights, they have vacation mode, what else?
I have RadioRA 2 for many years with about 150 devices, dual repeaters, HVAC, lights, and shades. Works great and integrates well with Roomie as well as other HA tools like Home Assistant
Can you do all that yourself or does it require an integrator? If it is prosumer-friendly, can you give me an idea of costs? I have a big investment in Insteon (w/ ISY), but it seems like their business model is changing and I probably need to think about what my next system will be. I am open to anything that isn’t reliant on an integrator.
I suppose you could, if you can find someone to sell you all the components. What I did is bought the initial install from a local electrical company. They did the dimmer and repeater installs and initial programming. They then gave me access to the software (this was before Lutron had a homeowner program). From then on I bought the any new devices from them. Sometimes, I did my own installation, other times, like with the shades, I had them do it. I did all the programming myself. I never took the Lutron programming. I just worked from examples of what they had done initially. The software is pretty straight forward.
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I am deep into Insteon with ISYs as well at a couple locations, one a fairly large installation that would be very costly to replace every Insteon device. I have found that adding HomeBridge or Home Assistant (with HomeKit bridge) is helping to add other devices and protocols to the homes and allows replacing Insteon devices over time without having to yank everything out at once. So now at one location I have a mix of Insteon/ISY, Zwave, WiFi (Tuya), LoRA and MagicUFO RGB Wifi all working together from the same HomeKit / Roomie interface.
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Thought I’d chime in here. I used RadioRA2 when I remodeled my house. If you go online, you can take the course and get an essentials license. This will allow you to program up to 100 devices by yourself. It includes the ability to configure most of their devices. (Dimmers, switches and motion detectors) It is straight forward. One critical thing is they’ll teach you how to deal with all the different LED devices. This is pretty important if you want to avoid flickering and all the little things that happen with LEDs and the wrong dimmers.
The other cool thing is you get ultimate flexibility in which lights are controlled by what and you can custom etc the buttons on the controllers to say what you want. Not possible with Caseta or select and picks. Also, they way you do things is you put all the dimmers and switches in hidden locations and only put controllers with labeled buttons in the room. This way you don’t have a bank of switches/dimmers on the wall when you walk into rooms with multiple lighting zones.
If you need more than 100 devices, you’ll need the Inclusive software and that requires a 3 day course, costs money and they want you to be a professional.
If you need to choose between Caseta and Select, choose Select. The big reason is if you ever decide to move to RadioRa2, all the select devices will work. Only a main repeater and the hub need to be changed.
Keep in mind that Insteon/ISY gives you more flexibility with its rules engine. The biggest thing I can think of is time of day differences when you push a button. I for one think it’s clunky but it does work. The Lutron devices are way nicer(my opinion) and always just work. Never any issues. Also, I think Insteon/ISY is terrible with occupancy/vacancy. With Lutron it’s really easy and works exactly how you want it to.
The last thing to keep in mind is everything counts as a device. Depending on the size of your home you may need an auxiliary repeater as well as a main repeater. Occupancy/vacancy sensors count, everything.
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I use Indigo (Mac software) as it does Insteon and Z-Wave. This gives me an opportunity to migrate from Insteon to Z-Wave with a large expense to change protocols. Also offers a wide range of plug-in integrations like HomeBridge.
At one time Roomie even offered direct integration with Indigo. They may still, it’s just that I have such a complicated setup that we using the Indigo Touch app vs trying to do it all in Roomie, thus I haven’t looked lately.
Their software model is more of a maintenance model than subscription. If you let your yearly cycle lapse - it keeps working fine, you just don’t get any upgrades.
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