He has a SmartThings hub as the primary Z wave controller. Say it can control a Z wave switch in the living room. It can’t even see the lutron switch in the hallway.
He also has a Staples connect hub which he has connected to the SmartThings installation as a secondary Zwave controller. It can see the same zwave switch in the living room that smartthings can. It can also see the Lutron switch in the hallway.
The pico is working with the Staples connect hub. When he presses the button on the pico, it can turn on either the Zwave switch or the Lutron switch because that’s how it works with Staples. The turn on status information is not sent directly to smartthings, but since it checks the Z wave switch status occasionally it gets updated for that one. Smartthings never knows the status of the Lutron switch, doesn’t even know it exists. Cannot include it in routines. And the pico remote cannot trigger a SmartThings routine the way an aeon minimote can.
So basically you’ve created overlapping networks which share the Z wave devices, but nothing else. And to do that you need two hubs, one from SmartThings and one from Staples.
Both Lutron Caseta and smartThings have IFTTT channels, so you can get some indirect control that way using virtual switches if you want to add Caseta devices to smartthings routines without needing a Staples hub as well. But there is usually some lag. It would be fine for time based routines like “turn on at 6 PM” or something like that.
Greetings, It seems that both SmartThings, and Lutron’s Caseta are supporting Apple HomeKit. Assuming both a SmartThings Hub and a Caseta Smart Bridge Pro, will this solve the world’s problems?
I’m thinking that ultimately that should allow Siri, etc. to access both systems via voice control, but…
Could that also somehow function as an intermediary, so that, for example, sensors talking to the SmartThings hub, such as motion, could ultimately trigger HomeKit to command certain lights to turn on via the the Caseta Bridge?
Any thoughts? In other words, (detailed Apple Homekit info seems to still be hard to find) could HomeKit function as a “bridge” between the the two “bridges”?
SmartThings does not currently support HomeKit and they no longer have plans to implement that compatibility from my understanding. Also, the only thing that will allow control of Lutron devices in SmartThings is through the IFTTT channel which is not a direct integration and may introduce both limitations and lag in the system.
Thanks, Darn, I thought I had read that SmartThings would support HomeKit. I wonder why not, give or take technical reasons, and HomeKit not especially interested in Z-wave it seems.
Still there are what 25 million households with “apple fanboys” as the android insult goes. As I see it, Apple once again is in a position to “change another industry” (along with Amazon Echo, etc.) As one of those “fanboys” I figure when Apple really starts rolling out the word on HomeKit sometime next year - that they are “ready”. Many of those home owners will proceed to make their homes smart homes, believing that if Apple is behind it, it will work (not all at once, or all perfectly) but like iPhones, etc., will create a long term excellent user experience.
In other words, Apple, more than anyone else, is in a position to take “smart home automation” to the masses. Right now, it’s mostly “old school” - expensive solutions like Crestron, Control4, Savant… (and high end Lutron (for lighting) for that matter, or it’s primary the DIY folks.
Joe Toyota, Susie Kia, and Bobby BMW320 are pretty much on the sidelines.
Voice control (and confidence in the company behind it all) are the key elements to entice the masses, and Apple and Amazon at least have figured that out.
As you know with apple, they love their strict platform control and standardized features that ‘just work.’ The problem with their HomeKit initiative is that they aren’t producing any hardware themselves, they’re just giving other companies a list of requirements and telling them to conform or else it won’t get accepted. This runs counter to the SmartThings ‘open’ architecture which allows us to create custom apps and devices, it’s a lot of the same issues that they were running into with trying to get official nest support. Also, as I understand it there are hardware requirements for HomeKit in relation to how you add new devices to the hub and SmartThings hub v2 just shipped without the required hardware.
Now, I might be mis-remembering the facts but that was what I remembered about the topic. There are threads on the forums that contain a lot more information on the topic.
Personally, I don’t see the draw of HomeKit, and not only because I don’t use an iPhone or any apple devices. The whole point of Home Automation (in my view) is to never have to pull your phone out to mess with it. Automation is the key word. If you have to pull out your phone to talk to it in order to do things, then why don’t you just get an Amazon Echo for each floor of your house and reduce the number of steps it takes to do it (and remove the barrier to entry: having an iPhone on you at the time when you want to use the routine).
Right on!! I couldn’t agree more. The only reason I pull out my mobile device with ST is to do configuration stuff. Everything else is automated in some way.
I will be glad to purchase SmartThings when they support Lutron Caseta. I am not giving up my Pico remotes and Independence from the internet to use my house.
“Everything else is automated in some way.” How do you automate your desire to change the brightness of the lights because your mood changes or your tired and just want to dim them?
I’m in agreement. The Lutron devices are the most reliable dimmer switches I have ever owned. For the last two homes, I have swapped out for Lutron all the switches every time. I’d really like to see support for these devices.
Hi Guys, I’m being working on this integration this days, I have 20+ lutron caseta dimmers and some switches, and I really love them! also I love the way ST works with most of the devices.
Anyway, this my workaround for accomplish some level of integration using **Logitech Harmony Home Hub ** as a bridge for integrate the lights (lutron) with Aeon Labs Multisensors.
Add the lutron controller to Harmony.
Add the ST controller to Harmony.
Create the activities in Harmony for turn on the lights when there’s movement in the sensors and turn it off when it’s no movement.
Overall, it works very good, not as fast as a lutron occupancy sensor, but it’s ok for me.
I got some issues with some activities, the light just don’t turn on, or it does not care of the schedule (start at sunset and end at sunrise). A restart in the Harmony fix one and delete the activity and create it again fix the another one.
Something that I don’t like from this integration is the poor support from Harmony for this sensor, there are 6 sensors in te device and Harmony can use only one, the movement sensor. So I can’t say turn on my lights when it’s only 5 lumens.
The another interesting thing is when you add the Logitech Harmony SmartApp in ST, it add your harmony activities to ST, so I’m planing to use this for integrate it with Amazon Echo, currently I’m using IFTTT for told alexa turn off or on my lights, but because it have to send it to the cloud and back it’s some delay and some times just don’t work (you know, when you are showing it to your friends).
I have this setup right now. I made activities in my harmony, which I have linked with smartthings, which I then link with the echo. The only problem is that if I want to dim the lights (as opposed to just turn them on and off) I have to make a different activity for each dimming setting (I.e. 50%, 30%…) which is very annoying. Overall, I hate the harmony to be completely honest. If it wasn’t the only way to hook Lutron and my TV up to smartthings I would throw it out the window
Agreed that the Lutron CL (particularly Caseta) dimmers are simply the nicest and easiest to use. In terms of controlling LEDs, though, they’re second best to the Leviton ELV dimmer (VRE06-1LZ), because they still cause a tiny bit of buzzing with almost any LED bulb (I’ve tried quite a few), in my home anyway, while the Leviton ELV dimmer causes none whatsoever. Not at the dimmer, not at the light, not anywhere else in my home due to EMI being fed back into my lines.
But the Lutron CL dimmers are almost as good, far ahead of every other smart dimmer I’ve tried (GE/Jasco, Linear, Leviton’s own non-ELV, etc.)
I would’ve also loved to have Lutron throughout my house, but the slight buzz (which did actually feed back into my home and cause my stereo to buzz a bit - wondering if I just have really dirty electricity that exacerbates things) combined with the lack of ST integration made me go with Leviton ELV, despite their class-trailing ergonomics (sorry, a term I use all-too-often reviewing cameras!).
One question for you related to your discussion - can you not use the Wink hub as the ‘bridge’ between Lutron and ST? I was toying with that idea for a little bit to use Lutron Connected Bulb Remotes with ST, until I found a way to directly do so by installing workmonk’s device handler and then pairing the Lutron remote to ST before pairing to a bulb (so it doesn’t ‘steal’ the bulb). Wink does seem like a nicer way to do it though since you can, whenever you want, change what lights any given Lutron remote controls. I can’t do that with my current setup. Well I can, but it’s tedious, requiring a full remote factory reset.
OTOH, I do like the idea of the Lutron remote bound directly to the bulbs (not via a Wink hub), since that means that if ST ever drops out, the remote can still control the bulb.
I have the perfect solution to link Lutron to SmartThings. I use Simple Control. A simulated Switch calls Simple control commands that automate all the direct actions to the 11 Lutron Switches and lamp dimmers. (It also calls 38 Hue Lights at the same time for instant light scene changes)
Here’s what it looks like for voice activated scene changes:
Amazon Alexa talks to Smart Things Switch, Simple Control trigger runs when the ST switch is turned on to call Simple control scene that calls Lutron and Hue lights at the same time.
I setup 1 virtual switch setup per scene in Smartthings. I have 1 rule running in rule engine that looks for a switch to be triggered and turns them all off so I can call them back to back without issues.
SmartThings is the hub that does all my home automation and calls simple Control to interface with all my electronics.
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
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What’s the lowest cost for just the Lutron requirement? It doesn’t look particularly … cheap, unfortunately.
The minimum requirement would be Simple Sync Software for $49.99 and Simple Service for 3 connections for $19.99. 20 devices is $29.99 so that’s smarter. This is how the Simple Control iOS app connects to other systems. Otherwise the app itself is free but it can’t connect to anything. So it looks like $70-80 gets you the connectivity to SmartThings and Lutron.
First there’s a hardware cost. You need either the Caseta Pro SmartBridge or a wink or a full Ra2 installation. The integration is via Telenet.
So if you already have Lutron devices installed, you might already have this hardware – – or you might only have the regular Caseta bridge, which isn’t enough.
But if you want to buy Lutron Caseta devices and add them to SmartThings, it would require more expensive hardware then if, say, you just wanted to use them with HomeKit.
So the cost depends in part on what you’re starting from.
