One thing I noticed about this remote is that as far as I can tell it doesn’t handle on/off like I expect. The “off” button appears to dim the bulb to 0 and not send a normal off() command. So if I refresh the bulb the level shows 0 and an on() command through ST won’t produce any light because it’s dimmed to 0. Similarly the “on” button appears to send a command that sets the level to full brightness, not simply tell the bulb to turn on.
Is anyone else experiencing this?
I ended up pairing the Cree Bulb right to the remote. I attached the remote to the wall in the kids room low enough so my 2yr old can reach it. Now he does not have to climb on toys to get to the switch. I expect less injury’s now:)
Any luck getting it to work with Smartthings? or will it never work till they do something about it?
We need to hack this… Looks like it running an android OS?
Wall mount
I have 3 Connected Bulb Remotes purchased 2 weeks ago which I have no use for anymore. I am using the Amazon Echo and installed a GE Z-wave Dimmer switch.
Anyone interested in them?
Direct connection to bulbs is the best you can do, but if you connect it to ST first, you can at least have dual control. Just be cognizant that ST might not see state changes initiated by the remote.
I have an idea for a SmartApp that could help you manage what bulbs it controls without having to go through the pair process with the remote for every bulb, but ST won’t be able to see the button presses until something changes on their end.
You can maybe have dual control. In my house the remote steals the bulb every time I try.
Hi Andy
I tried the steps you mentioned. Linked the remote to ST hub first and then linked the remote to the cree bulb by holding the top button for 30 seconds. The remote linked to the bulb but stole the bulb from my ST. Do you mind helping me. Thanks
MC
Scott, I noticed the same thing by just playing with it. I was able to use the remote to turn on and st to turn off but if i used the remote to turn it off only the remote could turn it back on. The on command i assume doesn’t get sent because its officially on just set to 0. How did you trace the command to find that out? Is there some way to get both of these to work together?
I found it the same way in testing. The bulb’s level is 0 after an “off” press of the remote and 99 after an “on” press regardless of what the last level was at the time. You can even press the “on” button when the light is already on, but dimmed; and it will go full bright. Makes me wonder why they bothered loading the on/off cluster on it at all.
You’d have to use custom code in your bulbs based on getting a level 0 report/state. When you see level 0 in your parse, then save the last level value in a state variable. Then in the on() command, check if level is 0. If it is send a setLevel command using the value currently in the state variable. Might not be a bad piece of code to have in general, so the bulb always comes on to some level when on() is sent.
I’m still kinda new to all of this. I’ve played around with writing apps, but haven’t’ got into the device types yet. How were you able to test/debug and actually see the set level to 0 command? Would this code be a custom device type?
You won’t be able to see the actual set level command because it doesn’t flow through ST. The remote sends a group message directly to the paired bulbs, and ST doesn’t support this type of zigbee message. You’d have to use a zigbee sniffer to capture the traffic to see the actual command from remote to bulb. Mostly my “testing” was just using the remote with the bulb in various on/off/level states and seeing the result.
Yes, you need custom code in the devicetype to handle this. You would add a conditional in the parse() section (that’s where messages from the bulb will be) that checks for a 0 level message and loads the state variable. Then you would add a similar check to the on() command, that would use a setLevel command to the state variable instead of sending the bulb the zigbee on message.
how do we even get the hub to see the remote, i cannot even get it to go that far. please help, i just got the smartthings hub. i have my hue bridge connected to the smartthings hub, now i am trying to get the lutron connected bulb remote added to the hub to be able to control the lights.
I agree I have the conected bulbs one as well and love the ability to control 4 different scenes from one switch plates. ST WOULD BE THE BEST if it hade that ability as well. For now I will just keep digesting Wink hub because you can put a switch where ever you want like buy Yor bed which my wife could not live with out. Plus turning on all and off all the lights needed to go to the bathroom at night frome bed is something I can’t give up.
For that I went with Hue dimmer switch and Hue bulbs. At least I have some control over the bulbs in ST and I can program whatever scenes I want for the dimmer via hue app.
So I have about 20 of these in my house. I paired them directly to Hue. You know what is lame though? Hue doesn’t update the device state during the group broadcast. It seems that neither the ST nor Hue hub process the group calls. Yikes.
Kristopher
I have hue bulbs connected directly to the smart things hub. I connected the lutron remote to the smart things hub. I then paired the bulb with the lutron remote. The lutron remote “stole” the bulb, which means it no longer works with the smart things hub.
It seems hue bulbs do not work as a “Secondary Controller”.
Actual smart things integration with the Lutron Remote working as a button controller would be awesome.
I wasn’t able to find a detailed description of how to get this remote working with Hue bulbs while they’re connected directly to SmartThings. Here’s what I did:
Now you’ve got bulbs that are connected to both SmartThings and the Connected Bulb Remote.
I picked one of these up because I really want to have a physical switch (the closer it is to a normal looking light switch the better) that I can control my Cree Connected bulbs with. I didn’t have any trouble pairing the remote to the bulbs and the bulbs to the hub.
There are a couple of caveats though:
All in all the issues are a little annoying but it’s functional but it would be really nice to see the support get added to the hub to be able to communicate with the remote. I would really like to get the remote as an actual device in ST so I didn’t have the out of sync issues and so I could control all the devices connected to the remote via 1 device in ST instead of having to manually change the state of each individual device connected to the remote.
FYI You can just press the up dimmer button to return to the last dimmed state. Hope this helps.
This is only true is you have not used the connected bulb remote to turn the light off. When the connected bulb remote turns off the lights, the first thing it does is dim to 1%. So, when you press the up button it goes to something like 4%. If you have shut the bulb off in ST and then press the up button on the remote, the brightness will return to a point just above where it was last set by the remote. So, that feature only works if you are not shutting the bulb off with the remote.
@KCole313: To solve issue #1, you can download a smartapp call “Pollster”. It basically forces a refresh every so-often to update the status of the bulb. I wouldn’t recommend anything too crazy like every 10 seconds or anything. Not a solution but definitely better than nothing.
If you are going to buy bulb to use with this remote, I hear the GE Link bulbs report back a change in their status to ST whenever they are changed.