Lutron Connected Bulb Remote

So you’re using the Connected Bulb Remote with ST and Cree bulbs? I have that exact setup and hope to received the Connected Bulbs Remotes in tomorrow’s mail. Wondering how your experience has been so far? Has it worked for you? Is the remote connected directly to the ST hub if so how? Otherwise, if the remote is connected to the bulbs as a secondary controller is that updating the bulb status for you?

Sorry, the remote doesn’t work with ST at this time. I’m running it with Wink. Experience has been great. Yesterday I added a GE Link to the mix, and they operate instantly together. The only downside is the GE Link will not dim as far as the Cree bulbs, so at a certain point the GE will turn off leaving the Crees at their last level of dim.

In smart button mode there is a delay that is typical of Wink, but you can add devices other than bulbs.

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That’s a bummer - so no direct connection between the Connected Bulb Remote and ST hub? Can I link the remote to the bulbs directly to have it act as a secondary controller? That way I could use either the remote or ST to control? I wonder, in that configuration, if the bulbs would update their state to ST if I used the remote to change them. I’ve read through this thread but I’m confused as to what people have actually found

Yes. This is how it would currently work in ST. My GE Links report their state change back to the hub, so they don’t get out of sync, but I can’t speak for the Cree bulbs.

Thank you! I thought I read somewhere that the Cree bulbs will report state back to ST in this configuration. Can anyone confirm? If not, I’ll update this thread after my remotes arrive. Thanks again for the help.

I had the Lutron Connected Bulb Remote acting as a secondary controller directly to 3 Hue lights. Worked very well since I didn’t have to wait for the Wink Relay commands to return from space. When I tried to add a second Connected Bulb Remote to a Wink Hub as a 4 button shortcut remote, it stole a light from the Hue Bridge/1st Connected Bulb Remote and after resetting everything, I’ve not been able to get the Hue Bridge and the Connected Bulb Remote to share a light.

The remotes have a bunch of features like restoring a bulb to factory settings, so it can force Unpair a Hue bulb, but I’m hoping to either get back to sharing the bulbs like before, or at least regain that functionality with the upcoming Philips Dimmer Remote.

@mattjfrank

I know you were looking for ways to reset hue bulbs to factory. Several people are reporting that this new Lutron remote can do that. Costs $30 at Home Depot and might be the simplest solution for a lot of people. :sunglasses:

( @johnr )

Well dang @JDRoberts I purchased the raspbee shield last week. It worked great. A $30 option would have been better though.

When you were connected directly to the Hue bulbs were you able to utilize scenes or just on/off and dim?

I’m running one of my remotes with Hues but via Wink as smart buttons so I can get scenes. It works every time, but Wink has that terrible delay.

Full scene control through the Hue app, shortcut control through Wink App & Relay, and the Connected Bulb Remote would turn them full bright (of their last setting) on the top button, functional dimmer up and down, and off on the bottom button.

Worked great to have an Instant On switch next to the Wink Relay (which controlled all the fancy color presets).
My Wink Relay “Off Switch” would turn them to “4000K white Off”. So the Connected Bulb Remote would turn them full bright white when I walked in the room and used it as a traditional light switch.

Good luck finding it though at any of those at HD’s atleast in NY/NJ area. Online it shows available for pick up at store and everytime I order to pick it up, after couple of minutes, the order is cancelled. I looked in at least 3 of the stores and couldn’t locate it and of course even the HD guys couldn’t locate it or had any clue as to what it was and no SKU listed. :frowning:

It’s in the same section as the light bulbs. They are usually sitting in a cardboard container on a shelf. They are also sometimes near the other lutron items in the electrical switch section.

Searxhed there too… No luck!

I’ve tried multiple times as well out here in the Pacific Northwest. If you get them the SKU from the website they’ll look it up and confirm they have it in inventory (normally shows 6) but that it doesn’t have a ‘home’ yet. This leads me to believe that it hasn’t been officially rolled out in a lot of the stores yet.

So it seems this remote works with ZLL bulbs and commissions via Touchlink. Has anyone got this working in HA mode, working with for example the Centralite Series 3 Lamp Module?

I’m trying to add ZigBee binding functionality to SmartThings. This would allow this remote to be directly paired with any HA device that accepts on/off and/or dimming. My thread is here:
https://community.smartthings.com/t/zigbee-binding-between-two-devices

I’ve read through the thread and I wanted to share my experience to make it easier for people that are less technical, like me…

Buying the remote:
The local HDs by me show between four and six in stock. I went into one and could not find it by the bulbs or by the smart home (Wink) section. I finally went to the customer service desk. I did not see it behind it with nest, drop cams, etc. I pulled the item up on the HD website; it lists the in store SKU and they were able to find it for me in a few minutes. (Apparently it is not stocked on the floor and they needed to get it for me.)

Setting it up:
This was much simpler than I expected. My fear was that pairing the remote would affect the ST setup. It did not; it acts as a secondary controller. The Lutron website has a really good explanation video on the remote setup options: http://www.lutron.com/connectedbulbremote

Along with the remote I also bought a Lutron 3 Gang Decora Wall Plate. I attached it to the two switches in the wall and used the sticky tape on the back of this remote’s mounting plate to attach it to the wall in the third (open) slot. Once I’m “sold” on this setup I will probably mount it with screws.

:+1: Now I can use my phone to turn the lamps on and off without having them not respond (as we’re less likely to turn them off the old fashioned way :wink:)
:+1: I can use the switch on the wall to control the two lamps (on/off and brightness).
:+1: The remote can be mounted on the wall where you can slide it off its plate and return it there later (no screws were provided)

:-1: ST sees the remote, but when paired it just shows up as UNKNOWN (I realize that I do not have a custom device type for it…)
:-1: The GE bulbs DO NOT update their status to ST when turned on or off with the remote (contrary to the experience that @mitchp described with his GE bulbs). Pressing the refresh button from “things” view correctly updates the status.

:camera: https://goo.gl/photos/4XTQbZ9aKRmnJFXP8

a little background on what I wanted and why it works for me
I have two switches for overhead lights in the room. I also have two standing lamps, with the GE bulbs, that we use when watching TV. We ended up using the knob switches by the bulbs more often as we didn’t have the phone near. This effectively cut off the power to the bulb and it would not respond to ST commands. I wanted a DECO looking switch to match the ones for the overhead lights AND I wanted it to blend it with the other two without having to open up the Sheetrock and installing a box.

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Nice write-up! I guess YMMV with the bulbs reporting. I could hit the button and watch the status change in the app. I don’t think I did anything unusual when setting them up. I brought my remotes over to the Wink hub temporarily, but I’ll have to bring them back over to ST to see if it will still work like it was.

@JDRoberts (Thanks for posting this bud!! I have my hopes up lets see what we can do with this!)

Okay this could be a big deal but I need more information. The switch is lacking in technical documentation! Here are my thoughts. First off this is not the first Light Link Remote on the market Philips has had one for years but you had to buy it with a bloom and it was bit expensive. The short coming with the Philips remote is it would only reset Hue Bulbs if they were on one of the ZigBee Light Link channels.

My questions if anyone can help please chime in.

  1. Is this a Light Link only remote? I bet it is. I bet it only controls bulbs that are linked to a Phillips hub not directly to a SmartThings Hub.

  2. Does it work on all ZigBee channels or only the Light Link channels? If it only works with ZigBee Light Link channels then there is no difference between this remote and the round bloom remote from Phillips other than it is flat and can be stuck to your wall.

@KrisFilip I’m encouraged that the SmartThings hub sees the remote did you happen to catch your hub’s log entry when the remote joined? If so please past a copy of it here. I will start looking into how we can take advantage of this switch via a custom device type. Its possible this switch has duel personalities (It can communicate on two profiles ZigBee Light Link and ZigBee Home Automation). If it can communicate over the ZigBee Home Automation profile we will be able to use this switch for a ton of stuff by creating a custom device type. I have been looking for an affordable battery powered ZigBee switch with level control built in!!

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It is a ZLL remote, but it will control bulbs that are connected directly to a SmartThings hub once it has joined the network.

It appears to work on all ZLL and ZHA channels.

The raw description from the IDE is:
01 C05E 0820 02 04 0000 1000 FF00 FC44 08 1000 0003 0006 0008 0004 0005 0000 FF00

I’ve written a device type for it, setting up binding for on/off and level control, but it does not send these commands to the ST hub. I’m assuming that it is looking for a match descriptor response from the hub that would include clusters 0x06 and 0x08. The Wink hub does return this. I’m assuming that the ST hub does not, but this is only an assumption since we can’t see all of the traffic back and forth.

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Humm.

Are you using this with Hue bulbs?

Will it control the bulb if you are out of direct range to the bulb but still within range of your ZigBee network? See I think your bulbs may be communicating on two networks. I have heard they can do this just never seen it.

What is the Wink hub doing? Why is that in your network?

I guess your custom device type has the configure capability and you have setup the bind commands for the ON/Off and Level clusters? Don’t forget you need to manually run the configure method if your device isn’t auto found when it joins. Just click on the configure button in the IDE.

Please don’t take this the wrong way but how do you know it is communicating on all ZigBee HA channels? What channel is your hub on?

I would be surprised that it needs this response to be bound manually. You should be able to just bind those two clusters directly to the hub with the bind command in your custom device type’s configure method.

Thanks great information!!

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