New house, zero automation now, what dimmers for future automation

[wkearney99]

There's nothing magical about one network, any more than there's ever been anything better about one gas station brand vs another.  It's certainly going to be interesting to see as more and more charging options become available.  800v charging with 4 minute top-off times will certainly be interesting. I do hope Tesla has continued success.  Could be their charging network might have longer term value than just the vehicles.

 

[dgage]

Caséta dimmer suse the same wireless technology so that isn’t the differentiator. Lutron markets Caséta as room based automation while RadioRa2 is home automation. You also get many more devices (100 with DIY or 200 with onsite Lutron training or a dealer). And RadioRa2 has many more device types to implement. Caséta and even RadioRa2 Select are more limited. I looked at the 3 for a friend and pretty much said RadioRa2 was the way to go if doing a Lutron based solution for the HOUSE, which is the only system I’d consider.

 

[wkearney99]

Caseta and Ra2 are exactly the same tech.  Lutron's market segmenting is the differentiating factor. 
 
Caseta is arbitrarily limited to 50 devices total and is a rip-and-replace situation if you need more than that on the same network.  It's possible to have more than one set of either on site and not have conflicts, you just don't get a 'whole system' of devices for programming.  Caseta decor choices are also more limited than Ra2.  One could almost say they're deliberately made ugly to not cannibalize Ra2 sales.  Personally I think this is brain-dead stupid on Lutron's part.

Ra2 allows for 100 devices per repeater and 200 total.  This includes shades, motion sensors and wireless pico remotes.  You can set up and program a 100 device network with a free online program and some training.  To do 200 in one setup requires an upgrade bump to your login to unlock the features.  I've done the training and they do cover a lot of very good topics (including LEDs).  

The kicker though is they work, every time, all the time without fail.  No interference, no mesh, no nonsense.  You set them up once and they STAY THAT WAY.  Honestly, this alone is more than enough reason to go with them.  The rest of the stuff like scenes and timeclocks are just icing on the cake.

I say all this not because I'm trying to confirm my buying selection.  I'd love to have spent $13k on anything other than a houseful of light switches and fan controls.  But having done so, and having done the whole house all at once, has gotten me a totally reliable setup.

 

[Linwood]

Caséta dimmer suse the same wireless technology so that isn’t the differentiator. Lutron markets Caséta as room based automation while RadioRa2 is home automation. You also get many more devices (100 with DIY or 200 with onsite Lutron training or a dealer). And RadioRa2 has many more device types to implement. Caséta and even RadioRa2 Select are more limited. I looked at the 3 for a friend and pretty much said RadioRa2 was the way to go if doing a Lutron based solution for the HOUSE, which is the only system I’d consider.

 
I guess it depends on the size of the house, or am I missing something.  The Caseta does 50 devices -- for me a device is primarily going to be a dimmer.   In a rough count of places I would want a dimmer I get about 10.  Not sure if a pico remote counts as another for each, but even if I used one for each one that's 20.  I've got a small house (thanks to my ex wife) so the estimated 2500 sq ft is reasonable.  And you can have more than one bridge if I ever decided to go nuts.
 
Or are there undocumented limitations I'm missing? 
 
I'm really not trying to do this on the cheap... but I just not seeing the distinction.  Now if I had a 6000 square foot house with a 100 different wall switches, I get it.

 

[Linwood]

Caseta and Ra2 are exactly the same tech.  Lutron's market segmenting is the differentiating factor. 
 
...
The kicker though is they work, every time, all the time without fail.  No interference, no mesh, no nonsense.  You set them up once and they STAY THAT WAY.  Honestly, this alone is more than enough reason to go with them.  ....

I say all this not because I'm trying to confirm my buying selection.  I'd love to have spent $13k on anything other than a houseful of light switches and fan controls.  But having done so, and having done the whole house all at once, has gotten me a totally reliable setup.

 
Wow, $13k... makes me wonder if I'm in company that's bad for my finances...  :blush:
 
So just for clarity, the "go with them" refers to either/both, or were you trying to be specific to RA2? 
 
The first sentence seems to reinforce that reliability (if not the other aspects you mention) may be the same? 

 

[wkearney99]

You'd be surprised how quickly the device counts add up.  I know I was.  Top of stairs, bottom of stairs, entry doors, entry/exit points to spaces, kitchen islands, closets, bathrooms (because many modern ones have the main area, the toilet closet and a shower/tub).  

I think a lot of folks get hung up on trying to limit the setup to only things they think "need" automating.  I'd argue that's a fantastically bad idea.  Not because it doesn't sell more devices, but because it invites repeated disruptions. 

Taking wall boxes apart over and over again is asking for trouble.  One, you're futzing with copper wiring, which while it is flexible, doesn't lend itself to being repeated mucked about with.  Next thing you know you've got a connection that's loose and potential for a fire.  The next thing is damaging the surrounding paint and drywall.  I'm careful and know what I'm doing and still there's material that gets cracked.  This raises the most troubling problem.... the wife complains you keep screwing with the wall plates and she's now uncomfortable with the mess it's making and starts worrying.  Now you're in really dangerous territory, not because of actual risks (because there are several) but you're making the wife worry. No good comes from this. 

Best approach it to do everything in each box ONCE.  This might allow a more piecemeal approach.  But avoids the repeated interrupting risks.  But then you're running into the need vs want over-thinking.  A wall box with 6 devices where only 2 of them are thought of as "needing" automation becomes a problem.  Do you do only two and then 'get around to' doing the other four?  God help you if you try to go at it six different times.  Instead now you've got ~$400 worth of switches in a single box and you've only got "two things" to show for it.  Follow me here?  Versus having a big picture laid out and a staged plan/budget to support it.

So start by counting up ALL the wall switches you've got.  Every-last-one.  Then base your plans on that, plus adding a keypad or two in some strategic control locations.  This may or may not mean making the wall box one gang larger.  Might be more than you think.

 

[wkearney99]

Wow, $13k... makes me wonder if I'm in company that's bad for my finances...  :blush:
 
So just for clarity, the "go with them" refers to either/both, or were you trying to be specific to RA2? 
 
The first sentence seems to reinforce that reliability (if not the other aspects you mention) may be the same? 

 
You're definitely in bad company when it comes to gadget spending.  But try owning a boat, yeesh, some of those guys would bankrupt me.

They're both reliable.  Caseta is out of the gate crippled at 50.  You hit this sooner than you'd guess.  Ra2 is better looking and has larger limits.  Ra2 also has some more flexible dimmer options for handling more specialized lighting setups.  If you're just automating bulbs that might not matter 'as much'.  But if you've got fixtures with low voltage lighting then it REALLY starts to matter for dimming.

 

[dgage]

And yes Picos and Motion sensors count as devices so you really can jump up in counts quickly as Bill mentions. I have a Pico on either side of the bed in our master bedroom for the wife and I. The main buttons on the Pico including he up/down arrows control the master bedroom lights while the middle circle turns on the bathroom nightlight. The off button of the Picos turn off the master bedroom and bathroom nightlight since the middle button controls a scene, not a device (at least with current software). I also put 2 Picos each on both of my kids bed to control the light and fan so thats 6 devices just by the beds, which wasnt on my original device count list.

As Bill suggested, I also put some non-RadioRa2 lighting up (matching Maestro that you can purchase from Home Depot or similar local places) and there have definitely been some times I wish I could control them from software/automation. But the luaundry room that I put on a Maestro local motion isnt necessarily one Ive ever felt the need to automate since the light turns off after a period of time with no motion.

 

[wkearney99]

I agree there's some areas where if you're "really sure" you don't need automation stuff like the Maestro motion sensor switches are very useful.  

The trick is "being sure".  Which is hard to know unless you're REALLY good at putting the whole house "in your head" and thinking through all of your potential automation scenarios.  I'm good, but it took several months of planning on paper and then three wild months during construction to really 'nail down' what was going to work.  Even then I've had to make 30+ edits to the scene and schedule programming, but only one or two hardware changes (mainly to change a dimmer to a switch, or vice-versa).

I don't have any of the Maestro sensors as the locations where I have wall switches would not lend themselves to an on-switch motion sensor.  The pickup element wouldn't remain pointing toward any useful activity and vacancy detection would end up leaving someone in the dark.  For those I've got a separate on-wall or on-ceiling Ra2 motion sensor (which counts as a device too).  3M Command Strips are GREAT for experimenting to find just the right location for a motion sensor.
 
Just don't go into the planning stages thinking you can leave some stuff out.  Make it work "the best way possible" and only once you've completely designed it should you think about dialing-back.

There are a few places where I have bathroom exhaust fans on non-automated switches.  My thinking was using an on-switch timer would let me customize how long the fan should remain running.  Which is important in a bathroom.  That and you probably don't want to tie this to a motion sensor because you might want the fan to stay running a while longer than the light.   At the time Ra2 didn't have 'roll back' functions.  There was only motion sensing.  Since then setting up a roll back for the fans might have given me the same functionality and would have let me automate the fans.  Why would fans be automated?  Well, how about discovering someone turned on the fan and left it on... for a week... while you were away on vacation.  My 3am turn-off timeclock event would have caught it... if they'd been automated.  Oh well.  I may swap them out for 8ANS switches at some point. 

I'll say this, the folks here have been a TREMENDOUSLY helpful resource for bouncing off ideas.  That and there's a Ra2 thread on AVSforum (which is now TEN years old and has 76 pages of posts!)  Between these two places I've had a lot of really good conversations. 

I think it's fair to say a lot of the participants in these forums are probably more expert than a lot of people calling themselves installers.  So, read up, use the search functions and ask away.

 

[upstatemike]

....  One could almost say they're deliberately made ugly to not cannibalize Ra2 sales.  Personally I think this is brain-dead stupid on Lutron's part.

 

 
I actually prefer the Caseta styling with dedicated on and off buttons instead of a rocker switch. To me the real shortcoming of Caseta is that you cannot control one load switch from another load switch. I have several areas where I want individual circuits to operate together as if they were a conventional 3-way setup. Can't be done with Caseta  because you can only sync load switches with a Pico, not other switches.

 

[pete_c]

Figure the cost to be twice that of the hardware guesstimate if you have the switch installed by an electrician.  If you DIY it yourself then you are saving 50% off on the endeavor. 
 
Most average folks or a young couple would not touch their budget on a new home spending XXX redoing their light switches for automation. 
 
My last endeavor pulled out all of the switches and wires in one room at a time.  Before connecting the switch did check each wire in the box for uniformity and it was there.  Here go overboard a bit using wire nuts and black tape.  All of this with metal 4X4 boxes with single or double mudplates.  Some rooms removed single duplex mudplates and installed double duplex mudplates for two switches, the revisited them and used dual load double paddle switches and went back to single duplex mudplates.  Fixed the wall and painted it per WAF request of a change in color.
 
@Bill
 
How many wireless repeaters are you using today for your lighting?

 

[upstatemike]

duplicate post.

 

[pete_c]

@Linwood...then figure
 
1 - cost of the switch
2 - cost of the installation of the switch
3 - programming the switch
 
time the total number of switches.  You do not need a switch for every closet or bathroom.  I have shut off the follow me lighting here as it spooked wife.
 
Add some creative bean counting (mixed in with IT high level jargon) here and you can tell your wife or yourself you saved her 100% of the cost doing #2 and #3 your self....free in a round about way....

 

[Linwood]

A lot to think about here.  Just some clarity on my side: 
 
No wife (any longer -- that's why I unexpected have a new house).
 
I hear, and appreciate the issues of "how many times should you go into the same junction box".  But...  sorry, that just doesn't seem to me to be a deciding factor.  My biggest set is a box of 4, and can't see even 4 visits being significant.  And joint compound and a nearby home depot are the answer to accidents.
 
What is more of a concern is what happens at 51. 
 
My IMPRESSION was that I just buy a second, and that various hubs I might choose can handle more than one bridge, and this would hide the limit effectively.  Is that not true?   I realize I could not make a scene within the Caseta software between two bridges, but can't something (like Hubitat or Homeseerer) do so? 
 
By the way, I also agree with liking the design of the caseta dimmers.  Off, On, Up, Down -- it really doesn't get a lot more simple minded for local control.

 

[dgage]

And unlike Keaeney, I was already in the house and added RadioRa2 a little at a time starting with the kitchen when I did a remodel. As I said, the hybrid keypads made the lighting control so much better and more intuitive. As upstatemike said, I needed to control lights from multiple locations when that light only had a single switch on the far side of the room. The keypads and RadioRa2 system allowed me to control that light from any of the 3 entrances to the kitchen. Following the kitchen I added RadioRa2 first to the hallways, stairs, and master bedroom, oh, and the entry lights front and back where I had RadioRa control them with an on at sunset and off at sunrise timeclock event. Then I added RadioRa2 to the kids rooms. So unlike Bill, I bought things a little bit at a time but installed myself, which is why I was able to do that. Harder to take it a little at a time unless you have an electrician friend or wire yourself. I also use wire nuts AND electrical tape.