RadioRa 2 - First Day Impressions

[JimSlipe]

dgage,
 
Great write-up.  Thank you for documenting here.  I'm one of the many who are evaluating RadioRA2 over an Insteon system.
 
Lutron seems to highlight the ability to create lighting scenes rather than individual light controls.  It looks like your keypads are set up as essentially individual light controls.  Did you consider creating scenes, or is that something you plan to do?
 
Thanks,
Jim

 

[Neurorad]

Most of the LV pros sub out the line voltage electrical work - often by law.
 
With some 3- and 4-way switches, and the need to have the dimmer 'on the load side' for some instances (from the installation guide), I am leaning toward using an electrician myself.

 

[dgage]

I was out of town on business and came back last night.  My wife said "these are the shit!" or something along those lines.  What it comes down to is she likes the standard 2 second shutoff delay that allows her exit from the area to be lighted.  She also likes the fact that she doesn't need to walk to a different wall to get access to certain switches, which somewhat speaks to your question JimSlipe. 
 
For our kitchen, one of the main drivers for the lighting system was the desire to have access to light switches that weren't well located in the room.  So there wasn't a need for a scene other than "All Off".  When we do the living room, I will likely use some scenes for "TV", "Movie", etc. but haven't really thought it out yet.  Mainly, I'm going to put some switches in other areas that are more functional for automation such as the garage and bathrooms for occupancy sensors.
 
And I was glad to use my electrician because he knew where the load was to put the main switch vs the remote switch (hint, I would have screwed up the garage 3-way).  He was also great in ensuring each switch had neutrals and were appropriately wired. 
 
David

 

[iostream212]

Thanks for the info. Based on the write up I ordered a starter set of 4 switches and a scene controller. Anxious to give it a try.

 

[dgage]

I'll start some blog posts with this info was I have a fuller picture.  Here are some updates and new understandings:

• I added an occupancy sensor to the garage and have it setup to come on after a minute.  My wife is very happy with it.  I wish it caught us coming into the garage from the outside a step quicker but there is a cabinet next to the door so it's not the fault of the equipment.  I did learn that the RadioRa 2 occupancy sensor does not utilize the light sensor to not turn on during the day (It does on the upper end Homeworks).  That doesn't bother me as my garage is dark and that is our primary family entrance and the one we use to take the dog out.  Again, my wife likes it very much that she doesn't have to press a button anymore so that is the important thing.  I'm glad that I don't come back to the house and realize the garage light was left on for the last many hours for no good reason.  Of course, at the cost of the switches and sensor, you'll never make your money back but if feels good to be "green" and not wasteful.
• I also have a switch on the back door that I setup in the Lutron software to turn on 30 min before sunset and turn off 30 min after sunrise.  Haven't seen it turn on or off yet but it seems to work perfectly.  I do also have a light sensor installed between the led bulb and fixture so that makes sure the light will not be on when it is light outside.  In the past, the light should have been left on but was periodically/accidentally turned off when it should be left on 24/7.  I haven't noticed an issue with that light being off since setting it up with RadioRa 2.
• I was a little disappointed to find that the 5 button Pico can't attach to more than one load.  I was hoping to use the middle circle button to turn on the bathroom nightlight and the rest of the buttons to control the master bedroom lights.  I bought CQC and am in the process of learning it and hope to use that to provide some more intelligence such as this button will turn on the bathroom night lite after midnight but will turn on the bathroom light and hall light after 6am.  I'm actually thinking now that I might be able to setup the Pico with RadioRa 2 so it is communicating but I won't actually use the RadioRa 2 software to setup the button actions, I'll use CQC to react to button presses, which will allow me to put logic into the mix.  That is what I hope to play with this weekend.
• Lutron recently released a RadioRa 2 fan control but it isn't the version with a canopy module meaning if you have a light, you will need two pairs of wires to control the light and fan.  I'm hoping Lutron will eventually come out with the version that has the canopy module and would only require one pair of power wires to the fan and would still be able to control fan and light, which they already have in their Maestro line.

I'll update more as I learn the RadioRa 2 system and products but so far I'm happy with it.  I think the Lutron RadioRa 2 system is nice and does what it does, which you will learn about in the Lutron BLAST training.  The software has some good, strong function but it is definitely made to simply work.  It is not made for the DIYer that wants to tweak how a light turns on depending on the time of day or whether you had your OJ that morning.  For that sort of tweaking, which I now want to do more now than I initially expected, I think CQC will give me that capability.  But I'm still learning RadioRa 2 and CQC so expect more info from me periodically.  If you are on the CQC board, I'm also posting little bits of info there too but I expect I will use my Cocoontech blog as the repository of my learnings on RadioRa 2 as I get further along.
 
David

 

[Dean Roddey]

Yeh, you can just set up the keypad buttons not to do anything at the Lutron level and just have CQC respond to them via triggered events. You do have to set them up a certain way, as described in the driver dock, otherwise they won't send out button press events for CQC to see.

 

[dgage]

Good point Dean.  As part of setting up the CQC/RadioRa 2 integration, I would definitely telnet into the RadioRa 2 Main Repeater and make sure that I see the simple button press commands go across.  Of course, I don't think I've watched the video on CQC Triggered Events yet but that is on my iPad and in my queue for this weekend.

 

[Dean Roddey]

The RA2 driver will send out 'user action' event triggers for button presses. The driver doc indictes what the contents of these are. They have two values, one indicates the kind of event, ButtonPress in this case, and the other indicates what button of what keypad it was, so that you can react to specific buttons to do specific things.
 
You can either set up mulitiple triggered events, each one of which filters for a specific button, or you can have one event that looks internally at the source and decides what to do, or you can do a mixture thereof. One common scenario might be to filter for the keypad, i.e. a triggered event per keypad, and then inside the event handler see which specific button it was and do something based on that, since all the buttons of a specific keypad are likely to be at least somewhat related.

 

[dgage]

Thanks Dean.  Will I need to involve the Logic Server if I want to react differently to a button press based on time of day?

 

[Dean Roddey]

The event handler can look at the time and do something accordingly. The Logic Server allows you to combine the values of fields in various ways to create new pseudo fields, so that those calculations can be done in one place. But you wouldn't use it for something like that.

 

[lleo]

...I did learn that the RadioRa 2 occupancy sensor does not utilize the light sensor to not turn on during the day (It does on the upper end Homeworks)....

 
I have about 8 of the LRF2-OCR2B-P occupance/vacancy sensors and they have light sensing function where the load is turned on only when the light hitting the sensor drops below about 1 foot-candle. This is not turned on by default, but its a simple press of a button.

 

[dgage]

Thanks for that. I know about the simple button so I'll have to test mine in more detail. Primarily came from this post but that was over a year ago so they might have fixed it.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1327173/radiora2-occupancy-sensor-doesnt-work-as-promised-holy-anti-green-technology

How are you using your occupancy/vacancy sensors?

 

[cjett]

Another radiora 2 diy'er here. I have mine integrated with the elk and started integration with irule a few months ago and ran into the holidays and travel and never quite finished. My goal with irule was to make the module available to others. But, that would mean finishing it first.

Anyway, would love a ra2 forum for diy'ers here.

 

[dsayed]

dgage,
 
Great write-up.  Thank you for documenting here.  I'm one of the many who are evaluating RadioRA2 over an Insteon system.
 
Lutron seems to highlight the ability to create lighting scenes rather than individual light controls.  It looks like your keypads are set up as essentially individual light controls.  Did you consider creating scenes, or is that something you plan to do?
 
Thanks,
Jim

I was an early adopter of Insteon in my previous home. Over a period of about 5 years, I must have replaced every dimmer and keypad at least once. Sometimes the dimmer paddle would fail to work reliably and other times the switch would just die. Periodically, they would also forget their programming and reintegrating a device into the system was a huge pain even with the software. Based on this experience, in my new home I am looking at Lutron, Leviton and Cooper - in other words switches from companies that have made switches for years. Perhaps Insteon's quality and robustness has improved, but I'm not willing to give it another go.

 

[dgage]

My lighting choice covered the gamut looking for a nice, elegant, robust solution. To me Zwave fell down due to robustness, especially with larger implementations. Insteon was never really considered due to too many negative stories over the years and the fact that SmartHome is the only distributor. UPB is definitely robust according to most people that don't have a strange power issues with pumps, etc. I didn't like that UPB seems to have stagnated. When looking at RadioRa 2 for the DIY market, first there isn't much information out there but the information I found complained about two things, closed nature and hoops to get software and the expense. There was never any discussion about it not being reliable, as a matter of fact it was often praised for reliability, even RadioRa 1. I also like the elegance of the switches and switch choices. Being able to have a hybrid keypad with 6 buttons where I can choose which button will control the local load gives me flexibility many of the other solutions didn't have. So far my implementation of RadioRa 2 is still modest with about a dozen switches, dimmers, and keypads installed and a few sensors and remotes thrown in. It has been very reliable so far and my wife and I really like it.

David