Lutron/Caseta Lights - Now that Wink is paid only, Here is how to use a Lutron Smart Bridge Pro with Vera

Other Devices & Integrations Lighting & Load Control
#1

So if you are like me and found the Wink paid service a non-starter, but have a lot of Caseta Lights that you want to integrate with Vera here is what I did:

First get and configure a Smart Bridge Pro:

  • Pick up Lutron Smart Bridge Pro (It has to have “Pro” in the name! non pro won’t work with Vera)
  • Setup your new Bridge and get your lights configured etc.
  • In the Lutron App go to Settings->Advanced->Integration and turn on Telnet Support
  • Then Directly Below the Telnet Support setting, click on Send Integration Report to email yourself the ID numbers of your lights, will be in “Zones” at the bottom

Now in Vera you will be using the “Lutron RadioRA2 Gateway” Plug-In

  • Install the Lutron RadioRA2 Gateway from Vera App Store
  • The instructions for the Gateway are here: Lutron RadioRA2 Gateway
  • Go to the new Gateway device and click on “Advanced”
  • On the Parameters Tab Set user to “lutron” and password to “integration”"
  • On the Variables Tab Set DeviceList and set this using the IDs from the integration report and the letters from the Gateway instructions, for Example if you entered the string “D:2,3;S:4” This means you have two dimmers with ID 2 and 3, and one switch with ID 4, from your integration report.
  • Do a Engine Reload, an your new devices will show up.

Now you will notice that your Dimmers aren’t quite displaying the way you want. Because of the age of the plug-in, it is not setting the Status correctly for the Dimmer (only the loadlevel). To fix this, grab my file attached here, unzip, and upload to your Vera using App->Develop Apps->Luup Files and upload my fixed up LUA file. Reload the engine and your Dimmers will now work correctly.

Note that your PICO remote will work with your lights without being integrated into Vera, if you want PICO remotes to trigger scenes, I believe you can get them to show up using the K (keyboard) device but I haven’t done enough testing to know how to get it to work, or if some addition LUA file fixes are needed (likely).
L_LutronRA2Telnet1.zip (5.4 KB)

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#2

Here is how to use a Pico Remote with Vera (this assumes you are using the 5 button dimmer style pico removte), you must have a Smart Bridge Pro, properly configured as in my first post.

Now go into:

  • Lutron Parent Device, select “Advanced → Parameters” and add your K:#s for your picos from the integration reports, to the DeviceList. To expand on the example above, if you have “D:2,3;S:4;K:7”,
  • Do an Engine Reload this will add a Keypad to your configuration
  • Now go tot he new Keypad child device, and select “Advance → Parameters” and edit the componentNumber variable to read “0,2,3,4,5,6” (without the quotes)
  • Do an Engine Reload

You will now be able to trigger Scene’s based on Keypad presses from the Pico.
Try pressing a button on your Pico and observe the Keypad button lights up on Vera.
Here is the button layout mapping:

  • Button 1: - Not used… does not exist on the Pico.
  • Button 2: On (top most button on the pico)
  • Button 3: Favorite (center button on the pico)
  • Button 4: Off (bottom button)
  • Button 5: Brighten (second from the top)
  • Button 6: Dim (second from the bottom)

So you can now trigger a scene based on the Pico button pressed, but you will likely notice a problem. The button stays pressed in Vera, until another button on the Pico is pressed. This is (I believe) because the Pico, unlike fancier Lutron remotes, don’t report a pressed, holed, and released command, only a pressed command.

This may or may not be the behaviour you want. But if you want to be-able to trigger the same scene repeatedly, that it is a problem.

You can solve this one of two ways:

First… since the Button 1 is unused, you can create an action in each scene (that will then set the device to Button 1), I would recommend having this action on a 3 second delay so you can see the button press happen in the UI before it returns to 1. This obviously doesn’t help you if you want to use Button 1 for manually triggering a scene from the UI (and no, there is no way to delete button 1).

Your second option is to clear the button (back to blank). To do this, add the following line of code the LUA section of your scene:

luup.variable_set(“urn:schemas-micasaverde-com:serviceId:LutronRA2Telnet1”, “KeypadCommand”, “0”, XYZ)

Where XYZ is the device number of your Keybad in Vera.

Again, if you want to see the button change from on to off… you will need to add a small sleep to your LUA code.

So

luup.sleep(1000)
luup.variable_set(“urn:schemas-micasaverde-com:serviceId:LutronRA2Telnet1”, “KeypadCommand”, “0”, XYZ)

Will give you a delay of 1 second (going above 2 seconds is dangerous, look up how to do a luup.call_delay() call if you want more than a 2 second delay, this is more complicated so not going to explain it here).

Remember that Vera will ignore re-presses of the button until button is changed back to 1 or cleared, using one of the two methods above.

I will look into creating some built in functionality to clear the Keypress directly in the plug in but for now… these are you two options for clearing the button press.

Hopefully you can now enjoy using your Pico Remote as a scene controller for VERA.

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