Can someone give me a quick rundown of the differences in functionality between the non-pro and pro versions of the Caseta hub? Thanks!
Pico remotes show up as sensors on the Pro version using Upsert’s custom component. Can then use that to activate scenes or other stuff. I think its worth the price difference.
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Another small difference is transition support for dimming or fading the lights. You can specify the fade or ramp time in seconds when changing a light level in Home Assistant.
The PRO hub is a little harder to find and more expensive, but I think worth it for the additional features enabled by its Telnet interface. The HA component for the non-PRO hub is also using an unofficial reverse engineered protocol that is a bit more likely to be broken by firmware updates when compared to the Telnet interface on the PRO bridge that is also used by third party integration partners.
How/where do you specify the fade or ramp up time? When you call the turn on/off action?
You can specify in automations, scripts, scenes… using the transition service data variable under the Lights component.
Here is a demo of an automation to turn off a light with an 8 second fade to black when pressing button 1 on a 4-button pico (see the button map for the numbers):
- alias: Light Fade Demo
id: '1516240051730'
action:
- data:
entity_id: light.living_room_right_lamp
transition: 8
service: light.turn_off
condition: []
trigger:
- entity_id: sensor.living_room_scene_pico
platform: state
to: '1'
This is using the custom component on a PRO bridge, otherwise the sensor will not exist and it wouldn’t work.
Thanks for the detailed answer.
My Pro Bridge arrived today… first thought: wow, that is incredibly small. Second thought… wow, that is incredibly easy to set up! Particularly copying the integration report and pasting it into the frontend. Thanks @upsert!
I’m curious about latency/response times when controlling non-caseta devices (i.e. using a pico to control a ge dimmer/switch)
for those that have this configuration, is it perceptibly about as fast as controlling the caseta wireless dimmers? surely it’s at least faster than hacking an amazon dash button?
My experience with the Picos is that their button presses are registered extremely quickly in HA (it feels immediate). So I’d imagine if you’re using them to trigger an automation it would fire instantly.
I’ve linked a Pico to my Denon AVR for volume control on the wall!
I found it very responsive! You can see the sensor value update in HASS pretty quickly. I was very impressed with the responsiveness!
Nice, Thanks for feedback, Just ordered a Pro Bridge kit with dimmer and pico remote. probably just going to use the pico remote as a nightstand control for my bedroom lights which are controlled by a ge z-wave switch. My wife and I occasionally wake each other up telling alexa to control the lights.
I wish someone made a simple z-wave remote that looks like the pico or even hue dimmer remotes. But I like the look of lutron dimmers better than ge anyways, so I guess this works out.
Does the Pro bridge require the Pro Dimmers? I have a non-Pro bridge, with a couple non-Pro dimmers/pico remotes, and am considering upgrading the bridge to a Pro. But I’m not sure it’s worth it if I have to swap out the dimmers too.
No, the Pro dimmers aren’t required.
Good news. Thanks!
Yep, the basic Caseta switches work fine with the Pro Hub, that’s what I’m running.
In fact the difference between the pro and standard/home Hub isn’t hardware, it’s likely only software; whereby the the Pro provides access to the more powerful telnet interface, for integration, while the standard has that feature disabled.
Hey @upsert I opened an issue on the GitHub repo - mind taking a look? https://github.com/upsert/lutron-caseta-pro/issues/1
Thanks!
Thanks for making this! should I be able to control dimming in the UI? or is it only through automations - currently I only see a toggle on/off button in HASSio front end
my config:
lutron_caseta_pro: bridges: - host: IP_ADDRESS switch: [ 2 ]
That’s because you explicitly defined it as a switch (ie on/off). Take switch: [ 2 ] out of your config and the component will treat it as a light (ie a dimmable entity).
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I don’t see my Pico remote showing up in Hass, only my switches, do I have to define them?