Just confirming that this works locally (without internet access) as described in the PR? If so, that is an awesome addition. I already have the pro but I know a few folks who dont want to spend the extra money.
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All local using the leap protocol like the rest of the integration speaking to the bridge over the existing connection
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Hi I am using the core integration to turn on/off smart bulbs via pico remote. The bulbs are in lamps so they are not hardwired to dimmer switches. Everything is working fine for turn on/off. The increase button has a weird behavior, if light is off and I press increase brightness then the light turn to full bright and then reduces to minimal, then pressing increase keeps increasing as expected. Anyone experienced that?
Also, is it possible to mimic exact same behavior as the Lutron dimmer switches? So when I press on, lights would slowly increase brightness from 0 to full, in my implementation light just suddenly turns on.
And when holding increase in the original dimmer switches the light keeps increasing brightness, in my implementation I need to keep pressing over and over to increase.
thanks vm
How can I get the serial of my pico?
Welcome. @jmsblah!
Since you mention you’re using the Pico remotes to control individual bulbs (i.e. not Lutron switches/dimmers), I’m going to assume you’re using some other brand of bulbs and that they’re connected to Home Assistant via a different integration.
In your use case, the lutron_caseta integration is providing a way to allow your Pico remotes to send events to Home Assistant. These are frequently used as automation triggers, which is how it seems you’re using them. Note that all the lutron_caseta integration is doing in this case is indicating when a particular button on the remote was pressed or released; it doesn’t control any of the actions that happen in response to that button event.
As far as figuring out any specific behavior of your lights, that likely needs to be done with the lights or the integration you’re using for the lights. For example, if you want to understand what happens when you use call the light.turn_on service with the brightness_step_pct parameter set to 10 on a lightbulb that’s off, you can go to the Services tab of the Developer Tools page, and call that service on the bulb you’re interested in. If you see it turn on to full brightness on the initial service call, then it’s your bulb (or the integration controlling your bulb) that’s causing the undesired behavior. For reference, with my Sylvania bulbs (zha integration) and Philips Hue bulbs (hue integration) do not exhibit the behavior you described; when they’re off initially, using the aforementioned brighten call results in them turning on to 10% brightness.
As for mimicking the behavior of the Lutron dimmers, what you’re describing sounds like the fade on/off capabilties, which are controlled via the transition parameter in the light service calls. I believe the default Lutron fade time is 2 seconds. As long as your bulbs support this capability, adding this parameter to your service calls should get you what you want. Here’s an example that fades the lights to 50% brightness over 5 seconds:
- service: light.turn_on
target:
entity_id: light.bedroom
data:
color_temp: 500
brightness_pct: 50
transition: 5
Some integrations also have the ability to set a default transition time for all lights - that way you don’t have to specify it with every service call. For example, the zha integration for Zigbee bulbs has this capability.
Finally, as for holding the dim/brighten buttons on the Pico remotes and getting continuous dimming/brightening, I haven’t implemented something like that yet, though I think it could be done. One way would be to make a dim/brighten call when the button press event is detected, and then repeatedly make dim/brighten calls until the button release event is detected. Perhaps the lutron_caseta integration will eventually get this capability natively, like the hue integration that can generate press/short-release/long-release/hold events.
The easiest way I know is to go to the Developer Tools page in the Events tab. Start listening for lutron_caseta_button_event events, and press a button on your pico. Then you should see something like this:
{
"event_type": "lutron_caseta_button_event",
"data": {
"serial": 01234567,
"type": "Pico3ButtonRaiseLower",
"button_number": 4,
"device_name": "Pico",
"area_name": "Bedroom",
"action": "press"
},
"origin": "LOCAL",
"time_fired": "xxx",
"context": {
"id": "xxx",
"parent_id": null,
"user_id": null
}
}
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Hi @erikg,
Thanks for taking the time to reply to me!
I have Lutron dimmers/picos all over the house, and most of them are connected to non smart lights.
I have some lights though that are in lamps, so for those I bought smart bulbs (meross) which I integrated to HA using the custom Meross LAN integration (btw, is there any other smart light bulbs better integrated with HA and HomeKit?) and my idea was to get some pico remotes to control them. My end goal is to mimic on those lamps the same behavior I get for the hardwired non-smart bulbs when using the dimmer/switches.
As far as smart bulbs that “just work”, support HomeKit, and support most features like color, color temp, transitions, groups/scenes, dimming, power-loss recovery, etc., I’ve been very happy with Philips Hue. They’re expensive, even when on sale, but IMHO, you actually get something for that premium price. I have them in critical areas of my house, and I’ve installed cheaper (~75% less) Sylvania Smart+ Zigbee bulbs elsewhere.
The Sylvania bulbs and strips work reliably if you ensure you have a solid Zigbee mesh, but they took some experimenting to get them reliable in my experience. They return to their last ON color/brightness after a power outage, so I do not use them in bedrooms. It only takes one power flicker at 2AM and having your bedroom instantly lit up like noon on a sunny day to drive home the importance of power loss recovery in bedrooms. Also, their rendering of oranges and blues isn’t quite as good as Hue in my experience. Others may have a different opinion.
I’ve also played a little with TP-link bulbs, mainly the KL130 and KL135. They’re 2.4 GHz WiFi, and I prefer have as few devices on that band as possible due to all the things that use that frequency (Xbox controllers are particularly bad in my home). The bulbs themselves seem good and support almost all the features that Hue bulbs do. Power loss recovery (staying off when power returns if they were off when power was interrupted) is one thing they don’t have. The KL135 is 1000 lumens, so it’s brighter than the Hue bulbs, except for the 75W and 100W equivalent ones they just released a few months ago.
I was excited about this but have one issue. I have 5 button remotes in our master bedroom and 5 lights to control and I wanted an all on / all off function. In the custom integration the remote is represented as a state. I used this along with the “for” keyword in automations to say if a state exists for 2 seconds trigger a different automation - so top button toggles a light but also if I hold it for 2 seconds turns all lights off, same for bottom button but turns them all on. I don’t see any way to replicate this with the event triggers - can anyone smarter than me figure out a way? Maybe “double click” somehow?
Playing around with long-presses is on my list of things to do with the Pico remotes, particularly to implement continuous dimming/brightening when those buttons are pressed, similar to the Lutron wall dimmers’ functionality. The triggers you mentioned sound like a similar application.
I think it could be done by having an automation detect a button press, waiting a moment (configurable delay), and then taking other actions if the button release event hasn’t been detected.
Something like:
Trigger on button press or release:
If press:
- Call service
- Wait 0.5s
- Repeat until interrupted
If release:
- Do nothing
If the automation is configured to restart when triggered with an instance already running, the above should give the desired effect.
This is a fork of the Pro custom integration that adds, long press, double click and even key sequences
I’ve only really used it for double click, and it’s worked flawlessly
Thank you!! Any chance of getting this into the main code?
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A quick question. Do both the core integration and the custom component require you to use the Lutron app to add devices? I just purchased the Smart Bridge Pro 2 and am looking to start adding switches to the core integration, but I don’t see a way to do this. I’m hoping that I won’t need to download the app, so I have additional assurances that all of my info stays local.
Thanks,
Dave
Yes, you need to use the Lutron app on your phone to pair each dimmer, switch, fan controller, Pico remote, etc. with the SmartBridge first.
Thanks, ogiewon! The information is much appreciated. I will likely delete the app once I’ve got these programmed and in Home Assistant.
Interesting point about not reporting state until the fade in/out has completed. Hadn’t thought about that.. .
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I wanna try this, would you be able to advice how to create the “wait .5 sec” and check if no release?
Just noticed this now (a year later) 
This script still works with custom config as long as you change the constants to the below.
BUTTON_ON = 2
BUTTON_FAV = 3
BUTTON_OFF = 4
BUTTON_RAISE = 5
BUTTON_LOWER = 6
The other change you need in your automation is to add a trigger for each button (as opposed to the old way, you have a single trigger).
Hi,
Just wondering if we can pickup button press events from the hardwired dimmers (for dumb lights) yet. I’d like my auxiliary hue light to come on and maybe change scenes depending on how many times I pressed “on”
Id like the same for, “if turned on from wall, dont turn off”