Hello! Apologies if this is obvious or has been answered elsewhere.
Would Home Assistant allow me to set up some Lutron smart switches or remotes (with a Lutron bridge) to control some Ikea smart light bulbs (on/off, dimming, temperature)?
I don’t have either of those products but I would say yes.
As long as there is an integration (have a look at the integrations page) then it’s possible.
And it’s not hard to do this, you create an automation to do this
The critical thing @jerrm notes above is only Pico remotes. All of the hardwired devices are not exposed as triggers in HA, but it sounds like that’s what you want anyway.
Currently, I have a Pico remote on the wall that looks like a legit wall switch that activates a Z-wave wall plug elsewhere in the room through HA.
You will add the Lutron Caseta integration and set it up per the linked docs, then add the Ikea integration per the linked docs, then create an automation that takes the lutron pico remote button press as a trigger and perform an action to turn the light on/off. Pretty easy once you get acclimated to HA.
@hassbrad What I have in mind sounds very much like your wall plug situation, with the only additional complication of controlling dimming instead of just on/off. However, it sounds like a pico remote could be programmed to do just that.
HA doesn’t get button press events from wired caseta devices, but it does get state change events.
You can’t do things like detect a double or long press, but you can have a zigbee or other bulb do things like mirror the lutron switch/dimmer state, or do something on the lutron on, off, brightness change events, etc.
I am slowly parsing the additional information.
It seems my original goal (controlling ikea smart bulbs with pico remotes via home assistant) can be achieved.
However, if I am investing in Lutron, I think I would eventually like to replace some regular hard-wired switches/dimmers with some Lutron smart switches/dimmers (this would be for regular non-smart bulbs). Am I to understand I won’t be able to control these Lutron smart switches/dimmers from Home Assistant?
In HA, the Lutron switches and dimmers are exposed as switch and light entitites with full control.
With regard to triggering automations, HA receives state change events for the switch or light - on, off, brightness change. You base automation triggers based on the state of the light/switch and not on the physical button press. The automation can see when the main lights turn on, and also turn on a zigbee bulb in the floor lamp. The automation doesn’t (easily) know if the main lights turned on because a button was pressed on the wall switch, or another automation turned it on. If the lights are already on and a user presses the on button a second time, HA won’t see the button press because the state of the light did not change (on to on).
Picos are exposed as a set of buttons. HA receives button press and release events for the individual button - off press, off release, on press, on release, raise press, raise release, etc. You can’t “turn on” a pico, but you can programatically simulate pressing the on button.
Overall, I’ve been very pleased with Lutron Caseta.
When I started this path, I wanted to make sure all the basics were 100% functional without LAN or internet, and I didn’t want anything in the walls that wasn’t UL (or equivalent) listed. Lutron Caseta was a great fit and has lived up to those goals.
