Lutron Caseta and Insteon? Or something else?

[Jay M]

I've been happy for 15 years or more with Insteon.  So happy, that I bought thousands of dollars worth of Insteon gear for my new home.  It turns out that Insteon isn't compatible with my new home.  I'm not sure of the specific cause, but all for the lights randomly blink off for a millisecond once every few minutes.  It could be poor wiring, dirty power caused by who knows what, or the 4 Tesla Powerwall 3s I have. 

I installed Caseta dimmers in the Master bedroom/bath as well as the Family room/kitchen area.  It's all stable. And removing a bunch of Insteon devices seems to have made the remaining Insteon dimmers more stable. 

Is it possible to run Insteon dimmers wirelessly? I suspect they are getting random noise in the power line that causes the blinking

My first thought would be to replace everything with Caseta, but Caseta doesn't have the feature set that I've gotten used to.  Things like assigning a scene to a load controlling dimmer.  I also like to freely adjust the ramp rate and on levels.  And as far as I know, you can't schedule a scene - you need to create an additional scene that is a schedule. 

My second thought was to use both Caseta and Insteon, but there are many programs or scenes that need to trigger both systems. 

Can the Eisy control both Insteon and Caseta? 

My Third thought is to go with Radio RA3?  But that would be about $6000 or so.  Is it worth it?  I'm not a programmer, but If I can handle the ISY994  and the Eisy, can I handle the Lutron Radio RA3 software? 

One thing I really like about the Caseta Diva dimmers is the ability to adjust the "trim".  That is where you can set a minimum dim level for the attached fixture.  So when I dim to 1% it will go as low as possible with out turning off.  It will also turn on at 1%.  That's nearly impossible to do with an Insteon dimmer.  I assume I can do that in the RA2/3 dimmers as well.

Thanks for your thoughts!

~Jay

 

[oberkc]

3 hours ago, Jay M said:

Can the Eisy control both Insteon and Caseta?

There is a Lutron caseta plug-in for polyglot.  I think it requires the caseta hub.   It works fine at my house.  My caseta test switch shows up in my Polisy and it responds to scene commands.  I am not sure whether the caseta switch can behave as a scene controller, but it is certainly worth experimenting around.  If you find the caseta switches works at your house, adding them to your EISY is worth doing, in my estimation.

[Jay M]

Thanks. I’ll give it a try. It would be awesome if my keypadlinks could activate a scene that includes both Caseta and Insteon. 
 

I’ve never used a plugin before.  Is it a paid plugin? Can you direct me to more details?

~Jay

[Andy P]

Jay, start here and read about Polyglot Eisy:User Guide - Universal Devices, Inc. Wiki

Ignore any reference to Polisy and replace it mentally with EISY. In the admin console select Plugins -> Launch Polyglot. Use your login credentials and select Plugins Store. Look for Caseta and install it into whatever slot you want. You can trial it for free, when I looked just now it shows the perpetual license is $50 - worth it in my mind.

I am using a Lutron Caseta dimmer for a wall lamp in the den and have created a scene that includes the Insteon and Lutron devices using the plugin in slot 3. So you see the plugin creates a device starting with n003 (slot number) which can be added to scenes just like the insteon devices. There are some restrictions, but basic functionality is there. Here is a screenshot of the admin console and the scene node definition that shows the Den Reading LIght caseta dimmer,  which is device17 of my caseta devices, along with the insteon other devices.

<group flag="132" nodeDefId="InsteonDimmer">

<address>47025</address>

<name>@Den Cozy</name>

<family>6</family>

<hint>70.69.67.84</hint>

<deviceGroup>26</deviceGroup>

<pnode>47025</pnode>

<members>

<link type="0">60 7E 13 1</link>

<link type="0">n003_device17</link>

<link type="0">60 4C D7 2</link>

<link type="16">60 7E 13 2</link>

<link type="0">60 23 81 1</link>

</members>

</group>

 

[Andy P]

@oberkc I have not tried using the Caseta switch as a controller for a scene, but it does give you the option to make it a controller or responder when you right click Add To Scene.

[bpwwer]

You can use a Caseta switch as a controller for a scene that has Insteon devices, but it's not ideal.  Lutron doesn't send out control commands when a switch is used.  Instead, the plug-in has to see the status change and then use that to activate the scene.  What this means is that whatever load the switch is controlling and any Insteon devices in the scene are not well synchronized.  

I have a dimmer switch controlling a lamp and an Insteon lamplinc controlling a lamp in a scene.  When the on button on the dimmer is pressed, the lamp it is controlling ramps up in brightness, then the Insteon lamplinc turns on.

However, the Pico switches do send out control commands since that's what they're designed to do.  So using a Pico as a scene controller should work as you'd expect.

Using Insteon devices as scene controllers should also work as you'd expect.

[Jay M]

This is really helpful.  It looks like With Eisy, and the Caseta plugin, I can have my cake and eat it too!

I've had lighting scenes in my home for more than 20 years.  I've been in the new house now for about 3 weeks without scenes.  I feel like I'm living in the stone age.  Last night I started to create a few scenes, and I already feel better.  Once I can make Caseta and Insteon behave as one, it'll be perfect. 

Hopefully, I'll be able to avoid the expense and learning curve of Radio RA3.

~Jay