I now have a couple Lutron Caseta dimmers, with a couple more on the way. It would be cool if they would integrate with Sense to report the usage. In place of supporting every individual dimmer though, would it be possible to get IFTTT support to tell Sense that something turned on or off (or, for dimmers, are at a certain percentage)? I’d expect to have to manually tell it the total wattage attached, but then it should feed into the model like smart plugs or network identification do; Sense is effectively manually told when the on and off events happen and what the wattage is.
Of course, if Caseta were supported directly, that would be even better – I was just brainstorming how to make it useful for a wider audience. If IFTTT could send information to Sense, that would enable all kinds of devices from many manufacturers.
I have Lutron Caseta as well in my home. A switch and dimmer but I have plans for more.
For integration though people may need to have the Smart Bridge Pro, not the regular bridge they sell at retailers like bestbuy. AFAIK the pro version is only available from electrical contractors and suppliers. The difference is that the pro allows third parties to communicate with it via telenet on the local LAN. Users also need to enable telenet communication in the Lutron app.
The standard hub does do integration with third parties but I don’t’ know if they offer a cloud based API that anybody can use. You might need to contact them. Or just use the local interface that the pro provides.
I havea Luton Bridge PRO as well. I think that the integration of this product in to Sense would make a whole lot of Sense if it could be aware of the operation of all the lights in the house. I have about 15 Caseta devices in the house and it would be neat to see lighting be integrated in to Sense this way.
That being said, I have yet to have Sense identify any lighting loads in my house at all.
Our of curiosity, are most of your lighting loads on dimmers? The only lights that have been detected in my home were two of the bathroom vanity lights in two bathrooms. No dimmer and they are incandescent bulbs. So I think a pretty recognizable signature. Almost everything else in the house is on a dimmer, and the few things that aren’t, are all LED had don’t amount to much usage.
Most of the dimmed sources are Lutron RadioRA 2. So hopefully if they can make a Caseta integration, they can tackle RadioRA as well.
The issue I do see with both is that neither system reports actual load. Just on / off and dim status. They made this work with Hue because the Hue system knows the values of each bulb, so it can do the math based on spec (or at least thats my understanding). While they can get on/off data for bulbs, I think without knowing exactly what is on each circuit, it gets tricky fast. The NDI TV detection is a good example of that. They were getting on/off signals from the TV’s, but not true power usage which gave a somewhat false report on how much the TV was using.
I think NDI is only used for data mining and not for device detection. Hopefully the Caseta/RA2 on/off/dim status could provide the same info as NDI.
Not sure how they could integrate it in a user friendly way into the GUI so you can see your energy usage like for Hue. But even if they only use it internally for their own use then it’ll still provide a benefit by helping improve device detection.
(I posted the following on another thread but it seems very applicable here, too.)
It seems to me that, through repeatedly cycling a smart switch on and off, that the standard “full on” load could be determined by the changes measured at the mains CTs. For dimmable switches, if some measure of the amount of dimming applied by the smart switch is provided to Sense, then that correction could then be applied to the known “full on” load. Perhaps this could even be dialed in more exactly by on-off cycling at the dimmed setting.
From what I understand the device to be integrated must have energy monitoring. I don’t have any knowledge of these switches, do the have this feature?
I’m looking to replace switches and if these could be integrated then they would be on the short list. I don’t want to end up like I ha e with smart plugs and have tons of them that will never be.
I’m hoping that devices integration doesn’t require energy monitoring. That would make it a very short list indeed.
Seems to be that there should be some value in being able to understand the light switches as their should be some co-temporal correlation between the light switch being turned to the on-state and one (or more) light bulbs suddenly drawing electricity. Seems like having that little bit of data would be more valuable than simply looking at the draw of the light bulbs themselves.
I’ve actually talked to @RyanAtSense and @kevin1 about integration with devices that done monitor and my take from them is that is a requirement. Probably why out list is already short.
My thinking is like yours for value and I thought it could help the same with device detection just like what we have now. There are some problems that were pointed out to me with smart plugs but your idea with switches don’t carry the same issues
Three big shortcomings of most home automation vs. WiFi smartplugs with power monitoring, when providing ground truth
just because a smart switch is on, doesn’t mean current is flowing. The device under control could be off, thermostatic, or burnt out. And bad ground truth is worse than no ground truth. The only class of smart devices immune from this problem are those that report their status back to the hub (I.e. Hue smart bulbs)
4 Bytes / second of well time-correlated power data is much richer ground truth data than loosely time-correlated 1 bit (on / off switch event) data every so often.
The relatively small number of power sensing smarthome hub-oriented devices probably can’t communicate with enough frequency or tight
enough temporal resolution with the Sense monitor to match the current integrations due to bandwidth limitations of Z-wave/Zigbee
Would love to see smarthome hub integrations for better learning, but I wanted to point out some of the additional challenges in making that work similarly.
@kevin1 explains the reasons there and where I had been hung up originally was that I thought Sense would get the report that the switch turned and at the same time see the draw of juice in the timeline.
What made me understand my thinking would t work was if it switched on and sense saw it draw 100 watts but instead of turning the device of at the smart switch, it was turned off at the device. Sense would then not be able to correlate the two.
This all falls under answer “1.” Above. What has me wondering about the switch mentioned originally is the smart switch is the only means of on/off, so does that change things where this device would be possible?
I don’t know about it and if the requirements in 2 and 3 would be met
We’re not talking about hubs in general. This is for lutron caseta integration. Lutron’s smart bridge pro provides real time on/off status without lag iirc. Caseta is their consumer line based on same technology as their professional line of lightning controls.
None of these provide watts but these devices are hardwired in wall dimmers/switches: not likely people would remove bulbs from thier ceiling fixtures. I think it’ll provide the same info as ndi does now.
Only downside is one has to have the smart bridge pro which is only available from electrical suppliers. Their regular smart bridge doesn’ t provide local lan control (telenet).
Also these are not based on zigbee or zwave but their own proprietary radio/ protocol.
Thanks for the overview. Seems like the Casita Pro offers the optimal technical characteristics if/when Sense develops on/off type integrations with hubs/bridges, where the feedback comes from the switch vs the end device. It still seems there exists the possibility for erroneous feedback - I had a light on a controlled switch for a month before I noticed the bulb was out.
Thanks again for highlighting differences between the pro and basic product.
I see your point. Also I realize my comparison with NDI (or network listening as they call it in the app now) is not valid as the dimmer or switch is putting out the notice and not the device consuming the power.
I have 6 Luton Caseta dimmer switches in my house, and one Leviton WIFI switch. All are controlling LED can retrofits, with the exception of the Leviton WIFI switch, which handles on/off scheduling duties of the porch lights that are not on motion sensors.
I do not currently have the Smart Hub Pro as I’m on Wink, but will be purchasing one along with a Hubitat.
