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Complete Renovation Project - Caseta or RadioRa - Any Help Apprecaited!!!

516 views 4 replies 3 participants last post by  rapamatic 
#1 ·
Hi Guys


Looking for some suggestions. I am currently planning a whole house renovation of a townhouse I have just bought. We are literally planning on doing everything, knocking down walls, putting in new kitchen and bathrooms, new ceiling and new floors etc. Now, I love home automation, one of the reasons I bought the house is so that I can start putting stuff in that I never could put into a rental property, like the lighting control etc!! We are also planning on building a home cinema in the basement (but that is for another thread!!).


Now, I love lighting and definitely want some form of lighting control with different scenes. The renovation is costing a bomb though, so was thinking of doing something scalable, i.e. start with installing the lighting control and then over time add the thermostat control and AV/video control/remote. I am not worried about security systems and I am already running Sonos and am really happy with it for audio. I also don't need AV distribution across the whole house, happy with an Apple TV in each room.


Since I was going to start with lighting, I want something that will ideally work with everything and was therefore thinking of a Lutron system since whatever control system I ultimately go (to the extent I go with a professional installed system such as Savant, Creston or Control 4), this should work with, as far as a I understand. This is where the problem comes in. I understand that the new(ish) Caseta system works with Homekit and Amazon Echo, which would seem like great choices for home automation control (and probably much cheaper). However, they are limited in range (the townhouse is 2732 sq foot but is over 3 floors and basement has a 15 foot ceiling on its own), don't look that slick re controls and is limited to 50 devices (not sure if this is 50 lights or 50 light switches/dimmers?). The RadioRa2/Grafik Eye/Homeworks systems on the other hand, looksmuch better re dimmers/control switches and would easily cover the whole house, but would be much more expensive but more important, don't as yet seem to work with Homekit or Echo and I want to install something that is future proof.


Does anyone have any ideas? Any help would be much appreciated!!!


Lee
 
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#4 ·
Great thanks, very helpful, haven't thought about intergration with Homeworks/Echo through the third party controller route. My fear would be that Lutron are now focused on the Caseta route and building that up for the masses, rather than focusing on the older RadioRa 2 technology etc.
 
#5 ·
There have been plenty of complaints on the official lutron forums about caseta having additional features, and I think lutron is working on it. But yeah, third party can handle a lot of the integration. While RR2 is older, lutron continues to develop new products for it and they have a long history of supporting their products and their installer network.

RR2 is several steps above caseta or z wave in terms of performance (all loads in a scene ramp at same rate and time, no "popcorn" effect), reliability, ability to handle all types of lighting loads, and aesthetics. I probably have 6 different colors of RR2 switches and keypads in my house, for example.


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