RadioRA2 versus Caseta / Smart Bridge
I'm in the midst of building a new house (about 3700 sq ft) and am looking at the RadioRA2 and the Smart Bridge Pro / Caseta systems. When we initially looked at Lutron, a lot of the "verbal" price ranges I heard for RadioRA2 made me almost immediately dismiss it. I started looking at the Smart Bridge system once it was announced last summer.
Now, the time to make a final decision has come. Our requirements are almost exclusively around lighting control, ranging from security (having different schemes on when we are away from home) to convenience / entertaining (we might have a few preset scenes for when we get in late at night with sleeping kids to entertaining). I don't want to have a lot of in-wall keypads in the house - my wife doesn't like the look of them. Rather, I just want to have general dimmers and operate scenes from my phone, and maybe with 1 Pico Remote in the house and one in the car.
I've counted out the number of switches the system would impact, and it is roughly 25. We do not have any shades, and do not plan to have any - so that benefit of RadioRA2 is not pertinent. Also, we have a Nest home thermostat.
When the electrician priced out both options in coordination with a Lutron rep, he indicated that the Smart Bridge Pro and the RadioRA2 system were roughly comparable price wise, and the rep recommended the RadioRA as it has "more future potential" in terms of unlimited switches and other things.
However, I'm still a bit skeptical. As a technology guy, I'm sensitive to what systems are getting more investment - and it seems like right now Lutron is innovating more around the Smart Bridge than the RadioRA system. For example, see the article below talking about Lutron support for Nest for Caseta / Smart Bridge but not RadioRA2: http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/05/nes...-nest-program/
Plus I'd rather have something that is a bit more "lightweight" in terms of infrastructure investment and can adapt into the future, as opposed to going "all in" on a system that might become increasingly dated.
Any advice?