Need advice - purchased home with legacy HomeWorks switches but no processor...

Hello,We recently purchase a house with a pretty significant HomeWorks lighting installation circa 2005. There's ~15 RF enabled switches and a couple of in-wall keypads, across a 9000 sqft home (3 levels). Unfortunately, the sellers removed the original RF processor unit...so all we have left are the switches.our objective is to ultimately have iphone/alex controlled lights. We're debating between:1. Get a new homeworks QS controller - Is it able to control the older RF switches? Do we need a "bridge" that converts the new HomeWorks QS to the old RF protocol? If not, does this mean we need to replace all of the old RF switches with new ones?2. If we do need to replace the old RF switches, should we consider just getting a Caseta system instead and avoid needing to pay for the HomeWorks RF processor?3. Should we consider RA system instead?We're trying to be cost conscious with this project....I understand the HomeWorks will provide the most capabilities but if the caseta option for example is a fraction of the cost, it might be a better option for us...Any advice would be most appreciated - thanks!

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Originally Posted by kahanop

Hello,We recently purchase a house with a pretty significant HomeWorks lighting installation circa 2005. There's ~15 RF enabled switches and a couple of in-wall keypads, across a 9000 sqft home (3 levels). Unfortunately, the sellers removed the original RF processor unit...so all we have left are the switches.our objective is to ultimately have iphone/alex controlled lights. We're debating between:1. Get a new homeworks QS controller - Is it able to control the older RF switches? Do we need a "bridge" that converts the new HomeWorks QS to the old RF protocol? If not, does this mean we need to replace all of the old RF switches with new ones?2. If we do need to replace the old RF switches, should we consider just getting a Caseta system instead and avoid needing to pay for the HomeWorks RF processor?3. Should we consider RA system instead?We're trying to be cost conscious with this project....I understand the HomeWorks will provide the most capabilities but if the caseta option for example is a fraction of the cost, it might be a better option for us...Any advice would be most appreciated - thanks!

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Thank you for your interest in Lutron products kahanop.Unfortunately, you would not be able to swap in a new HomeWorks QS processor without doing some upgrading of the system. We would recommend that you reach out to a local dealer for help with that. You can find a dealer in your area using our where to buy tool found here http://www.lutron.com/en-us/Pages/WT...buy.aspx?AID=1. For what system you should purchase we would recommend looking at our Residential system comparison here at http://www.lutron.com/TechnicalDocum...comparison.pdf.

IF they're all RF, another option (which honestly I don't recommend) would be to just buy a Homeworks Wireless processor off ebay and a couple of repeaters. I see them on there for as low as $200 even. The repeaters can be had for like $20. You'd still have to find someone to program things for you which is why I don't recommend this route since that's a cost that could go towards a new Radio RA2 system. I don't think Caseta would work in a house that big and you probably want real keypads. This processor and repeater setup would have easily cost you $3500 back in the day, but this was kind of an niche purpose processor that wasn't used much so there is not nearly as much demand for an old processor the way the full blown Series 8 processor was. Those if you can find them cost an arm and a leg because the houses they were installed in likely had RPM panels, wired keypads, and possibly wireless devices so it'd be a lot cheaper to swap those out than to move to QS. The Homeworks wireless processor filled the gap between a full blown homeworks system and the old radio ra classic which wasn't that great. Today's Radio Ra2 is absolutely great for most people and you'd get to use the new app, cloud capabilities and other things that the old systems never dreamed of.