Thoughts on the new Alisse keypad?

Here are my thoughts:
The good: I really like the idea of having a base station with a removable/replaceable face plate. It's kind of like how See-touch is except this has electronics built in. For us at least, we were hesitant to offer Palladiom because we had no idea what the final programming would be 6 months or a year later. Sometimes with see-touch the customer would have the little plastic labels on there for months after they moved in before they figured out what they wanted. It was also nice that we could order the engraving without dealing with our supplier and going straight to Lutron. I hope that's the case here too where once we order the parts, we can just send engraving directly.
I also like that you can use the same base station/hole in the wall for 1, 2, or 3 column keypads. Nice piece of engineering.

The not so good:
It only works with QSX...I have a feeling this is the trend going forward but this is again a hostile act against existing Homeworks Illuminations, and current QS users who have RPMs. Not to mention those with LiteTouch panels that have RPMs or future LiteTouch upgrades. Doing this only makes sense if QSX brings RPM support. And not to beat a dead horse- also bring Telnet support to QS (the new integration is a not there yet).

More evidence Lutron is going to kill QS in the near future.

It looks a lot light the old, old KP9 keypads except the buttons are round . They also offer round button kits for Signature keypads. It's a look... My guess is they are in the Palladiom price range which makes them a hard sell.

Not enough buttons. Yes, you can have 9 buttons but that looks tacky to me.

They require the square (EU) back boxes which means they are not compatible with anything in North America. No ganging with audio controls, etc.

I think its bad enough trying to give clients control when going from a regular keypad to a Palladiom since you have less buttons per gang. This is even worse. My clients want more than 3 buttons in a single gang.

Yeah myself, I've always been function over form and in that regard, it's really hard to beat See-Touch keypads' price and functionality. They really look pretty nice too if you pick the right colors for the rooms. The problem with taking buttons away is that Lutron assumes that the homeowner is the type to just want to push one button to turn everything on, all the time. Yes, it's true, some people like to make the top button be "bright" middle button be "medium" and 3rd button to be "relaxed" but then when you have 5 different lights in an area, how would they just turn on the one light they want? I guess now with the app that's possible but in my experience, people still want to have a physical button to control individual lights. The way I usually program them is for each room to make the top button be the main scene where in most cases, all the lights in the room come on- recessed lights, chandelier, whatever and more importantly, just hitting that button will turn the room off (even if it didn't turn them on initially). In busy common areas, I often have two keypads next to each other, one for scenes and another for rooms or individual lights. I'm sure there will be jobs where this might come in handy but I don't think See-Touch is losing the crown anytime soon.

I've never had an owner complain about too many buttons or that they never used a particular button. I have had them say they don't want to turn a bunch of stuff on, they just want that one zone.

I would like to see and update to seeTouch. Maybe more tactile buttons. Ambient light sensors. Motion sensors so they only light up when you walk by. Ability to turn the LEDs off with button press/clock event. Options for LED colors. Field configurable buttons so I don't have to pay $75 to change 1 button or order a button kit to add/remove a button. There is a competitor out there that has those features in a less expensive keypad.

Thank you for your post SparkyCoog.

In talking with our team we wanted to share the following on QSX/QS Systems.

1. Dealers can expect that going forward new keypads, system features and other devices will be brought to QSX systems first. QSX is the future of HomeWorks and will receive the new updates first as we continue to support QS.

2. While we cannot discuss future product roadmaps, we are considering upgrade paths for legacy systems, and appreciate the feedback

3. We continue to add LEAP integration partners. If there’s specific integration functionality available in Telnet that is not yet available in LEAP, we’d love to hear about it at workswith@lutron.com.