Originally Posted by
Shawn Parr
Hopefully my line breaks will work, otherwise sorry for the wall of text.1. Yup it is a bit step in price for what is technically a lower resource processor. But as a note you can find dealers with way better pricing. I pay under $90 for 6NDs brand new. The place I work with does a lot of volume, and doesn’t stock the RA2 stuff normally from what I’ve seen, so when I order it takes a couple weeks to get it, but it comes to me boxed in a way that appears how it was shipped to them from Lutron.2. Full Radio RA2 does not allow control of fans via HomeKit. The same fan controller on RA2 select does work with HomeKit. I’ve had both system and have hands on experience with both. If this is as annoying to you as it is for me, please call Lutron and ask for Mike S. Tell him how annoyed you are about this. I don’t want to necessarily harass him maliciously, but he is who I had discussions about with it and should know what you’re referring to, and hopefully will keep track of how many people complain.3. When paired to RA2 select last level is the only option. That is the default option out of the box for the dimmers, and when paired to Select the settings on the dimmer are defaulted, and there is no way in the app to change those settings. Only high and low end trim is available.4. You can do this but there are caveats. First off in Full RA2 you do need them paired to a device to see the output on Telnet, however Radio RA2 allows for virtual devices. You add a dimmer in the software, but never “activate” it (RA2 pairing). Also in my experience when running either a RA2 select OR a Radio RA2 system along with Caseta, telnet commands to the Caseta will be delayed by the Caseta system when originating from an Occupancy Sensor. So the occupancy sensor triggers on RA2/Select, the telnet integration shows that (or your paired device status for Select), telnet integration triggers Caseta, Caseta shows the update in the app but the dimmer doesn’t come on for 5 seconds. I confirmed this with support. On RadioRA2 you can go into advanced mode on the repeater and change the radio channel and it fixes this, but I don’t think you can do that in Select. When you do this you have to manually program your Picos and Occupancy sensors to change the channel. The software explains how to do it if you change the repeater’s channel.5. I use HomeSeer for this, but the Lutron plugins cost extra. One plugin does up to 4 Caseta and/or Select hubs, another one does Radio RA2. Hubitat can also do this, and I believe to some level is built in. The HomeSeer plugins support keypad buttons and LEDs on full RA2, not sure if Hubitat does that or not.6. I tried many different Z-Wave motion sensors. That is an important distinction: Z-Wave stuff is motion sensing, Lutron is occupancy sensing. Basically on motion sensing the original motion starts a timer and then after that it goes non-motion and/or re-triggers on motion again. With occupancy sensing the original motion starts a timer, and any additional motion resets the timer, so until there has been no motion for that time will it go to unoccupied. Depending on what software you are working with it can be trickier to get the programming right on motion sensors when you want them to behave like occupancy sensors. I also found that every PIR Z-Wave motion I could do a minimum of 1 second of motion in front of them before they triggered and sent a Z-Wave signal out. Many of them blink when motion detected, and you could wave in front of it for a second before it would blink. The Lutron stuff has been way more responsive for me. Occupancy was the primary reason I started moving from Caseta to RA2 Select. I then ran into the RA2 Select issues and moved to Radio RA2.