No access to homeworks system...

[epr23]

So my company bought a building that has a homeworks qs processor running sivoia shades and I can not get anyone to help me at all. There are no lutron installers or techs near me in Cincinnati, which is a fairly large city, that has been able to come out or help. I tried asking lutron for the software so I can just try to fix it myself as the main IT infrastructure guy here but I cant get access to the software until I take some course and become a certified installer. Well I said okay, let me take the course then, and they said some sales rep will reach out and never did. The whole lutron process has been miserable and I cant get anyone to reply or be reliable including this system. Is there a way to get access to this or can I just swap in a consumer processor that I will have control over without requiring to pay some lutron certified installer to come out and fix solely because they have access to the software?

[jeffw]

Homeworks certification is controlled rather tightly. Radio RA 2/3 is available to end users who take the courses, which you can complete online or at local providers. You would have to change out not only the processor, but all of the devices as well, as Lutron doesn’t allow upgrading or downgrading the firmware on dimmers and keypads and the like to different systems. So you’d be starting from scratch. If you did that you might want to go with one of Lutron’s commercial systems anyway. whether it is worth making the change depends on how many devices are in the system.

If you can’t find someone locally, you may be able to find someone who can program the system remotely. They could walk you through what would be required to make that possible.

[epr23]

Homeworks certification is controlled rather tightly. Radio RA 2/3 is available to end users who take the courses, which you can complete online or at local providers. You would have to change out not only the processor, but all of the devices as well, as Lutron doesn’t allow upgrading or downgrading the firmware on dimmers and keypads and the like to different systems. So you’d be starting from scratch. If you did that you might want to go with one of Lutron’s commercial systems anyway. whether it is worth making the change depends on how many devices are in the system.

If you can’t find someone locally, you may be able to find someone who can program the system remotely. They could walk you through what would be required to make that possible.

Yeah I was afraid of that... rather annoying because if I had someone locally that was reliable, I wouldn't have an issue. But because its so tightly controlled, no one seems to be certified besides a few people who are either no longer in business or impossible to get a hold of.

I actually wouldnt mind remote help actually if you could suggest how I could go about doing that? I already have a mini pc hooked up to both ethernet ports on the qs that I am able to remote into or give someone temporary access to it to program the homeworks qs.

[jeffw]

Someone else here will have to chime in. Not sure if you can extract the program file and do a transfer remotely, but if you've got a PC hooked up and you can give someone remote access to the PC, it should be possible to install the Homework Designer software and have the programmer log in, extract the file, do the programming on their end, and then use your remote PC to open the updated file and do the transfer.

BTW, you said the processor is running Sivoia shades. Is that all? No lighting devices? Do you want to add any devices to the system? If you're planning to install new lighting controls, and the shades are wireless and compatible with the Radio RA 2/3 systems, then if you really have no Homeworks programmers you can rely on, it may be worth downgrading to a system you can program yourself.