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Thread: Compare Shades?

  1. #1
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    Compare Shades?

    I have a Caseta Wireless PRO hub and several Lutron switches installed, and am looking to add two window shades to my system. (To the extent it matters, my caseta system is integrated with both my alarm.com security system and thermostat and my logitech harmony remote).

    I have been searching everywhere online, including here, and cannot find any source that compares the different shade options (Serena, Sivoia, and Triathlon). Can anyone here direct me to such a source, or give me more information on the differences between them?

    Thank you.

  2. #2
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    Tech-wise the Serena and QS honeycomb are exactly the same shades. The firmware is different and one system can't use the other. But Sivoia and Triathlon come in quite a lot more colors and textures, along with rollers, venetian, sheers and drapery options.

    I skipped Lutron shades entirely as I wanted top-down/bottom-up (both the top lowers and the bottom raises) and Hunter Douglas is about the only company making them with battery power options. Not cheap but they've been working pretty well for the past 6 months.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by wkearney99 View Post
    I skipped Lutron shades entirely as I wanted top-down/bottom-up (both the top lowers and the bottom raises) and Hunter Douglas is about the only company making them with battery power options. Not cheap but they've been working pretty well for the past 6 months.
    And these can be controlled through the Lutron Caseta phone app?

  4. #4
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    The Hunter Douglas shades? No, they are controlled with their own system. Which works reasonably well. Their PowerView hub and pebble remotes are actually pretty convenient, especially if you have more than just one or two shades in a room and you want direct control over them from a physical remote. The Lutron Pico remotes are great but not for situations where there's a lot of shades and you want fine control of them individually. It's not that you can't but you end up using multiple remotes whereas a pebble remote can do up to 6

    Lutron makes a bunch of stuff of their own. I chose not to use them because they didn't have the bidirectional mechanism that I needed.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by wkearney99 View Post
    The Hunter Douglas shades? No, they are controlled with their own system. .
    ok, thanks.

  6. #6
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    Hi wkearney99,

    Were you able to integrate your Powerview shades into a lutron Lighting system? I'm looking for Hunter Douglas drivers that I can use in QS and RA2 systems. I know I can build RS232 commands but I'd like to integrate over IP.

    Any help there would be appreciated.

  7. #7
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    No, no, I did not integrate the two. There's no real need to do that. Using the Hunter Douglas remote is a lot more convenient. That and the hub supports various scenes for scheduled events and remembered positions.

  8. #8
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    ok, thanks for the information.
    I like the remotes and the App also.

    Do you find inconsistent operation in the RF signal for the powerview shades? I've had a couple systems where all of the shades don't always operate the 1st time when selecting a scene from the App. Sometimes one or 2 shades out of a group won't run out of say, 8 shades in a Scene.

    ..even after confirming good wifi and repeater placement.

    thanks
    Steve

  9. #9
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    Oh, don't get me started on their horrendously inconsistent setup process for pairing the shades! It's eff'ing horrible. That and they've released no tools to do any kind of debugging or even checking/viewing signal strength.

    It doesn't use wifi to communicate with the shades, so that won't matter. Placing the hub 'sort of' matters, but without ANY debugging tools it's a VERY annoying bit of guesswork.

    Here's a curious thing, use the app to make a backup. Note, each app installation has it's own set of backups, they're not cloud-saved. You can, at least, e-mail yourself a copy of it. Although I'm not sure how you'd restore from an e-mail. Ugh, more bad code. But that's not the curious bit. I had a hub just lose it's configuration. Supposedly you have to press and hold a button on the back of it to clear it. I'm not sure. Just moving it seems to have caused it to go blank. That or just a quick press of that button, not a hold. But that's not the curious bit....

    Where it got interesting was rebuilding the setup. If I just used the discovery process it would only find 7 shades (out of many more). Nothing I could do would cause it to discover more. I tried moving the hub, power-cycling the repeaters, etc. Nothing. Now, some of these shades are at the tops of 10' tall windows, behind furniture, so getting out the ladder is NOT ideal.

    I happened to bring up the app on all of my tablets and found ONE that I had used to create a backup! Yay! I restored the hub using that and, lo and behold, it suddenly sees all the shades! So clearly there's something that gets stored in the backup, and the shade still communicates, but can't be re-discovered. Like something was paired, but wasn't. Meanwhile the shades still worked with their paired remotes.

    Were it not for them having the kind of hardware we needed for this setup I would probably not have gone with Hunter. Lutron gear is great and their engineering pays quite a lot of attention to all aspects of design. Hunter... not so much when it comes to automation...

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by SPEIRICK View Post
    Do you find inconsistent operation in the RF signal for the powerview shades? I've had a couple systems where all of the shades don't always operate the 1st time when selecting a scene from the App.
    Hunter's shade reliability is a big issue, just check the reviews on their app. When integrating with other systems, I ended up doubling up all of the signals to increase reliability. Their's app is terrible too, but thankfully it is not needed after integrating shades into a larger system.

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