Splitting system into primary home and ADU

[dalefox]

Hey all, 7-year Caseta and smart home user/designer but new to the forum. We are in hospitality and have set up dozens of projects using these systems. I have a particular use case now and I’m not sure how best to solve it.

Above my primary home is a full one bedroom apartment, which we are now setting up as an ADU. It will be rented as a short term rental. That ADU has previously been integrated into my primary home systems, such as Lutron, Sonos, etc. Since we are now taking outside guests, I want to set it up so our guests wouldn’t issue commands that would affect our residence nor the same in reverse (for example: turn off all the lights).

We have created a separate Wi-Fi network for the ADU, but on the same set of networking hardware (Unifi) to which the Lutron smart hub is plugged in by ethernet. Here are the questions:

is it possible to create a new (second) home in the Lutron app without adding another Lutron Smart Hub?

if I do add another Lutron smart hub to the same network, How would my two separate systems know which one to connect to?


Could I simply dumb down the system in the ADU and have them operate as just light switches and pico remotes without any connection back to the smart hub on network?

any other suggestions on how best to handle this situation?

thanks everyone, Dale

[Joy L.]

Hello dalefox, welcome to the Forums!

Since the Caseta system/Lutron App does not have any guest mode type of features, and you cannot create a second home in the Lutron App without adding a second Hub, there are a couple options you can explore for the ADU:

1. If you want to split the system into primary home and ADU, you can put a Smart Hub in the ADU and factory reset-->re-associate all devices in the ADU to the new Hub. To do this, you have the option of either:

-adding the second Hub to your existing Lutron App account, allowing you to toggle between the two hubs, or
-make a new Lutron App account that guests can log into and control themselves (that you can also log into if need be)

2. Make all the control local in the ADU, i.e. your suggestion of just having Picos and lighting controls without the Hub.

If you do choose option one, luckily there would not be any cross-talk or interference between the systems, as devices only communicate to the hub they are paired to. Also, you may have two hubs on one network.

We hope this helps!