I love using Apple’s HomeKit technology to turn my home into a smarter home. While I have quite a few HomeKit products installed, the most useful ones are part of the Lutron Caséta Wireless family. As I explained when I first reviewed these products in 2015, you can replace your current wall switch or dimmer with a Lutron Caséta Wireless Dimmer, and then you can use any of your Apple devices to turn the light on or off or dim the light. Or you can program the light to come on or off at specific times of the day or when triggered by some other HomeKit device, such as a motion sensor. I started with just a single wireless dimmer and I added more devices over time. You can have up to 75 Lutron Caséta devices in a single home.
Lutron Caséta uses a proprietary wireless technology it calls Clear Connect that works incredibly well. I’ve never experienced radio interference, nor have I seen reports online of others seeing that. I particularly like Lutron Caséta wall dimmers because while you can use devices like an iPhone to control them and you can automate them, the dimmer on the wall works just like any dumb dimmer. Other members of your household or guests just press the buttons on the wall the way that they would normally control a light switch or dimmer. (Some other HomeKit systems require that the light switch on the wall always be set to the “on” position to work; if someone turns the switch off, you can no longer control the lights using your iPhone.). And if a family member wants to use their Apple devices to control HomeKit products such as Lutron Caséta light switches, just use the Home app on your iPhone to send an invitation and then that person will be able to do everything that you can do.
The Lutron Smart Bridge (which you can buy with your first dimmer as a part of a set) connects to your router and is what allows the Lutron devices to work with Apple’s HomeKit technology. For example, the Smart Bridge gives you the power to tell Siri on your iPhone or your Apple Watch to dim the dining room light to 30%. Lutron says that the Smart Bridge is powerful enough to extend about 30 feet in each direction. If you lived in a big square home with no walls and put the Smart Bridge in the center, that would allow for about a 60 x 60 foot house of about 3,600 square feet. Of course, most folks won’t be able to place the Smart Bridge right in the middle of a house, and walls create some interference, but I’ve seen numerous reports online of folks saying that for a house size of around 2,500 square feet, even with two or even three floors, the Smart Bridge covers the entire house.
My house is two stories and almost 3,500 square feet, which means that the Lutron Smart Bridge could be enough to cover all of my house if I could put it in a central location, but I don’t have a router in the center of my house. My main router is next to my cable modem and computer, located in the study at the front upstairs of my house, and I have a second router located in my TV room at the back of the downstairs of my house. Placing the Smart Bridge at either extreme of my house, where the routers are located, made it difficult for the Smart Bridge to work with devices located at the other extreme at my house on a different floor.
Fortunately, Lutron gives you the option to extend the range, although you can only do so once. If you purchase a Lutron Caseta Wireless Smart Lighting Lamp Dimmer, which you can use to control a lamp or other device which plugs in to an outlet on a wall (you can actually control two lamps, one plugged in to each side), that device as a bonus will extend the range another 30 feet in each direction. Thus, place the lamp dimmer in a location that is in range of your Smart Bridge, and it will extend the wireless range in the other directions.
The way that I currently have this configured it that my Smart Bridge is in my upstairs study, and then in my upstairs bedroom I have the lamp dimmer plugged in next to my bed, controlling my bedside lamp. (If my wife is asleep in the room, it is nice to be able to use my Apple Watch to turn on my lamp to just 5% so that I can make my way around a dark room without waking her up.) The lamp dimmer is actually more than 30 feet from my Smart Bridge (it’s more like 50 feet away) but it still works fine. That lamp dimmer then works as a range extender, allowing the wireless signal to go to my TV room, located in that downstairs room in the back of my house, and to my backyard so that I can control outdoor lights connected to an iHome iSP100 Outdoor Smart Plug.
I’ve been using this configuration with success for a while, but recently I noticed that I was having trouble with the lights on a wall dimmer farthest away from my Smart Bridge. I thought that perhaps the wall dimmer itself was malfunctioning and would need to be replaced, but after some troubleshooting, I learned that I was having trouble with range because my lamp dimmer was no longer extending my range. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I noticed that when I went to the settings in the Lutron app and looked at the range extender settings, I was told that I should add a range extender to increase my range. In other words, the lamp dimmer was working great to control my lamp, but it was not extending my range.
To solve this problem, I deleted the lamp dimmer from my HomeKit configuration using the Lutron app, added it back again, and then the Lutron app automatically made that dimmer a range extender. And then the lights that I was having trouble with started working perfectly again.
Unfortunately, if you have multiple Lutron lamp dimmers, there is currently no way to designate one of them as the range extender. The first one that you add to your HomeKit system is the range extender, and any subsequent ones are just normal lamp dimmers. So if you plan to use multiple lamp dimmers in your house, make sure that the first one that you configure is in the most strategic location to extend your wireless range, and then put the other lamp dimmer(s) wherever you want just for use as a dimmer. If you want to designate a different lamp dimmer as a range extender, you should first remove all of the lamp dimmers from your HomeKit account, then add the one that you want to extend the range, and then add the other lamp dimmers.
All of this sounds very obvious as I am writing this post, but it took me a long time to figure out what was going on when I had trouble with my lights. It took a long time to realize that there could be a problem with the range extender. If you decide to install Lutron Caséta devices in your home — and I can highly recommend them — make sure that you take advantage of a lamp dimmer if you want to extend your range. And if you ever have trouble with lights that are far from your Smart Bridge, learn from my experience and take a look at the settings in the Lutron app and confirm that your lamp dimmer is working as a range extender.
If you are looking to start using a Lutron Caséta system, there are lots of ways to purchase it on Amazon, and I’ve included a few links below, but you can set it up lots of different ways. Surely, you will want a wall dimmer and a Smart Bridge. You can also get a remote control (which Lutron calls the Pico remote) which is included with some sets, and you can use that remote control either on its own, or you can mount it on a wall with a wall bracket. For example, if you want to control the lights in a room from two different light switches, you can put a dimmer on one wall to actually control the lights, and then you can mount the Pico on another wall with the wall bracket, and it will look almost exactly like a dimmer switch, but it will actually be sending a signal from the Pico to the dimmer on the other wall to control the lights. And you can purchase Lutron Caséta in multiple colors to match your decor. In most of the rooms in my house, I use Light Almond, but in my TV room I use white, and you can also purchase black or ivory.
Click here to get a Lutron two-wall dimmer and Smart Bridge starter kit on Amazon ($159.80)
Click here to get a Lutron wall dimmer, pico remote and Smart Bridge starter kit on Amazon ($99.95)
I have this setup with a bridge and a lamp dimmer on the other side of my house to extend the range. But it seems the lamp dimmer is not actually adding to the overall signal pattern combining the footprints of the two devices, but rather, *replacing* the bridges signal pattern with it’s own. Because now when I try to access my lights on the same side of the house (using home control buttons on a harmony remote) as the bridge, the lights won’t respond. But if I walk over to the other side of my house, closer to the range extender, they DO respond to commands.
That is clearly telling me the only device receiving my commands is the range extender and implies the bridge is no longer receiving and transmitting signals.
Is that your experience? To repeat, does the range extender (lamp dimmer) actually add to the bridge’s signal pattern, or is it simply *replacing* it with it’s own 30 foot radius/circle pattern?
I’m not sure if you call it an “extender” or a “replacement.” There is a FAQ on the Lutron website that you can access on this page, which includes a diagram, if you expand the question “Is there any way to extend the wireless range of the Smart Bridge?”:
https://www.casetawireless.com/faqs
But whatever you call it, I can control lights in any part of my house thanks to the lamp dimmer. I can use my iPhone or my Apple Watch in the front upstairs or the back downstairs and everything works the same way. So if you are finding that a Harmony Remote isn’t working in all parts of your house, that’s not the experience I am seeing. Do you happen to have an extra Lutron remote that you can try instead of the Harmony Remote to see if that gives you a different result? If so, then maybe the Harmony is the cause of the issue.
I hope this helps!
-Jeff
Thanks. Nice write up. I’m in the process of setting up my hone with Lutron Caseta switches. A couple of comments:
1. Lutron now supports a dimmer as well as the Lutron Caseta Repeater (PD-REP-WH) for extending the range. So, one can effectively have two range extenders. The repeater has even greater range than the dimmer. See the aforementioned Lutron FAQ for more details.
2. If you want to change the dimmer that’s acting as a range extender, you had suggested removing all dimmers first and then the first one that is re-added will act as a range extender. I haven’t tested this yet, but wouldn’t it be easier just to physically move the dimmer that’s acting as a range extender to the room where it is needed, and then, in the Lutron app, just rename the dimmer and change the room where it is assigned. Then move the other dimmer that may have been in that room.