Lutron Announces More Third-Party Products Compatible With Connected Home Strategy
DENVER -- Lutron advanced its diplomatic role in the Internet of Things with product and software announcements at CEDIA Expo last week. At a news conference Friday, CEO Michael Pessina outlined Lutron’s trajectory in the home control market -- from the company’s first CEDIA Expo 24 years ago, where it displayed on a tabletop a collection of mostly analog products tied together with wires -- to a software-driven company whose app was featured at the Apple Watch launch in Cupertino, California, three days earlier.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
Pessina described being able to control lighting, shades and temperature from “your wrist” through a Lutron Caseta app available for Android and iOS devices. He gave scenarios that exist today with home control interfaces now being extended to a watch, including “snuggling up for a movie” and being able to adjust lights and shades to favorite levels. Users can also get alerts on their watches about settings, giving them the option to adjust them, he said.
Within the quarter-century, Lutron transitioned from a company protective of its proprietary technology to one that is reaching out to others in the connected world. While the industry has talked about the connected home for quite a while, “We believe it’s really here,” Pessina said, pointing to the Internet, smartphones and a foundation laid by the CEDIA channel as drivers. On Friday, Lutron reached out further to third parties in the connected space with the Caseta app’s launch.
Lutron also announced half a dozen products compatible with its ClearConnect technology and controllable via a smartphone app available from the iTunes and Google Play stores. Alarm.com has a smartphone app that controls Lutron Caseta wireless dimmers and its Serena electronic shades. By integrating with the Alarm.com apps, Lutron products can be included as part of a response to a security event, Lutron said. If an alarm is tripped, shades could go up and lights turn on to draw attention to the residence, the company said.
GE’s ’telligent wireless dimming LED, due in early 2015, will be embedded with ClearConnect technology that’s controllable by a Lutron Pico remote control, Pessina said. GE positions the wireless bulb for retrofit use as the bulb “screws into the socket just like a standard bulb,” the company said. A Pico remote can control up to 10 GE LEDs, with dimming capability built into the bulbs rather than an external dimmer, it said.
Honeywell’s Wi-Fi thermostats are compatible with ClearConnect, Lutron said. Using the Lutron app, consumers can raise the temperature a few degrees before the user arrives home, adjust to a more comfortable level while he or she watches TV, and control the temperature over the Internet while away from home, it said.
Lutron also announced compatible control devices and systems for ClearConnect. The iPort LaunchPort adds the functionality of a Pico remote control to a sleeve that attaches to the LaunchPort iPad. The iPort buttons function independently from the iPad, while performing on/off, fade up/down and favorite setting functions for Caseta devices, the company said. Lutron also announced compatibility with RTI’s wired and wireless control products and that it’s part of the Savant Certified Partner Program.
Citing the competing platforms on the market from Apple, Amazon, Lowe’s, Staples and others, Pessina said all of Lutron’s lighting systems are compatible with ClearConnect because they all can connect to the Internet. Lutron’s mainstream Caseta system gives consumers 50 points of control “out of the box with some integration capability,” Pessina said. Adding the Smart Bridge Pro allows Caseta owners to connect to the Internet, and once connected, “the opportunities are there,” he said. “You don’t need to be on the same radio platform,” he said.
Pessina touted ClearConnect’s two-way communication as a differentiator in the connected world that gives feedback to users from a command. “You press a button on the control here, the light turns on out of the room, or out of your home, and you get feedback on the control that tells you that what you intended to have happened actually happened,” he said.