Considering adding a new "linked button" device type

One of the things I do quite often with my Lutron setup is use a Lutron keypad button to control non-Lutron devices. This requires three Indigo triggers per controlled device: (1) toggle the power to the device on each keypad button press, (2) set the keypad LED on when the device turns on, and (3) turn the keypad LED off when the device turns off. At least, I haven't found any way to do it with less, allowing for control of the device by other means.

So I'm considering adding a custom device type to the Lutron plugin that will accomplish all that automatically. You'll specify the keypad button and the Indigo dimmer or switch device to be controlled. Then it'll just work.

How are other people doing this now? Would this be useful?

I'm also considering whether the inverse is useful. For instance, a Lutron device (in my case, a switch for a ceiling fan) being controlled by Insteon RemoteLincs. I actually prefer the Insteon RemoteLincs to the Lutron Picos. The Picos have bright/dim buttons, but at best have four usable buttons. With the RemoteLincs I have 8 buttons to play with. The Picos are cheaper, though.

This sounds useful to me, although I've not used a keypad button to exclusively control a non-lutron device yet. Right now I'm just piggybacking Indigo triggers on top of existing lighting scenes (such as shutting off Sonos and Harmony Hub when I hit the "Exit" keypad button which triggers my "All Off" lighting scene).

It sounds useful to me too, although so far I have also tended to piggyback non-lutron devices onto existing scenes... having this as easy possibility may encourage me to play a little more with this though.


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I've got this working in the latest build of the plugin. I'll release another beta today.

Just saw this. This would be an extremely useful feature. I have this working today with some RA2 "virtual" dimmers and a whole bunch of triggers. It's basically unmanageable.

I just installed beta 10 (After multiple backups ).

I had an issue with a virtual device I use to control my Sonos. I didn't have toggle enabled on that virtual device. After enabling toggle, this is working as expected with my keypad.

This is a great addition. Thank you.

Thanks. Be aware I'm probably going to rework it before release so it doesn't use those dummy devices. I first thought I needed them for showing the status of the link, but it turns out that was unnecessary.

I should have said my Indigo Virtual device.

I have removed my RA2 virtual devices and things are fine.

Just to say I also use Insteon RemoteLincs and control Lutron and other non-Insteon devices with them. I have a few Pico's and agree there is a place for both of them.

I have house members that don't like automation, so I have been using a lot of the single paddle RemoteLincs in the tabletop stands. They look "just like" wall light switches and the single function avoids the problem of the button not being engraved to identify what it does.

One thing that I do is that I "overload" the RemoteLincs with an off "double-tap" ("Instant off" in Insteon lingo) doing something slightly different. For some RemoteLincs, I have double-tap acting as a scene trigger to turn off all the lights in a room instead of the single light that is normally controlled or setting a favorite dimming level for myself.

So for other users in the house, they don't even know this extra mode exists. Simple for them, extra "favorite" functions for me.

Two questions/ideas:

Anything along the lines of your special virtual device that would make creating and managing this easier would help. I have been thinking of expanding this and using a "double-tap" to mean "disable timed auto shutoff". So every switch or dimmer where the load is being controlled by an automatic trigger (such as a door/window sensor or a motion detector), I can temporarily disable the timer trigger with a double tap.

If not clear - here is a use case. I have my garage lights activated by Insteon motion sensor since we have a second fridge in the garage and often go in and out of the garage many times during prep or cooking. However, sometimes I need to do something in the garage that takes a long time and it is annoying when the light goes out to either wave my arms triggering the motion detector or reach for my iPhone and use Indigo Touch to turn the light back on. With the enhancement, when I am entering the garage for this type of use, I would just double-tap the wall switch first and that overrides the timeouts temporarily for me.

Is it possible to overload Pico buttons with double-taps to achieve the same multiplexing of additional functions?

Just to be clear, this modification is only for Lutron keypad type devices controlling non-Lutron devices. This doesn't do anything for non-Lutron devices controlling Lutron loads, like you're doing with your RemoteLincs.

Unfortunately, Lutron doesn't have the concept of double-clicking buttons, so that's not something that can be done in the plugin as designed. It might be possible to do something by timing the intervals between presses. I'd have to look into that. Please open an issue on it at https://github.com/FlyingDiver/Indigo-radiora2/issues.

Unfortunately, Lutron doesn't have the concept of double-clicking buttons, so that's not something that can be done in the plugin as designed. It might be possible to do something by timing the intervals between presses. I'd have to look into that. Please open an issue on it at https://github.com/FlyingDiver/Indigo-radiora2/issues.

I’ve been able to achieve double and triple click functionality with a single trigger, a variable, and some action groups. I’m traveling today but can post some screen shots when I get back. Basically the trigger increments the variable by one, there is a bit of python code that executes an action group based on the value of the variable, and then there is another action (all in the same trigger) that sets the variable back to zero after a period of time (I do like 5 seconds)

I wish RR2 supported double click like Homeworks does!


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