Lutron RadioRA 2 (and Caseta) plugin

I'm very pleased to announce that a member of the community (Ramias) has invested substantial effort to add IP support to the plugin.

His work will be folded into the next general release, which will be out within the next 1-3 weeks, depending on integration testing.

And many thanks again to all past contributors.

Cheers,
-Jim

To clarify: I took the work Sbe08 started (He was able to get me access to his version via another community member since Sbe08 was out) and integrated it with Rat Ranch's latest version. Though what I did is IP only; not dual-stack.

Excited to watch this space as the work continues.

So far I'm very impressed with Indigo -- and its community.

Folks: sorry about any confusion created. It looks like we could still use a volunteer who has time to work on integrating serial and IP support into the same plugin. But thanks again to Ramias for making some good progress on this front.

-Jim

I wanted to come on here and let people know that a friend of mine was able to minimally modify this plugin and have it work for controlling the Lutron SmartBridge Pro 2. It should also work with the regular SmartBridge 1 and 2 as well, but I haven't been able to test that. Obviously it doesn't control as many different devices as the RA2 does, but the dimmers that I have it paired with operate extremely quickly! The Pico remotes are extremely responsive too.

The first step was to enable Telnet communication on the SmartBridge. This was done through the advanced settings in the Lutron iOS app. After that, I set my IP address on the SmartBridge to be static. Once I had done that, I exported a list of Integration IDs, and headed to Indigo with this plugin.

The only setup required was to use a socket connection to the SmartBridge, connecting on port 23. After I knew the IP address and port that I was attempting to contact, the only thing left was to get it to accept authentication. A few lines of code was all it took to get that working.

Code: Select all

self.conn = self.openSerial(u"Lutron SmartBridge", serialUrl, 9600, stopbits=1, timeout=2, writeTimeout=1)
      if self.conn is None:
         indigo.server.log(u"Failed to open serial port")
         return

      self.debugLog(u"Server says: " + self.conn.read(len('login: ')))
      self.conn.write("lutron\r\n")
      self.debugLog(u"Server says: " + self.conn.read(len('password: ')))
      self.conn.write("integration\r\n")
      self.debugLog(u"Server says: " + self.conn.read(len('GNET> ')))
      self.portEnabled = True


These are the default user credentials for the SmartBridge, and as far as I'm aware, are unable to be modified by the end user.

After we had authenticated, the only other quirk we had was to get it to accept commands. It seems that the SmartBridge, as posted to RA2, expects an \n after sending a command. An easy fix as such was all that was required.

Code: Select all

   def _sendSerialCommand(self, cmd):
      self.debugLog(u"Sending serial command: " + cmd)
      self.conn.write(cmd + "\n")

This setup works GREAT. I really don't have any complaints with how well it works - especially with a system that it was not originally intended to be used with this plugin!

That being said, I was curious about one thing, and had a hopeful feature request. When I had originally used telnet to connect to my device, I discovered through your blog the ability to send fade durations to the lights, in addition to their brightness level. Is that something that could be easily added do you think? I'd much rather have the controller be handling the fade than Indigo incrementally decreasing a fade value over time. The main reason being that if a user interrupts it at the switch, Indigo would just keep going, and the switch command would be ignored, whereas sending the fade instructions to the controller first, the fade would be smoother when it did happen, and if interrupted, would stay interrupted.

Thanks again for all of your amazing work. I can't tell you how big of a happy dance I did when I got this plugin working with my system. Incredible stuff!

Thanks for the great contribution mathys! This will be in the next plugin update.

Cheers,
-Jim

Does this mean the dream of interfacing with the Main Repeater via IP may be coming true?

Not tested yet but I think this approach should also work for RA 2 systems.

-Jim

After a little bit of tinkering, I think that we finally have a plugin that supports both IP and serial.

Is there anyone who is willing to help test the code? I'll be sending my changes to RatRanch, but wanted to see if there are any daring souls who would like to help me test it for the following cases:

1) Serial
2) IP - RadioRA 2
3) IP - Caseta

This incorporates all of Jim's latest, published changes. I did my best to add Mathys's information for Caseta but I have no idea if it works.

Many thanks to Jim for the awesome plugin, Ramias who integrated Jim's latest published plugin, Mathys for the Caseta Smartbridge information, and most of all, Sb08, who did the heavy work of modifying the Elk plugin for the socket communications.

I've tested with my own system, albeit limited selection of devices, for case #2, but would like to have more people try it out as well so that Jim gets the least amount of bugs to work with.

There is a quirk with the IP communications that you all need to know about, and it stems from the port of the Elk plugin that Sb08 had done to make Jim's code work with sockets.

You should leave the "Auto-create Lutron folder and gateway device?" checkbox marked. The plugin will create a Lutron folder and a new device called "Lutron Gateway". You will need both of these to make the plugin work. You don't need to put anything in the Lutron folder though. I believe that these are all vestiges of the Elk plugin, and I don't have any desire to recode something that already works.

Although I wanted to stick with Mathys's minor mods, I already know that Sb08's mods work, and there are some minor discrepancies between how some keypad buttons are handled that I didn't want to mess with.

PM me for the plugin. I'll limit the number of people that get this until Jim can help test and merge with his code base.

Hi all,

Vic13 did a great job with integrating Sb08's IP support and serial connectivity in a unified plugin. Caseta compatibility is also included. This will let us continue to add new features to a single codebase going forward.

I removed the Elk dependencies and streamlined the configuration dialog to simplify setup.

We are still looking for a few people to test IP and Caseta before putting this version out as a general release.

Cheers,
-Jim

I'll try it this weekend if I can.

Vic13 sent me his original modded version but I never got around to trying it before he mentioned it was going to be fixed up a bit more.

Does this basically retain all of original devices (i.e. I can load it up, switch interfaces and be running)?

JS

Yes, you can update your existing plugin and all devices will be preserved.

Known bug: if you switch from serial to ethernet (or vice versa), you will need to reload the plugin before the change takes effect.

5 minutes in and it looks awesome. Basically just updated the plugin, configured to IP and away it goes. seems to work just as well as the serial version. Great stuff.

I notice it's a bit more verbose in its logging than the last one. Is there an option I missed somewhere? Not a big deal.

5 minutes in and it looks awesome. Basically just updated the plugin, configured to IP and away it goes. seems to work just as well as the serial version. Great stuff.

I notice it's a bit more verbose in its logging than the last one. Is there an option I missed somewhere? Not a big deal.

In the last general release (1.2.6), I added logging of known device events. If you're getting more than that, make sure debug logging is turned off: Plugins -> Lutron RadioRA 2 / Caseta -> Toggle Debugging.

-Jim

Earlier in this thread it was mentioned that it "should" work with the non Pro version of the Smart Bridge for Caseta control. Can anyone confirm this? I'd like to buy one to try some of the Caseta switches with this plugin but the non Pro version is the only one that is carried in stores in my area.
Thanks.

Earlier in this thread it was mentioned that it "should" work with the non Pro version of the Smart Bridge for Caseta control. Can anyone confirm this? I'd like to buy one to try some of the Caseta switches with this plugin but the non Pro version is the only one that is carried in stores in my area.
Thanks.

I can't confirm, but would doubt it. The Smart Bridge Pro enables an additional option in the app to enable telnet support. Which, I'd imagine is required. That said, I know one of the guys in the MicasaVerde Forums created a plugin for the Vera which could control the standard Smart Bridge. So, it is certainly possible to do. Just don't know that the version here would allow for it.

Earlier in this thread it was mentioned that it "should" work with the non Pro version of the Smart Bridge for Caseta control. Can anyone confirm this? I'd like to buy one to try some of the Caseta switches with this plugin but the non Pro version is the only one that is carried in stores in my area.
Thanks.

I can't confirm, but would doubt it. The Smart Bridge Pro enables an additional option in the app to enable telnet support. Which, I'd imagine is required. That said, I know one of the guys in the MicasaVerde Forums created a plugin for the Vera which could control the standard Smart Bridge. So, it is certainly possible to do. Just don't know that the version here would allow for it.

The RadioRA 2 plugin connects via telnet (port 23), so I would tend to agree with adamfox.

-Jim

I've been playing around with the Alexa plugin and it's nothing short of amazing!! It lets you voice control devices that are defined in Indigo via an Amazon Echo, Echo Dot or Fire TV. The Alexa plugin works seamlessly with the RadioRA 2 / Caseta plugin.

Please see this post for links and more details.

Cheers,
-Jim