Lutron Caseta and Diva Review

This is episode number 230 of The Homeowner Show. Well, whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We're so glad you could join us for another live episode here in The Homeowner Show studios. Howdy, Kev.

Hey there, partner buckaroo. Oh my goodness, it— I'm— look, I'll tell you this, I'm tired.

Uh-huh.

Today has been a— I, I, you know, whenever you have a project you want to do and it just takes exponentially longer than you think it will take.

Yes, that's every project. Every project and every single project.

And so today I, I, you know, went to church this morning. We're recording this on a Sunday, y'all. Went to church this morning, came home— well, went to eat, came home, and like there were a couple things around the house that I've been wanting to do that I'm like, I'm gonna do this. So yesterday I went to Lowe's and bought the parts that I needed, and today I was gonna install them.

Right.

So one of them was a, um, a light outside of our camper. So our camper has a cover, like a big metal cover.

Yep.

And my mother-in-law's staying in that while our house is being built, which, by the way, it's completely sheetrocked now.

Nice.

Yeah. So it, it looks like a house on the inside, which is really cool. But, like, so I think I've told you before that this house is— it's really well set up for, like, there's water everywhere. There's electricity everywhere. Like, they've, they've done a really, really good job. There's only a few things where, like, there's only one place that I wish they would've put electricity that they didn't. And I'm— it's not gonna be that difficult to do, so I'm going to at some point. But outside of the camper, there are 2 light fixtures.

Okay.

One of them is like a spotlight, double spotlight, right?

Like a motion light?

Yeah, but it's not on a motion, it's just a spotlight.

Right.

And then there's a 4-foot fluorescent bulb ballast style light. fixture. And right there, there is a— on, on the pole, there's a light switch and, uh, and like a 120 plug. So all on one, one unit there, right? One receptacle. So the problem is they didn't work. Well, you look up there and it's like, well, there's no bulbs in there, so we've got to put bulbs in it. Put bulbs in it, still Still doesn't work. So I pull out—

You realize now why there weren't bulbs in it.

Right.

Okay.

But I, but, but I'm thinking, okay, what's the problem? Right? Like, do we have power? So I got the multimeter out, checked. We got power. Although we were only getting power to the receptacle. Anyway, long story short, I replaced the whole fixture. I took the spotlight out and I replaced the fixture with the, with a new LED damp-rated Um, fixture, but it took a lot longer than I anticipated. Like, I ran new wiring and everything from, from the receptacle to the, to the actual— because that wiring, it really looked like someone had taken like a, like an extension cord and like just wired it up there. Which is possible. Possible. Um, but nothing else is really done that janky, so I don't know. Anyway, I think it was just a really old My house is. Yeah. Mine isn't

though. So anyway, but, but it took a while. And, and part of the reason it took a while is because, so I bought a new receptacle and, and I got a GFCI receptacle.

Uh-huh.

And it's also got a, you know, the light switch on it. But I had to call my brother-in-law because I was like, how am I gonna wire this thing up? Because it was, it was odd. And this was crazy. So out of the back of the receptacle, there's 2 black wires. I'm What am I supposed to do with these? Yeah, well, one of them he told me to, to route to the line side, which was the one going to the fixture. And the other one he told me to, um, loop back into the line side. Like, you know how some of those receptacles you, you can just poke the, the wire in and it grabs it? Yeah,

it was one of those. He was like, yeah, just loop it back in there.

Is that how it's supposed to go, or—

That's how it's supposed to go.

Why didn't they just do that?

I have no— well, I think that there's a way you can wire it up to where it may need both of those, but it didn't.

Okay.

And so I would have never thought— you and I have talked about this before where it's like, look, I'm— there's one thing I don't really work on, and that's electricity, right? Because—

Me either. I don't touch it.

Like, unless—

I mean, like, there's some things I can do, but like, for the most part, I don't want to touch it.

I don't want to touch it most of the time either, but this is just replacing a fixture. Not that big of a deal. I already had the mount up there and everything, so it was super easy. Um, but got it installed, worked great. Boom.

Yeah.

Uh, but it took like— I mean, the whole thing took like an hour and a half to replace, which is more than I wanted to take. But then I'd also— so in my, my man cave shed area, which is double function, like I use it as a man cave, but it also has like Christmas stuff, and like, it's, it's storage. The lighting isn't very good. They had 2 old-school ballast-style fixtures, the 4-foot bulb kind. One of them, like, you had to, like, pet it to make it work.

Had to jimmy the switch a few times.

Exactly.

Warm it up.

Exactly. And I got tired of that. So I was like, well, this thing is— the ballast is bad, and I gotta replace it. The other one sounded like you turn it on, it sounded like it was working too hard. Like, it was like, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

And I'm like, this isn't gonna work. So I was like, I'm gonna replace these. So when I was at Lowe's, I was like, I don't know, there's so many options whenever you're looking at lights.

Yeah.

Way too many options. Like, give me 2 options. I don't want to think about it that hard. But I started looking at it, I was like, I need more light in here. LED is going to be great. But I'm sitting there thinking I'm kinda using it as a man cave. Right?

Yeah.

So I would like, like to dim the lights.

Okay.

Rather than just, like, turn them all the way off. And I was like, okay. What am I gonna do? Well, come to find out, a lot of these, like, light fixtures, since they're LED, they're dimmable.

Oh, that's cool.

So I, I came home and I go, just go with me on this, babe. And she was like, why? And I'm like, just trust me. I think I'm making the right choice here. So instead of a 4-foot bulb, I got 2 8-foot bulbs.

Okay. They—

the building's only, I think it's like 11 feet, like depth-wise, right? So the thing, like, they take up the entire width of the building, um, and I, and I get it in there and it wasn't— it was super easy to install, super easy. So I got both of them put up Um, and, uh, then I— it was wired for an outdoor light as well. It's dark, man. It's so dark. It's so dark at my place.

Yeah.

Whenever— at night. At night. Oh my gosh, it's so dark. So I was like, I, I— so I bought an outdoor light that actually is pretty cool. It comes on at dusk and goes off at daylight, right? Means you can just leave the light on if you want to. So I bought one of those. I installed that, and I'm feeling really good about, about myself. And so I'm thinking, okay, all I gotta do is install these dimmer switches for these, these 2 lights, and, and I'll be good. So, um, I bought a, a name brand that said it should work, and as soon as I started dimming it, like, the lights just started flickering.

Yeah.

Like blinking. And, and, and so, you know, some of these switches tell you that they're, they're good for LED and some aren't, right? Well, these LEDs are tricky. Yes. And so apparently these are not good for that, so I'm gonna have to get something else. I, I think that they should, they should dim. I mean, it's, it says on the box, I mean, dimmable down to like 10%, which is pretty good.

Talking about the lights or the switches?

The light says that.

Okay.

The switch, I mean, it's a dimmer switch, so yeah. And it's a name brand. I'm not going to say what name brand it is because I just don't want to But, um, uh, but anyway, I, uh, that's the only thing I didn't get done.

Was the dimmer switches?

Yeah. But I installed a lot of lighting today, and I turned those things on. And not only that, I mean, they're 8-foot long. It's only one strip.

It's gotta put out a lot of light.

It puts out a ton of light. Not only, but it also has like, it has 3 light settings. So you can do warm, warm white, cool white, or daylight.

Is it like a remote control?

No, it's like a little toggle.

A little toggle. Okay.

So there's no remote control or anything. But dude, you'll have to see it next time you're over there. I mean, there's so much light in there now. It's beautiful. Except if I wanna, like, you know, turn down, watch a movie or something like that, I gotta get a dimmer switch. So But good news.

We can just turn them off and get a table lamp.

Why are you being logical, Craig? I'm just saying. Why are you trying to be logical? And we probably have one of those.

But anyway.

In there.

The good news— Probably in the store.

There's— it's— I guarantee you it is. I guarantee you there's one in there.

Just string the Christmas lights. They're already there. That's true.

Again, stop with the logic. But the good news is We're going to talk about something today, uh, that, uh, is really cool.

Yeah.

And that is Lutron.

Yeah.

Light switch stuff.

Which we both have in our houses now.

We, we do. And, and part of it is because they send us a ton of stuff.

Yep.

To, to try out. And I, I'll tell you, like, it's, it's frustrating to me how long it's taken for me to install this stuff because you know how it is. It's like, oh, I got to do this, I got to do that, I got so many things to do. Installing a light switch, it's going to take me way longer than it should because I'm not an electrician, right? Um, dude, it was so easy.

I had the same experience.

I mean, it was so easy. I, I've— I mean, literally the hardest thing was finding which, uh, breaker I needed to flip off. Yeah, that was the hardest thing.

I, I will take— for me, the hardest part was deciding where to put the hub.

Oh, okay.

I just— because like, you know, it's, it's not ugly.

No.

But it's just like, you know, I don't want it out and about. Sure. But, but it works a lot better if you can just hardwire it.

Yes. Yeah, no, it absolutely does. And so, so first of all, I'll talk about the, uh, the install itself. So I— so they gave us a lot of different products. They basically gave us, uh, the, the 3 that I'm going to talk about today. They gave us the original Caseta, which is, is a like the brand, Lutron Caseta.

Yeah.

So they gave us a, a light switch, a fan switch, and a Pico. And then they also sent us their new Diva switch. Okay, so I'm gonna kind of talk about those for a minute. So the original, uh, light switch is just a traditional, um, it's a button. You turn on the top button and it turns all the lights on.

Okay.

Turn the bottom one off and press that, and they kind of dim down and go off.

Yeah.

Which is kind of cool. My wife is like, is this supposed to do that? And I was like, oh yeah, isn't it awesome?

She doesn't get it.

No, she doesn't get it. So then you can just, you know, you can dim it up and down, no big deal. It's, it's really simple. You just hold the bottom button to dim it.

Yeah.

Top button to to get it brighter. Um, and the control is really good. Like, it does a really good job of like controlling the— and on— again, you mentioned it, LED dimming is, is tricky.

Yeah, no, we use LEDs with ours.

Yeah, we do too. And, and it is tricky. And we've noticed that the ones we had, it worked okay, but this one is a smoother product. Like, it's better. It's a, it's a better experience, I should say.

Yeah. And we even, we even use, uh, LED halogen replacements.

Oh, okay. Yeah.

Which, I mean, like, that's, that's a whole different—

It is.

System, right?

Um, but I mean, it works great. Sure. Yeah. So, uh, so that's the just the original Caseta light switch.

Yeah.

And then, um, then they've got their Diva switch. So the Diva switch is a brand new—

That's the one you just got.

We just got it in. Like, they, they sent it to us like maybe a month ago. Um, and they— so they just came out with this product, and the thing that's really cool about it is it is a traditional toggle, uh, light switch, right? Which their other one isn't. It's got buttons on it, right? This is just a traditional toggle, and on the side it's got a— it's got a bar that you can move up and down.

Okay.

Which is like a lot of other ones, only it works with their smart hub.

Okay.

Which we'll get to in a minute. And also the other thing that's really cool about it is it's got a real— like, it's back— like, that bar is backlit.

Oh yeah.

So you can see how much—

where it's at—

it's lit even, or how— yeah, where it's at even if you're not standing right next to it.

Yeah.

Um, but the nice thing about it at night, right? Exactly. The, the other thing is— but it's very subtle. Like, it's not like, like a nightlight.

It's not like, like Like if you were sitting across from the room from it, it wouldn't like catch your eye.

No.

But like—

But if you're looking for it, it's there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's, it's cool how like they attenuated that so, so well.

I agree. Yeah, and you know, some of them, some of the— it's just like a slider. It's got like the light, like the, the orange light on it.

It's not that. Yeah.

It's just much more pleasing than that. Um, so when I, when I installed that one, the other thing I really liked about it was when you turn it off and then turn it back on, I mean, it's got the slider, so it just goes back on to where it was, right? Which the, the original ones don't. You can set it, but if you're just pressing the on and off button, yeah, it doesn't do that. It goes either full on or full off.

So let me ask you this. It's a toggle switch.

Yeah.

And it works with the hub.

Yes.

So do you have— does the switch have to be in the on position in order for the light to come on?

Uh, no.

So you— okay, so you can turn it on and off remotely?

Correct. Without having to flip this actual switch?

Yes. Okay.

Yeah.

So if— so if the light was in the off position and you told it remotely to turn it on, and then you went over to the switch and you flipped it up, would it turn the light off?

No. No, it would stay on at that point.

Interesting.

You would have to— you'd have to up and then down.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's done well. I mean, because otherwise it would get confusing. That would be—

yeah, that's why I was asking, because that would be confusing to me.

Right. And it's not. They, they did not make it confusing. Um, the other thing that's kind of cool about it— so, so then you got what they call the Pico. So a Pico is— and I didn't know what it was. Um, I'd heard about it, but I didn't know. It's just a little remote And it looks exactly like the original Caseta Switch. I mean, like, exactly alike.

I think we actually have like a wall mount.

We do.

Over here for that.

Which I want to get to as well because— so it's just a remote. You can carry it around with you wherever.

Ours stays on our coffee table.

Okay. Yeah. And you can actually attach it to multiple different switches. Mm-hmm. But So I just have it used in my living room, but here's what's really cool. So my living room only has one light switch in it, and it's over by the front door.

Okay.

Our living room is also connected to our back door. And so if you come in our back door and the light's off, you can't turn it on without walking all the way through the dark room to the front and turning it on.

Got it.

Um, now We just installed Smart Switch so I can just do it on my phone, and that's part of what Smart Hub does. Come to that in a minute. But now with the Pico, just put it over by the back door if you want, and that way you've got almost like a 3-way switch anywhere you need it.

Yeah.

But they got smart and they realized, well, some people just need a 3-way switch but they don't want to wire another wall switch on the other side of the room, right? That's why they bought— they put the wall plate. So you can literally buy a wall plate that the Pico fits in, and you put a cover on it, and it looks just exactly—

Yeah, it looks just like a switch.

Just like a switch. Yeah, it looks like the other switch that's in, in your room or whatever. That's super cool. Yeah. Um, so all of a sudden you got a wireless 3-way, basically. So, um, so I installed that, and then I was going to, uh, well, next I went ahead and I installed the Smart Hub because I wanted to test out. Now, you do not have to have the Smart Hub for this to work, right? You can buy those products, and if you want really good light switches that have a superior, like, like dimming control—

Uh-huh.

And I mean that on purpose. Like, I just told you that I bought a dimmer switch that didn't work.

Right.

Right, these are really, really good. They work with almost any LEDs.

Pretty much any kind of light.

Pretty much any kind of—

Any kind of dimming ability, yeah.

Exactly. And not LEDs are—

No, yeah, that's true. Not all, you have to get a dimmable LED.

Right.

You can't blame it on the switch if you're dumb and buy the wrong light bulb.

Yeah, you can't, yeah, exactly. And it'll say right there on the box.

Yeah.

Right, so get what you need. But I went ahead and installed the, the Smart Hub, and I will tell you, so it works Wi-Fi or it works hardwired through Ethernet.

Mhmm.

Well, I just so happen to have been really smart whenever I wired my internet into my house and put it basically in my— that new built-in that I did for my TV and my media center. And I've got, I've got an Ethernet hub. there. I had an extra port, plugged it right into that, and it came on. And, and it— the way my media center is done, it's all behind cabinets, right? And but it's got mesh on the front so you can still see things and you can get behind it if you need to, uh, with like IR for like remotes and stuff. So I was able to plug it in. It's completely hidden, but it

is kind of visually appealing. Like, it's, it's a white box.

It's a cool little box.

But it's got like a little, a light ring around it that kind of I don't know. It's kinda cool.

Reminds me of Knight Rider.

It does.

It does.

If you— yeah. It doesn't do that. But it is—

It does when you first turn it on.

Yeah.

It does, actually.

You're right about that now that you say that. But anyway, what the Smart Hub does is it allows you to connect everything together. Like, and so you download the app, and you can schedule things. you can set all kinds of like scenes and everything.

Yeah, the hub is there for the automation and the connectivity through the app. The switches work with or without the hub.

Exactly. So you don't, that's why I'm saying you don't have to have the hub, but if you want like some automation control and to be able to use your phone to turn things on and off.

Which is amazing.

It really, really is. Like I do it sometimes just because I can. Right? I literally, the first day I installed it.

Watch this. Watch this.

I, I installed it and I sat down to watch a movie, uh, with my wife that night and I was like, hey, check this out. I got on my phone and I turned the light down.

She was completely unimpressed.

She goes, she goes, wow, babe. And I was like, I know. I don't think she saw it the way I did, but she does like the, the abilities that it has. Yeah. So Um, they actually just came out with another new product, and they just released this like, uh, what is today? Uh, this is like middle of January. They came out with it January 3rd, which was another device called a Claro. C-L-A-R-O. So the Claro device adds a 3-way function to the Diva, uh, switch.

Okay.

But it's hardwired.

Right.

So right now, if you were to put 2 Divas in, even if they're like— you would already have to have the 3-way already installed, all that kind of stuff. Um, but it doesn't function as a 3-way just putting 2 Divas there, right? It's just not set up that way. So if you have 3-way already installed in your house and you decide, oh, I'm gonna put 2 Divas in there and be able to control it 3-way, it won't. Because again, it is smart, and on is on and off is off.

Right.

So you can't flip it like a 3-way would flip.

Right.

Does that make sense?

No, no, it makes total sense.

Okay, because—

But like, I've run into that in my house where it's like, well, I'd like to put in these switches, but this is a 3-way and they didn't make a 3-way.

Correct.

And so now they have that.

Now the Claro is the 3-way that attaches to the, to the Diva. So you have to buy a Diva and then you buy a Claro and now you've got a 3-way system.

Okay.

But the cool thing is, so there is a device limit on the hub. Honestly, I don't know what it is. I think it's like maybe 10. It's, it's a decent amount you gotta have before you have to put in another one.

So after that you can just— but you can just buy another hub.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And it'll— they work together, but I think it's a device limit of 10. I may be wrong. Lutron, I'm sorry, don't hate me.

I'll look it up while you're talking.

Okay. Um, but if you install the Diva and the Claro, it only counts one device. on your hub.

Oh, okay.

So that's one of the cool things about the Claro is it doesn't actually add to your device limit, um, which is really, really nice. So that's a really cool feature that they've just come out. And whenever it comes to these smart switches, like, there are limitations to what they will do, and Lutron's doing a really, really cool job of like eliminating those issues.

So according to this, it supports 75 devices.

Well, I wasn't even close then.

So—

75?

That's what it says.

That's amazing. Well, I was very, very wrong.

Now that, that also includes Pico remotes.

Okay, well, but that makes sense though because the Pico is its own thing.

Yeah.

And it does, but it— because it doesn't function like— because you can add the Pico to multiple locations.

Yeah.

As well.

So there's, there's a Smart Bridge, but then there's a Smart Bridge Pro. Uh, let's see, what, what does this do? Okay, so you have to— okay, so this is, this is the thing that they've, they've asked us about before. So that's the only way to have the wireless shades.

Oh yeah.

Is to have the Pro.

Okay, we actually, uh, considered getting some of the shades, we just haven't done it yet.

Yeah, so interesting. They need to send us some shades and then we'll test it out. And the Smart Bridge Pro.

There you go. We will.

So we can test drive that.

Yes, yes. You know who you are, send it over. Um, but so then there was another one that I told you about, the fan.

Yeah, the fan switch.

I did not install that one.

Why come?

Well, um, frankly, it's because I don't know why I would use it.

Uh-huh.

And, and I, I, you know, We're gonna be honest with you guys whenever we review stuff. We're not just gonna— like, Lutron sent us this stuff, we're not just gonna say great things about it because they sent it to us.

Sure.

We're gonna give you honest reviews. And my honest review of this fan switch is, what is— why?

Because is it, is it essentially just an on/off switch for the fan?

It is.

Yeah, that's— I think I remember seeing that.

Yeah. And so, but now again, you can use it in an automation, you can turn it on and off from your bed and with your phone, all that kind of stuff. Like, The other night it got colder than I thought it was going to be, and I had the fan on medium, and I wanted it on low, and I had to get up, and then I was colder. And, you know, it was like, if I had it on my phone, I probably could have just, you know, swiped up and—

Yeah.

Good, right? So there's reasons for it, but here's the problem. Most fans I know have light kits attached to them. So it's a fan and a light. Well, in my house, Everywhere that's the case, I, I have a switch that controls the fan and a switch that controls the light.

Yeah.

And this was— and I've never seen one like this. It's actually got 4 different, like, toggles on a knob. Like, it's got it off.

Okay.

High, medium, low.

Right.

And actually, now that I say that, there's another one. There's a, like, a really low. I don't even know how it does it, but there's, there's 5 functions on this knob. And then there's a toggle on the bottom that toggles to the left and the right. If you toggle to the left, it does like a low setting on the light fixture. And if you toggle it to the right, it's the regular bright setting.

Okay.

Which is interesting. Never seen one like that. I hadn't either. But one wall plate or, and one receptacle controls my fan and my light.

Mm-hmm.

And Lutron doesn't have anything like that.

Yeah.

Not, not yet at least. I'm hoping that they will because I would love to have the automated fan option. I would love to have that work for me. But if I remove my— if I remove that receptacle and put the fan receptacle in, that's the smart fan.

Yeah.

I lose control of my light.

Couldn't— I mean, I don't, I don't know how these work, but with fans that have a light switch like that? Well, one, I think most, most newer fans now have their own remote controls.

Most of them do. Do—

does the wiring kit that from the ceiling fan have a set of wires for the fan and then a separate set of wires for the light?

I believe so.

So you could separate those?

I could, yes, and I've thought about doing that, but then I gotta cut a bigger hole in my wall and then I gotta put a retrofit box in.

Honestly, that's, that's my issue with, um, it, it's not because I don't want them.

Mm-hmm.

It's because I, I have a custom wall plate.

Yeah.

That somebody made for my house.

Ah.

For, for 6 switches.

Wow.

And it's, it's just for toggle switches.

Right.

And so like to put in something new, It messes that up. Yeah, and I have to get a whole new custom thing made, and like, it would take up more space.

Yeah.

And I, I mean, like, it, it just becomes a mess.

Yeah.

And, and half of those are 3-way switches.

Yeah.

And so like, some of them, I'm like, unless I get this new thing, Yeah. um, I'm not going to be able to use that space. And so I'd be getting like a really wonky custom light plate cover.

Yeah. So it's just, it's more trouble than it's worth.

So at that point, yeah.

Yeah. So for me, We— again, my house—

Except unless it was the, the one that you mentioned, that's the regular toggle switch with the fader on the side, right? That would work.

That would work.

Um, but I, I haven't— I'd need to look at it and see if it would fit on my wall plate cover.

Yeah, so this— the— it's the square one, like the—

I know the fan is the square one. I'm talking about for the other switches that aren't fan switches.

Right.

So the, the, the, the on/off fan switch would work really well on my deck.

Yeah.

Because I have 8 fans.

No light kits.

No light kits.

See, that, that would be perfect. And in it, in that situation—

And each— so there's basically, there's 2 sets of 4 fans that are all on one switch.

I need to bring it to you so that you can use it because I think it'll work perfect in that situation.

I just don't have a hub over there.

That's the problem. Yeah.

have to— I mean, I could just use the switch, but—

Yeah, you could. But so in the rooms that I, that I've got that I really would use this, this switch, I've also got, I've got can lights and then I got fan or fans with light kits.

Okay.

So there's a lot of light in there. So like where I really wanted to use it was my bedroom because I'd really like to have control of my fan while I'm sleeping, right? So I've got a switch for my cans and this other switch that controls the fan and the light.

Mm-hmm.

So again, to add another switch to it, I would have to put— now instead of, instead of 2, and they're separate, they're not on the same, they're not in the same box, they're separated. So I would have to take one of them out, cut a bigger hole, put a retrofit, uh, 2-gang box in, and then it's just— it just seems like more trouble than it's worth. And so I didn't install it for that reason.

Yeah.

Um, but I do see the value in it if you don't have a light kit on your fan.

Yeah.

So really, for outdoor locations, it would really work well because a lot of outdoor locations don't have a light kit on it.

Yeah. Um, I'm wondering if that thing's rated for outdoors.

I don't know, I haven't looked. We'll have to look at it.

Yeah.

And find out.

It'd be worth looking into.

Yeah, it really would. But anyway, I'll tell you this, I'm loving the system.

Yeah.

And I will— that, that's the other thing that's really cool, and, and I, I think this is smart for Lutron for doing it this way. Like, it kind of ties you into their brand by doing this, but but it also ties you into their brand. Like, you, you don't— you just can't buy other ones that make sense in your house. And so eventually you're going to have the same of everything. It's going to make sense in your house. It's going to look good. It's going to feel good. People are going to think you're awesome.

Well, like, like I have— so like I have the Lutron Caseta system in my house. Yeah. But I also have the Philips system in my house.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, which is a completely different setup.

Right.

Um, I, I much prefer the Lutron setup, although I do recognize that the Philips system is an interesting one. Um, that has it— there's more—

It's more versatile.

It's definitely more versatile.

Because they've got like wall plugs and all different kinds of like the lights and all different things.

That's the thing is it's, it, it's not, it's not based off the switches.

Yeah.

It's all based off the bulbs.

It's based off the bulbs and the wall plate, the wall, the wall plugs.

Yeah.

Like, you can buy a plug that you then plug something else into, right?

You can do that. And they have, they have like rope lights and different things like that.

Yeah.

And, and so like, we had a room, like our bedroom was set up like this for a while, and we— I did it just to see because they have, um, and I don't— I haven't used it in a long time, so it may not even be like this anymore. Yeah, just because the novelty of it wore off pretty quick.

Yeah.

But they had scenes built into the app. And so like you could do like the Serengeti in your— and so like you'd have like blue light coming over here and orange light and red light coming in over here. And like the bulbs, I mean, like the bulbs last a long time.

Sure.

Can be any color.

Yeah.

And like you can even play around with the color wheel.

Oh my goodness.

So I mean, like there's a lot of cool stuff you can do with it. Yeah.

Um, but like, those are actually using circuit boards instead of light bulbs, you know?

Yeah, it's pretty cool. So it's, I mean, it's a totally different setup, different utility.

Yeah. So Lutron has really gone in on—

And Lutron even has a Philips switch that we have.

Oh yeah, they do. Yeah, we have it over here.

Like, but like, I don't, again, like it's, it's like something that like goes over a toggle switch to control the Philips bulbs in that room that are attached to that switch.

And it's like, you gotta have the whole system.

Yeah, mine, mine doesn't do that. And so like, I can't— again, like what you're saying, like, I, I have no— I, I can't use it.

Yeah, but if you have a setup for it, I promise you, you'll get a great experience.

Oh, for sure.

That's the thing that, that Lutron's really gone in on is the, the wall switch side of it, which if you think about it, is the more complicated side. Yeah, because it's the one hardwired into your house. Well, like, you know, for—

like, from, from their perspective, it's a way for them to hack the Philips system.

Correct.

You know, like, you, you can now control your Philips system through the hub. Through the hub. You know, and, and have access to it that way. Whereas, like, you— but, like, you still have to have the Philips hub.

Sure. For the bulbs.

Yeah. So it's, you know, I— that's, that's the thing I don't like. I don't— I want one and that's it.

I just want one. Yeah.

So, and I don't know if you— I don't know if you mentioned this or if you've even tried it, but you can, you can tie your Lutron system in through the, uh, IFTTT app.

Yeah, I've not done that yet. Um, you can also, you know, I think you can also tie it into like if you've got HomeKit or—

I would assume it works with those as well. Yeah.

So like I don't—

Google Home.

Yeah, I— yeah, exactly. I use HomeKit for a few things. Um, I don't have like the the HomeKit Hub, but I've used my Apple TV for that purpose. Um, so you, yeah, you can set some things with that.

You can use it with Alexa as well.

Exactly.

And I think you have that too, don't you?

I do. Yeah, yeah. In fact, yeah, we can talk about that at some point too. But, um, the other thing I was going to mention, um, this is probably the last thing. I don't think we have too much else to talk about with it, but, um, they've just come out with the, uh, the Diva Switch and the Claro. Right now they're all white.

Mhm.

The Diva Switch and the Claro have just come out with new colors.

Okay.

So now they've got 6, 6 total colors.

Oh, that's cool.

Yeah, so they got white, black, gray, brown, ivory, and light almond.

Okay.

And so like, it's interesting because light almond was what we put in the first house that we were in. It was an older home and it just really made sense in that home.

Sure.

The light almond was a beautiful option, but you were limited on what options you had.

As far as switches?

Yeah, because there just weren't very many things out there that, like, you— that you could do. But now, especially with these designer homes, like, gray is huge.

And I like the black switches. The black switches, they don't really work in my house, but I like the look of them.

Yeah, they, they look great. Now you got brown even.

Yeah.

And ivory, man, it's kind of a—

the ivory color is Um, because like they've only up until this point they've only had like just stark white.

Yeah, white. Yeah, but now they've, they really run the gamut. Uh, ivory was a, for a long, long time that was a very, very popular color. Um, but yeah, so now they got new colors and that's really, really cool. So, uh, I would, I would say this, if you're interested in getting a smart control system for your lights The Lutron cassette is a really, really good way to go. And, and again, we're going to give honest reviews here, and if I, if I did not think it was good, first of all, I would uninstall it from my house probably, but I'm not going to. I'm really glad I have it, and I will expand on it. I, I really, really will.

So, and I'll tell you guys, like, there are, there are a lot of other systems out there.

Yeah.

And, and what I like about this one is it's fairly simple, you know. Most everybody can install it and it's attainable. A lot of the other systems who have maybe like some more bells and whistles and different things like that, I mean, like the payment on that is gonna be substantial, right?

Comparatively. Right.

You know, and so like, you know, I think with the Caseta, you can get into it for, you know, with switches and a hub and all, I mean, like you could probably get going in your house for around $500.

Yeah.

Other, other more complicated systems that, you know, like, I've seen some that, like, where they have, like, iPads embedded throughout the house.

Yep.

You know, and that's, that's, like, full automation on the home. And that's what you start looking at is, like, full home automation.

Yep.

And that, that takes, like, people to come—

Those are thousands of dollars. They're—

every single one of them is custom.

Yep.

And it requires a lot more hardware.

And, and software as well. Like, you got programming that goes into it and, like, all this stuff. And if, Like, I was watching something the other day on one of those, like, look, I live in a $5 million home, and they couldn't get in their wine cellar because it wasn't working.

The system was down. Yeah.

Yeah.

And it can be— it can be a frustrating situation.

Yeah.

So, but I mean, like, there's, there's companies out there that that's all they do is they manage people's homes.

Yep.

Home automation systems because they're so complicated.

Exactly.

But, like, if you want that, I mean, you're gonna— you're looking at spending tens of thousands of dollars.

You get what you pay for.

Yeah. And it's like, okay. Like, but I just want to turn my lights on and off and fade them and control it from my phone.

This is a good option. You can do that.

You can do that.

Yep. So anyway, I encourage you to go get it. I, I think they're really, really great. So yeah, anything else?

That's it, man.

Cool. Well, all right, so that's gonna do it for today's episode of The Homeowner Show. So thank you for downloading the episode, and, uh, yeah, tell your family about us, tell your friends about us.

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Tell a stranger about us. Whoever you talk to, because at the end of the day, we do this because of y'all. So thanks for listening. And, uh, yeah, until next time, we'll see you later.

See ya.