What do I need to hook it up to HomeKit?
Rip it all out and go with a traditional circuit breaker panel.
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
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Home Automation
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Home automation is the residential extension of building automation.
It is automation of the home, housework or household activity.
Home automation may include centralized control of lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), appliances, security locks of gates and doors and other systems, to provide improved convenience, comfort, energy efficiency and security.
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The cable management is porn-like
r/cableporn
I forgot about that sub. Will have to peruse it again.
Lots of great advice in this thread. Thanks for all the suggestions.
Rip it out and replace with KNX.
That's what I had to do with my Lutron installation.
They are notorious for obsoleting their lines. 10 years after my system was installed there were zero replacement wall panel/switches available anywhere in the world.
KNX is an open system that remains backwoods compatible.
KNX plus Home Assistant is rock solid.
If it can take serial commands (which reading some of the posts here, it does appear to), there's no reason you couldn't get home assistant to fill in the blanks. It would take a lot of time and patience, but I doubt it'll be out of the realms of possibility.
Can’t speak for HWI processors, but if it’s a QS processor, it can take telnet commands. It’s a published and easy protocol.
Ahh Lutron HomeWorks QS Panels. Last one of these I touched was about a year ago. It looks like you have the module interfaces installed. Do you see a main processor? If you have that, and it’s a HomeWorks QS processor, all you need is a few hundred dollar box, smaller than an Apple TV, and HomeKit will work well.
If you have an older processor, these can be installed, relatively affordably, along with new processors:
https://assets.lutron.com/a/documents/369545_hw_module_interface_spec.pdf
Source: had to go “program a quick job” - which meant figuring out what panels were where, how many existed, and every single load. In renovation. Contractors just used a breaker to turn everything on and off. Setup new processors, as well as a bridge, and I could use HomeKit. I am also Lutron certified, but not for HomeWorks, so take that for what you will
This wont offer help in the slightest way sorry, but this picture immediately brings to mind the scene in one of the original 80s superman films where a person falls/is pulled into a cupboard on the side of a cave-sized supercomputer and comes back out as a remote controlled android.
Id be forever wary of standing in the doorway looking at this, expecting to get a shove from the smart hoover from behind and being rewired against my will.
Then again if i was integrated directly into HA i wouldn't need to hang decommissioned tablets on the wall so my partner would probably prefer that.
IDK but my tech spidy sense is tingling.
Easy! That’s an old Lutron homework’s system. You should have a main repeater and a small box called a BDG2 (3”x3”x1.5”, could be white or black. Both must have Ethernet connections. You download the Lutron app. Select homeworks, fallow the step, it will ask you to press a button on the bdg2. You can kick the last owner this way. Then it will ask you if you want to add it to HomeKit. You can AMA! Was an integrater for 10 years.
I’ve installed the 120V side of a few Crestron systems, looks dam near identical, and I’d say you need a lot, whatever company manufactures those basically owns everything inside. You’d probably have to replace everything in those cabinets except the terminal strips.
Each one of those wires goes to independent lights or groups of lights, last house I did we used about 15x 150m rolls of NMD90 there were around a hundred pulls. Shits expensive and a lot of work and in my opinion wildly pointless. But that’s just a poor man’s opinion.
This looks wild, what would this offer over just a hub and a bunch of switches?
20 years ago I used a java based automation framework to talk to these over serial.
The basic idea is you can emulate any of the physical keypads, and the lutron programmer can add virtual keypads if that's not enough.
So what Id do is setup a room to lutron ID array and poll the controller for all the labels on the keypad for the room. Then display a virtual keypad with status for each button on a touchscreen. If the lutron programmer ever changed the scenes in a room it would update dynamically in my program as well.
Bees knees, this is what I think of as smart lighting. All the wifi and zigbee stuff is just imitating.
Lutron Homeworks system. See if the integrator that installed it is still around. Likely Homeworks QS or Illumination.
If QS, adding a connect bridge should allow for HomeKit integration
That is a MAJOR score! Nice!!
How big is this? Like 4 feet tall? Looks huge.
Maybe 5ft
Bro tear the shit out and get something up to date. Technology is so funny one day new the next obsolete.
My dad (now elderly) has been into home automation since the 1980s so he has a lot of legacy hardware still running in his system. He's got a wall that looks like this but it's a hodgepodge of different pieces, different brands, controlling different things and it's not as nicely organized. It's tied into everything. I dread the day I'm going to have to tear it all out to get his house ready to sell.
Here’s how I’d start to tackle it short of replacing the entire thing.
https://chat.openai.com/share/a2920642-21b1-41df-bf8d-95cbe412c379
That's interactive based on the sticker unless it was changed over to illumination or qs. Pray it is qs, the red ones are the older modules but will still work in qs.
Still have one or two clients on interactive , if it wasn't converted you better hope there is an up to date file for the system.
If needed I can pull it for you and give you it
I have about the same. I've built a plugin to connect directly to the network connector on the processor. Based on that you can get everything working 100% in HomeAssistant. This in turn can expose anything to HomeKit.
Additionally, an advantage by connecting the system with e.g., HA, is that you can get a log of what buttons triggers what dimmers and what the LED updates look like. This means that you can move these to HA instead, if you want, or at least have them recorded should your processor fail.
Did you decide what to do with yours? We just bought a house with HWI as well. I walked through with the electrician and Lutron guys today and I don’t think it will be an inexpensive change. We are doing some remodeling/finishing currently unfinished areas though.