CES 2017 bore good news for anyone who has bought into Lutron’s Caséta Wireless smart home devices. In addition to Apple HomeKit and Amazon Alexa, Lutron now works with Samsung SmartThings and the Nest Cam, making for a very impressive list of compatible devices and services.
There are some hurdles. Caséta Wireless uses a proprietary wireless connection called ClearConnect that the devices use to connect to Lutron’s bridge unit, so the individual devices can’t connect to SmartThings or any other smart home hub directly. Instead, that bridge unit will still need to be there to pass along commands from SmartThings to the Caséta Wireless devices, which include lights and automatic blinds.
With Nest Cam integration, Caséta Wireless devices can be triggered by the camera’s motion sensor. Lutron suggests that Caséta Wireless lights can be scheduled to go off at certain times (say, at night) if motion is detected, as a sort of burglar alarm.
Besides SmartThings and Nest Cam, Caséta Wireless currently works with Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, the Logitech Pop Home Switch, and the Wink Hub and Wink Hub 2.
It’s worth noting that Lutron does not yet work with Google Home, Google’s new smart home speaker that works with Google Assistant. Conspicuously few smart home devices had Google Home compatibility at CES this year (as opposed to near-universal compatibility with Alexa) — most companies we asked gave us the same boilerplate line about considering other smart home systems in the future.
