+3 votes
by (390 points)
Question on smart switches- Lutron caseta has the pico switch for three way switches. I'm not seeing this on other brands. How does this work with other brands such as inovelli or GE? thanks
Question on smart switches- Lutron caseta has the pico switch for three way switches.

3 Answers

+3 votes
by (11.6k points)
Lutron is an outlier - the Pico remote isn't actually wired to anything. Instead, you alter the wiring of the existing 3 way switch to just pass the electricity through rather than switching it on/off. The Pico controls it through the hub/app, not the wiring. All other brands I'm aware of keep the traditional wiring in place.  
+1 vote
by (4.8k points)
To add to the above, GE requires special "add-on"/"companion" switches (so do all the equivalent Jasco products, and so does HomeSeer). Zooz requires "dumb" switches, but some require rewiring the dumb switch and some (with other tradeoffs) need it wired as usual. The current (v2, or Red/Black) generation of Inovelli can actually work in either of these configurations *or* with another smart switch (all with certain benefits and drawbacks)--they designed the product from scratch and tried to accommodate as many different wishes as possible. :) In all cases, the idea is that it depends on the brand and model--it's not the same for all (though Lutron is probably the oddest of the bunch here).  
by (11.6k points)
Thank you for filling in the blanks - as you may have guessed, I am using lutron so I am much more familiar with how it works but haven't looked into other brands since I installed lutron 2 years ago.  
+3 votes
by (5.2k points)
C by GE will be releasing a similar setup for bluetooth/wifi line of switches.  
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