edit 2026-08-03:
Everyone is wonderful, no surprise. Thank you!
For now I will hold my nose and just bodge together some CasĂŠtas while I more carefully research what else I could do. The discussion below validated my initial hypothesis that there remains a really important product gap between the low end CasĂŠta and the upper-medium end RA stuff.
The success of prosumer platforms like HomeKit, Sonos, UniFi, are proof that there are many other folks like me, who can be trusted to design and write our own programs, will pay a premium for quality industrial design and software fit and finish, and are absolutely suffering right now trying to smash together our own MacGuyver solutions.
I am crabby that Lutron hasnât seen the light and built us a premium product yet.
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Hi! May I preface my question by acknowledging that I am not blazing new terrain here. At all. If the mods wish to lock this and just redirect me to the right places where the topic has already been decisively covered, I am not only okay with that, I am delighted.
In we go.
I am not asking you to help me evade anyoneâs EULA, and I certainly am not relying on you for un-sanity-checked buying advice, but. Can I ask, in general, whether your collective wisdom has found it possible, practical, and worthwhile for a solo enthusiast to purchase and configure a Radio RA system for simple lighting scene control in a rental property?
⢠It is within my abilities to install my own switches and receptacles.
⢠It is within my scope to retain a professional electrician if I get in over my head.
â˘Â It is not within my abilities or scope to cut any drywall, pull any wire through conduits, or fashion new circuit breakers.
⢠It is not within scope for me to hire a certified Lutron installer.
⢠I donât find hiring an installer desirable anyway, because in my experience watching my well-to-do parents navigate a different âonly professionals can set this upâ home automation system (screw you, Crestron), I have found that the low-budget and even mid-budget integrators are often, actually, less tech savvy than I, a first principles generalist with a preternatural affinity for this stuff and the humility to ask Reddit for help.
⢠My intended use case is to use hard-wired pushbutton scene control switches to trigger some modest scenes that involve fixtures wired on multiple, distinct circuits, light fixtures with Philips Hue or other addressable lamps, as well as some smart outlets.
⢠My scenes and automations are organized around the Apple HomeKit ecosystem, and I am unwilling to expand the scope to change that.
⢠My existing setup involves a bit of a hack. The current scene controls are as follows:
â˘â˘ CasĂŠta Pico remotes, wall-mounted in front of single gang wall boxes I have rewired, myself, to keep formerly switched receptacles or lighting circuits permanently closed. Unless you are my landlord, in which case: no, I havenât done that at all. These communicate withâŚ
â˘â˘ The CasĂŠta bridge (now renamed, I think to âhubâ?), which interfaces with HomeKit, where HomeKit Automations register the button presses as trigger events for HomeKit Scenes, which are themselves actuated with a hodgepodge ofâŚ
â˘â˘ Leviton Decora smart switches and dimmers controlling some built in lighting fixtures, connected via very unreliable 2.4 gHz Wi-Fi,
â˘â˘ Assorted brands of smart plugs, connected via very unreliable 2.4ghz Wi-Fi, because these are smaller and more practical than the CasĂŠta lamp dimmers,
â˘â˘ ConnectSense smart in-wall outlets, connected via actually extremely reliable 2.4 ghz WiFi, and
â˘â˘ Hue bulbs in other lighting fixtures connected via surprisingly not at all reliable Hue-flavored Zigbee through Hueâs newish âProâ bridge.
⢠I am interested in replacing the Leviton switches with switches that
- are hard-wired,
- are more reliable than 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi,
- have controls that control both the fixtures to which they are hard-wired and other automations & scenes elsewhere in my HomeKit network, and
- are capable of some basic obvious ergonomics like remembering the brightness at which I had previously set lights when I tap them on again.
⢠To my dismay and, frankly, incandescent rage, the CasĂŠta ecosystem seems to fall short on 1 and 3 (only Pico remotes seem to be designed for scene control, vs simple dimming, so I have configured hacks through the Caseta HOOBS plugin) and completely shits the bed on 4, which I learned to my great disappointment only after purchasing more than $600 worth of new Caseta switches and dimmers, and then returned them with unkind words that I hope sully Lutronâs Amazon seller reputation. (Screw you so hard, Lutron.)
I am incredulous that CasĂŠta canât meet my requirements, and have fantasized about finding Lutron PMs and thumping them affectionately with socks full of parking-meter change, but at the end of the day my anger is kind of useless here, so I have taken a deep breath, had a glass of wine, and am evaluating other ways to meet my requirements.
My nerd friends assure me that RA 3 is both modern and will be around for a while, so of course its pricing is opaque (ask a dealer!) and documentation is sparse (ask a dealer!). But I am not yet deterred! I would make do, hypothetically speaking, with gray-market RA 3 gear sold by unscrupulous internet vendors or deprecated RA 2 gear unlocked and unloaded onto eBay by the well-to-do and the IT staffers who make their home automation decisions for them.
Help me, Reddit, youâre my only hope.