Lutron blazed new ground five years ago when it introduced a “lite” lighting system for the retrofit market. The Radio RA system, which could handle 32 lighting points, was the first system from a high-end lighting control company to offer existing homeowners a way to set lighting scenes reliably without having to rewire their homes.
Turns out RadioRA was a small-scale test of sorts. Lutron wanted to find out if its radio-frequency (RF) control technology was bulletproof enough to put into homes with far more than 32 lighting circuits. RadioRA apparently passed its exams because this month Lutron will add RF lighting control to its flagship product, HomeWorks, which is designed for 5,000-to 10,000-square-foot houses. Called HomeServe, the RF-based system offers a way for existing homes in the upper tier of the housing market to experience integrated lighting control for the first time.
“We took the experience we had with Radio RA and took it to the next level,” says Roger Stamm, marketing manager for Lutron. Before the company was willing to link the wireless technology to its reference product, Stamm says, it had to meet two conditions: It had to operate flawlessly in any home, and it had to deliver consistent performance. “We had to prove that every time a homeowner pressed a button, the result would be the same and that the results would occur in the same amount of time every time,” he says. “We were looking for the technology’s ability to work in any installation and to deliver repeatable results.”
Lutron officials say only a stainless steel- or lead-lined room would block commands from getting through, but company literature makes more modest claims about transmission distance. Manuals state that the operating range from keypads to switches is 50 feet—a number that’s very conservative, according to Stamm, who maintains 100 feet is more the range in a typical frame and drywall house. For longer distances—where you want a table-top master bedroom keypad to turn off every light in the house with one button, for instance—repeaters are used to extend the range of the signal. The communication between keypads and dimmers occurs in a band of frequencies reserved by the Federal Communications Commission for “non-continuous emitters.”
HomeServe expands the number of control points available from 32 to 1,024. Like the RadioRA system, HomeServe is controlled by wall-mount and tabletop keypads with built-in RF transceivers that send commands to switches and dimmers. HomeServe can accommodate up to 512 keypads and can control any type of lighting, including fluorescents and other challenging types.
Pressing a button on a keypad initiates a lighting scene that has been programmed by the installer: Lights assigned to that button dim to specific levels chosen to create a particular mood. One button might create a low-light romantic scene; the button beneath could create a party scene with much brighter settings. One button can turn all lights in a house on in a panic mode. The most popular button is the All Off button, which shuts off every light in the system—at a selectable fadeout rate.
The major advantage HomeWorks still holds over the retrofit system is that its keypads can eliminate entire banks of light switches from the design stage. With a pre-wired lighting system, electricians can put the dimmer switches for a foyer or great room in a nearby closet and out of view. Being able to take 25 to 30 light dimmers off a wall has tremendous appeal to homeowners and interior designers. Whereas HomeServe can control the same number of lights, it still works with existing—and visible—switches and outlets. One more HomeWorks advantage: It can integrate with home control systems from AMX and Crestron, allowing lighting control to be one of the functions on a touchpanel controller.
For builders, HomeServe adds one more option for clients who may not be willing to commit to lighting control at the blueprint stage, or who only decide well into the project that it’s an amenity they want to have. In the past those homeowners would have been out of luck since it’s an expensive afterthought to rewire for lighting control after the walls are up.
“HomeServe takes care of the ‘oops’ factor,” says Lutron’s Stamm. “Even the best-planned homes undergo last-minute changes during construction. Or maybe they decide to add more lighting points.” Lutron hopes HomeServe will sell well in the new construction market as an afterthought solution.
The company maintains HomeServe won’t cannibalize sales either of HomeWorks or RadioRA but instead create a new segment of the business. RadioRA is still targeted at smaller-scale existing homes in the 2,000- to 5,000-square-foot range. The average RadioRA system controls 10 to 12 lighting circuits and costs homeowners about $3,000. A hard-wired HomeWorks system can run from $10,000 to $200,000 for 5,000-square-foot and larger homes, with the average falling between $20,000 and $25,000 for 50 to 80 lighting loads. HomeServe RF capability adds a 20 percent premium to the cost of a HomeWorks system, Stamm says.
“We wouldn’t see builders leading customers with a HomeServe system except in cases where a customer didn’t want to commit to a lighting system up front,” says Glen Kruse, home systems business unit manager. “If they change their mind about lighting control, then HomeServe still offers them a whole-house control possibility.”
HomeServe also offers the possibility of a hybrid approach to lighting control. Kruse says homeowners could start with a HomeWorks system and have the wiring infrastructure installed during the pre-wire phase of construction. If a room is added or homeowners want to expand control to an area not in the original plans, they could integrate wireless keypads into the wired system. That’s something they couldn’t do today. HomeServe also gives HomeWorks customers table-top dimming control, which was not available before. “Now customers can order lighting control a la carte with wired and wireless solutions that meet their needs,” Stamm says.
The availability of large-scale retrofit systems from the leading companies in high-end lighting control—including Vantage Control’s RadioLink system and the LiteTouch HomeTouch system—should increase awareness overall for existing luxury homeowners. Until very recently, that vast market was not served by lighting control at all. “Most of the really nice homes in this country weren’t built when lighting systems came out,” Kruse says.
Education will be key to cracking the existing home market, says Stamm. Many consumers still associate lighting control with not-ready-for-prime-time low-end technology that’s either inconsistent or uses hand clapping for commands. Some lighting systems for the retrofit market have been hobbyist solutions that don’t always work as promised. Others have come as part of a laundry list of home automation features from technology companies that didn’t support lighting at a high-end level. With high-end lighting control now an option for existing luxury homes, awareness should help drive demand for lighting systems in new custom homes down the road.
The biggest challenge for high-end lighting control companies, Lutron says, has been to explain the benefits of programmable lighting control to homeowners who have never lived with it. The easiest sale is getting customers to purchase one for their next home.
Rebecca Day specializes in writing about home electronics. She can be reached at rebecca362@aol.com
