At Lutron, we believe that the perfectly curated environment, a seamless interplay of intelligent lighting, beautiful shades, and powerful controls is best experienced through all five senses.
Know the Facts about Working with Lutron HomeWorks
It may be common knowledge that Lutron only allows factory-trained, authorized Lutron dealers to work on their HomeWorks Lighting systems. This makes information harder to find, so for the love of the internet of things, we are going to address some best practices about Lutron HomeWorks and what the systems are like before and during a Lutron HomeWorks system upgrade.
Rule of Thumb
Upgrade your Lutron HomeWorks system as soon as possible.
Benefits Include:
- Experience new features that allow you to set up your own timers and scenes without calling your dealer.
- Explore integrations with other brands like JoshAI and catch up to current popular features like smartphone and app control so you can control your Lutron system from anywhere at any time.
We recommend that you do not wait for a total system failure, as that will certainly create a more complicated situation for the client or homeowner. Don’t leave the homeowner ill-prepared when the system fails completely.
The History of Lutron
Lutron was founded in Coopersburg, PA, in 1961. Many things have changed over the years with the company's products, especially as they added more integration partners and system control from phones and tablets, but some things have stayed consistent, such as the overall architecture of the systems.
The Architecture
All of the loads in a Lutron HomeWorks home do not run back to a standard circuit breaker panel like you might be used to seeing. Instead, these same loads typically run back to a dedicated Lutron lighting panel. This panel houses Lutron HomeWorks control modules that control the entire home’s lights, exhaust fans, and even ceiling fans with multiple speeds. Separate from the dedicated Lutron lighting panel and modules is a separate Lutron panel for the Lutron HomeWorks processors, power supplies, and translators. These Lutron processors allow the Lutron HomeWorks system to control the Lutron Keypads, Lutron Lighting and fan loads as well as Lutron motorized shades in every room. Separate from the processor panel are Lutron shade control panels. Each Lutron motorized shade control panel can control up to ten individual Lutron motorized shades each.
Knowing When to Upgrade
Let’s run through an upgrade scenario where we encounter a home with old Lutron Homeworks Illumination equipment. The customer has reached out because the lights are not working and the processor is giving off the “Blinking light of death”. If you look at the processor and the lights are on or red, it usually means it’s stuck and needs to be revived. If only one light is on, or no lights at all, it means you have more serious problems: the best case is that your power supply is gone, and the worst case is that your processor is fried.
Upgrading the Core of the System
Once we explain the situation to the homeowner, the agreed-upon solution is to include a complete Lutron HomeWorks upgrade from the ground up. At this point, we show the customer the 2 upgrade options of HomeWorks QS and HomeWorks QSX. The system that we are upgrading is an old Lutron HomeWorks Illumination panel. These systems are very old and have some restrictions regarding upgrades. (Not all HomeWorks Illumination keypads can be made compatible with Lutron HomeWorks QSX processors, and for this reason HomeWorks QS is typically recommended during these types of HomeWorks Illumination system upgrades and replacements.) The Old Lutron Illumination HWI keypads will require a link translator when upgrading the core system from HomeWorks Illumination to HomeWorks QS, so the old keypads can communicate with the new HomeWorks QS Processor. (Part # 470-4213 REV A) These translators will require a Lutron License to complete the translator installation and programming into the system.
Expect to Reprogram
In most cases, when doing an upgrade from an old Lutron system to a new Lutron system, you’ll find that the database has become totally corrupted and unable to be recovered and converted. This means you will need to completely rebuild the system programming from the bottom up. We will not be going over the Lutron HomeWorks QS system programming in this article. That will be a separate “how to” altogether.
Here are the steps and best practices for successfully upgrading a Lutron HomeWorks Illumination panel to a Lutron HomeWorks QS.
Step 1) Remove the Lutron HomeWorks Illumination processor and install DIN rails that you can mount the 2 new HomeWorks QS power supplies and processors to.
Step 2) Start by verifying that wiring is usable and that all adapters are updated (replaced) to avoid trouble that can be avoided moving forward.
Step 3) Install redundant power supplies – One power supply could easily power two processors, but by installing two power supplies, we can ensure that we have a backup in the future if one of them fails.
Step 4) Continue by mounting the HomeWorksQS processors (Model HQP6-2)
Step 5) Wire the processors with power and ground connections: Ground connections are connected to the structured panel itself, and the power wires are fed from the power supplies we installed in step one.
Step 6) Connect and Power up your new power supplies by plugging in the first power supply with the factory-provided cable and “daisy chain” the power to the second processor by using standard Romex cable.
Step 7) Test and connect a Cat5/6 network cable from the customer’s Home Network Router to the first HomeWorksQS processor 1, and then connect HomeWorks processor 1 and HomeWorksQS processor 2 using a cat5/Cat6 network patch cable.
Step 8) Connect the keypad translators to each HomeWorksQS processor so that the new processors can communicate with the older Lutron Illumination HWI Keypads
Step 9) Test continuity of the cable connected to the new upgraded power supply for the old HWI keypads so that you can identify which wire on the keypad power supply is the tip and which wire is the “ring”. This is so you can make sure that the polarity of the connection from the power supply is correct. The striped side of the wire identifies it as the “tip,” or positive, wire.
Step 10) Connect the AC adapter to the length that runs around the house to all of the keypads to verify that the keypads are powering up. At this point they will be giving you a flash pattern that is telling you that the keypad is not connected to anything just yet. The flash patterns are lights running down the keypads from top to bottom in a cycling, repeating motion. This flash pattern will remain until the Lutron HomeWorksQS system is programmed and uploaded to the processor.
Step 11) Install the hybrid repeater into the system by touching down the wires from the hybrid repeater into the second HomeWorksQS processor.
Step 12) At this point, we are ready to program the new Lutron HomeWorksQS system and get all of the lighting and control back up and running throughout the entire home.
Looking to upgrade an existing Lutron System?
Contact Smarter Homes Customer Support at 512-775-6101 or visit SmarterTX.com