ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
Are there any advantages/disadvantages to useing a Phillips Hue light bulb in a light socket controlled by a Lutron Grafic-eye light switch in a MLGW setup??
None - personally I love this model!
I have a Lutron Grafik Ra2 system with Pico wireless controls, tabletop keypads and wall mounted keypads and I can use the BLGW to 'add' Hue lights, strips, lamps to the scenes and controls on the (much better looking) Lutron switches.
You can even mount a Lutron Pico wallmounted switch for a room that only contains Hue bulbs, with the BLGW 'translating' the switch presses to the Hue - looks a lot better than philips own switches!
Beware that Hue bulbs won't work with Lutron's dimmable switches. While some brands of dimmers with let you use LED lights when the dimmer is at the max on, Lutron's dimmers will not. The way to work around this issue is to bypass the dimmer and hardwire the Hue lamp so that the power is always on. You can then create macros on the BLGW to control the Hue bulbs with the Lutron buttons.
Thus, you can use RadioRa 2 "wall" keypads instead of "hybrid" keypads. The "wall" version just has the programmable buttons and does not dim a load. They look identical to the hybrid keypads but are less expensive. Also, it's useful to know that it doesn't matter what the button configuration is of a RadioRA 2 wall keypad when you buy it. When you order the custom-engraved buttons, you can get whatever button configuration (e.g., 3 button, 4, button, 6, button, etc.) that you want. All 6 buttons are actually already there behind the button keypad.The unused buttons are just covered up if the unit indicated less than 6 buttons. Also, when you get the engraved buttons, you can get any color that you want -- regardless of what color you originally bought.