Improve the Lighting In Your Home With These Awesome Lutron Products

hey everybody welcome to my entertainment room so this is the room in the house where we're hanging out all the time we're playing games watching movies over here over here we're playing with toys and then over here we're exercising so this room has a lot of different purposes but the main problem I have is lighting in this room sometimes it gets too bright it's really too hot over here we don't have a blind so the Sun just beats down all day long so in today's video I'm gonna show you some really cool options that Lutron has come out with that can help you solve all these problems for lighting over here on the window as well as lighting up here let's get started hey everybody welcome to tech with brett where i help tech work for you so i do want to mention that in today's video i will be showing off a lot of products by Lutron and they did provide all those products to me for this review first we're gonna start off with the Lutron sarena shades so after doing my previous review about having shades in the home it really improves the look of any room so I'm really excited to be able to add these over here to this window because we don't have any blinds or anything right now so these are smart shades that will work with the Lutron Hub and we'll be able to control those with our smart devices or with remotes so before we get to the setup I do want to show you what it's like to order these and the different options that are available so let's go to that now to order your smart shade you're just going to head to Serena shades calm up here at the top were then just going to select design and shop and then design and then here we have the different options you can choose honeycomb or the roller shades to go all the way up and down or you can also choose wood blinds and then it gives you the option to tilt and untilled through the smart automation with the Lutron hub so I'm gonna choose honeycomb for my room and then here we're gonna measure our window and make sure that we have the right size so if you're going to choose an inside mount which I'm using today you're going to measure the top middle and bottom and choose the smallest dimension if you're measuring for outside mount you want to choose the largest dimensions so here we're going to choose 70 inches by 1/2 and then the length is going to be 41 and one-fourth and then here you have the option to choose the top back cover so if you are worried about light coming through and linking through you would want to add this so that it can add some extra protection because there is a little bit of a gap at the top of the shade so I'm gonna say yes I want to add that and then here you have the options of how you want to control your blind so you can choose battery-powered or you can choose wired now depending on what you choose here that is how they build the shade so you can't get battery-powered and then later add wired you have to choose that now so for mine easiest to use battery-powered and I like the simplicity of not having any wires and then here we're gonna choose what type of mount so inside mount outside mount on frame or outside mount above frame I really like inside mount so we're gonna choose that works great and in here you're gonna choose the type of shade so you have sheer single shade so this is going to just add a little bit of privacy it's not going to be very thick and it's not going to block much light and then you have the light filtering single cell light filtering double cell and then room darkening single cell and here you can see all the differences of why you might want to choose one or the other I'm putting these in my media room so I'm actually going to go with the room darkening single cell in my other room I have these light filtering single cell or maybe it's double cell shades and they work really great because it keeps everything private but it still allows light to come through which have been really nice but for this example we're gonna try out the room darkening single cells I'm gonna select that one select next and now you can choose the different style you would like so there are actually quite a few different styles here depending on what you want in your room I believe they offer free samples as well if you want to see these in real life before you actually go and order your shades but for this I'm just going to choose the Monaco collection and I'm going to choose white and then you can see as you change it will adjust the price over here you can see the cost of each collection and so then you can find what fits your budget and now we are at the option of how we want to control our shades so if you already have a Lutron Hub you would just need to get the remote control so this is a little pico remote that you can control your shade easily so I'm going to pick one of those up but if you don't already have the hub you would want to select this option or here you have the hub and the Pico remote now these shades do require the Lutron hub so if you need help setting that up I have a video about that that I'll link at the end of this video so let's go ahead and I'm just going to choose the remote control and here you have a few more options so you can do the Pico three-button remote and then here you have the Sarina RF that allows you to control groups and then here you have the plugin adapter if you order the plug-in shades for me I'm just going to choose the Pico remote and you have a few different colors that you could get it in ivory white grey black light almond all those so I'm just going to choose white and then down here you could actually order a10 output power panel I don't know what that is but you could get that so we're gonna go next and now we're gonna save this to the media room and Add to Cart and purchase so that is what I ordered now let's go ahead and unbox this and get it set up so here inside the box we have the back cover and then we have two sets of brackets as well as the instructions that we will need and then here we have our custom aid Sarina shade so here on the inside you have the brackets for the D batteries and then here you have the main hub with a button and then here on the other side you have batteries as well now this will depend on what size of shade you actually get now the D batteries are not included alright now we need to thoroughly read the instructions so we know exactly what to do now the first thing we're going to do is hang the back cover now they do suggest to test to make sure that it does fit before you hang it so everything looks good here so now we're going to take three command strips to temporarily hang the back cover before we put on the brackets and I'm just going to separate these on each side and in the middle and now I'm going to put this into place you probably should measure this beforehand to make sure that it's the same distance on the front of the window for each of these and I'm going to press down to put the command strips in place and now I'm going to make sure the window opens without grinding against the back cover that looks good and now we are going to install the bracket so because of the size of my shade here I did get four different brackets but I ending up only using three of these so you have the brackets here as well as two screws for each bracket this part took me a little too long to figure out but I find that open up the instructions all the way and it tells you exactly where you're supposed to place the brackets now this will all depend on the size of shade that you get so here with my 71 in shade we're going to do two inches in from the left side two inches away from the main center console and then two inches away from the right side now while reading through some instructions it did say that if you place these brackets up to the back cover they are able to snap into place but that didn't seem to work so you just kind of have to hold this in place right up next to the back cover it gives you a little bit of a guide but then you screw it in right there that seemed to go in just fine so onto number two we're going to mark that right here and we're just gonna simply screw it in [Music] let's try one more time got it and the third one went in without in we now have three brackets installed that was harder than I'd like to admit now it's time to install the six D batteries first we will put these in at an angle and lock it to the front and then we're going to push it down to lock it on the back and so you'll need to make sure that it does this with each bracket and they actually went in pretty easily and you will hear a snap once they are in taking a look at the back of the shade here you can see that it is fully locked in after installing the shade you can just press each bracket to pull the shade down so that you can easily change the batteries now I wasn't able to find out exactly how long these are gonna last and that will be different depending on the size of shade that you have but once these batteries die I will leave a pin comment below on how long they've lasted now let's go and get them set up in a Lutron app again I already have the Lutron hub installed in my home so we're just going to go into the settings here and then we are going to select add device and now we are going to choose the shade option next we need to press the button for 10 seconds on the shade until the light starts blinking now if you have honeycomb or roller shades this will be in a different spot so there's a little picture of where it will be so here I'm just going to press up right here until the light starts flashing rapidly once it does that I'm gonna head back into the application it found the shade and now I am going to choose where I want to put the shade full-disclosure it did take me a few times to be able to do this but it finally showed up and we're gonna add this here into the family room and we're gonna name it family room shade once that has been added it asks if you want to add other devices so now I want to add my Pico remote that I also received so here I'm just going to hold down on the bottom button for 10 seconds until the light starts flashing and once it is discovered it will ask which room you want it to be added in and now we choose what we want it to control so we're going to choose shades and then here we are all done and now you can see that I have my shade added in and I can come in here and totally close it or I can use the little arrows to set it at a specific length and then I also have the option to change the remote which does the same thing and so here the shades are closing for the first time I'm actually very impressed by how quiet these shades are I'll do a full comparison later on of these versus my other shades and here's a quick view of it closing outside now one of the benefits of the back cover is it leaves a nice little spot at the top that looks really clean and just looks really great closing from out here as well now taking a look at the full room with the shade installed even during the middle of the day now the kids can play some minecraft without any glare or issues from this window which is really nice and then here with the Pico remote I can easily open the shape just by pressing the top button I can hold the down arrow and as soon as I let go it will then stop at that length if I find a length I want to go too often you can actually just long press on the middle button here and it will set that as the preferred quick length so here I can just press the button on the Pico remote and then it will jump back to that length without me having to hold down the button for so long until it gets to that point so now let's go ahead and get the Pico remote installed so everyone is able to use the shade now there are a few different ways in which you can use this remote you can easily just pull that little piece off and you can put it on the wall or you can put it on a pedal stool but for this room I'm going to attach this wall plate bracket so that I can just put it on just like a light switch and anybody can access it at any time without having to look for the remote now you could use this in a gang box but I'm not going to I'm just going to attach it right to the wall if you're attaching it to the wall like me you do need to pop out this little top piece so that it can fit flush right against the wall so you just use a flathead screwdriver and you can pop it out like that and now it is ready for us to add the Pico remote it just slides right on the top just make sure you have it flipped the right direction and now we are ready to screw it in now once you do use this it's locked in there you can't pull it off and use it but there are other ways to do that if you wanted to have that option if you want to use this wall plate bracket you can also pick up this wall plate to have a real nice clean look the bracket comes with the different screws that you need as well as if you want to remove the light switch it has some wiring caps there as well now that the bracket is installed we just need to pull apart the wall plate and we're going to screw on the bottom piece and then we just need to snap the top piece into place and now for a final look at a product fully installed so press the button and it opened the shades just as expected and pretty much anyone is able to use that now let's go ahead and get this set up with the different assistance so that we can control this in many other ways let's start with adding this into Google assistant and we're gonna head into the Google home app and I've already setup Lutron here so all I need to do is activate Google assistant and once I have completed that command I can then go back to the home page scroll down and now I have family room shade I can just tap on this select add to home and then I can choose which room I want this to be in so here we're gonna add it into the family room and now it is there now I really wish there was an option right here in the application to open and close but that's not available so let's try it out with voice open family room shade and now for Amazon's assistant again you do need to have the Lutron skill already set up and I'm going to select all devices and then scrolling down here I have the family room shade so I'm gonna open this up now here we do have the option to open and close right from the app and we can also set the percent that is open here even without using voice which is just nice to have the option and now I'm gonna go ahead and add this into the family room by selecting edit up here finding the family room shade and then selecting save and now it has been added to our room let's try it out by voice open family room shade okay now even after all of that one of the main ways I'm going to control these shades is by never actually touching them or worrying about them so here in the Lutron app I'm going to set a schedule where they automatically open and close sunrise and sunset so here I'm going to set a schedule for every day and here I'm going to choose sunrise sunset so here I'm going to choose sunrise I'm gonna go next and then we need to give the schedule a name and now I'm going to choose what is in that schedule so here I'm just going to select the shade and here we're going to choose to open and now we're going to set another schedule where it will automatically do this at sunset so I'm going to select add schedule I want this to happen every day of the week I'm going to choose sunset and then here I'm going to give it a name and now I'm going to choose the shades and I'm going to select that they're going to close and once we have done that we can now test out the schedule just by tapping on the icon here so you can see a sunrise it's going to open the shades and then if I were to tap sunset it is going to close the shades now after having used these for a while here on my wife's cam you can see that every day they automatically open and close in the morning and in the evening every day without any issue at all which is really great that's one of the benefits of these you don't have to worry about opening and closing them once you have them set up they just kind of take care of themselves and then you have the other options to control them if needed alright now that we have our smart shade installed let's talk about the next way in which you can improve lighting with some of the Lutron products so right here I have the Lutron Aurora so in this media room I actually have four hue lights set up now the main problem with hue light bulbs is you have to have the power source always turned on so if you have a light switch here that needs to be on the 100 print 100 percent of the time or those hue lights do not work well with the Aurora that is able to fix all of the problems I have with you so let me go ahead and show you how to install this so here is the Aurora ready smart bulb dimmer now this is a friends of Hugh product so this isn't going to work with your other Lutron devices this is going to specifically work if you already have a Philips you hub in your home with Philips you light bulb so here inside the box we just have the Aurora switch there and there are two parts to it that is able to have it function so here we have the knob and then here we have the base that will attach directly to the light switch now these light switches are great I actually have a few in my home already but they had only been able to attach to the old-style toggle switch well now Lutron actually came out with this Aurora wallplate bracket so this allows you to pretty much add an Aurora switch in any part of your home if you have the newer style toggle switch you can replace that with one of these completely removing the light switch and having this work with your Philips hue light bulbs or you can actually just place this anywhere on any wall and you have the option to use an Aurora or switch so I'm also going to be installing this in one of my rooms today as I show you how to use the Aurora switch so let's head to that room now so if you are adding the Aurora light switch to a toggle switch like this you don't need to do anything all you need to do is make sure the light switch is on when you put it on here now for this example I'm actually going to fully remove the light switch so you do need to make sure that power is off if you're going to replace the light switch with the wallplate bracket now this is a really cool option to completely remove the light switch and that way you'll never have problem with the light switch not being on and then you'll have access to your hue lights at all times so here I'm going to take the two wires here and just cap them off with the wire plug and now we are going to attempt to install the wall plate bracket I don't know what it is today I just got some butterfingers okay second time so I've already instead I think I've finally recovered I think I got it this time we're going to install the wall plate bracket and then I'm going to install a Lutron wall plate just like we did for the Pico remote and then I'm going to snap on the wall plate and now I can place the knob right on to the base once you do that it is installed now we need to go through the setup process for this we're going to have into the philips u application and then we're going to select the settings and we are going to select accessory setup here we're going to select add accessory and then we're going to choose friends a few and here we have Lutron aurora sorry about the glare here and now it says to double press the center button and then the light should begin to blink it will then rapidly blink showing it's connected to your hue bridge and now you choose what room that you want it in now here in the settings you have the option to adjust the name of this light switch so here i'm going to call this adele switch and then here we can choose what happens when we press the button so you have last dawn state you could set bright dimmed night light and then you could choose a few different scenes here so we're just going to keep it how it is you can choose what room it controls and now it is all setup so for controlling with the light all you have to do is turn the knob and it will start turning it on through brightness or you can press the button on the front to turn it on or turn it off now if you dim it with the rotation you do have to press the button to fully turn it off but that's essentially how the light switch works ok so the last product that we're gonna check out from Lutron today is their new caseta wireless presence sensor so we're gonna set it up in this bathroom so that if somebody comes in it's automatically going to turn on the light when they leave after a certain amount of time it's going to turn it off so let me get it set up so here inside the box we have the motion sensor right there you can see the sensor on the top and then on the back you have a few manual controls to change the time as well as you have the battery that you will place right in there and here is the cr123a 3 volt battery that it will use and then you also have two screws with two anchors and then you have to bracket types so here you have a corner bracket and then you have a flat bracket that you can put right up against the wall so we're gonna start by trying this bracket up here in the top corner to see how it works now after placing it up here it actually didn't work very well after reading through the instructions it did say that it should be more at eye level so I ended up changing it for later but as of right now you just simply two screws and then you can mount the motion sensor right on top now it also recommended to use a command strip to temporarily place it to see if it works there before you officially mount it somewhere and I test that out later as well now this motion sensor will only work with your other Lutron products so in this room I have already installed a Lutron light switch so it's gonna work hopefully great but let's go ahead and finish getting this fully setup into the application so now after installing the battery we need to pair this with the light switch to do this we're going to hold down for 10 seconds on the off on the light switch until it starts flashing and then on the top of the motion sensor there's an on/off button and we're gonna hold that down until we see the motion sensor flash it will then begin pairing together and you'll see a rapidly flash on the light switch once it has paired and now it has finished pairing and you can now press the on/off button on top of the motion sensor to test it out to make sure everything paired up on the top of the light switch you also have a test option so you can turn on the test option and then you can place this somewhere and you can see when it is actually being activated so this actually has a 180 degree view with a hundred and fifty foot range so I will do some more testing with this in a minute but let's head into the Lutron app to finish setup and show you some of the other settings that this has so here we're going to go in the settings and then we're going to select add device and then here I'm going to choose the occupancy vacancy sensor and then it wants me to hold down the bulb button on the motion sensor for 10 seconds once I have done that it is now asking which room I want this to be added in so here we are going to select the kids bathroom and now I am done adding devices now here in the app it shows up under the kids bathroom but you only get two options so here we can test vacancy so we can see that when nobody is there it's going to turn off the lights and here we can test when somebody comes in it's going to turn the lights on and there aren't any other sensor options that you have here inside the application it will show you in the app if presence has been detected here you will see this little person icon on the back of the sensor is where you can actually adjust the settings so here you have three two settings that you can adjust to adjust these you long press and then you can rotate through so here we have a 30 minute timeout 15 minute timeout or five minute timeout when you find the one you want you hold down on the button till the LED turns off so I set this at five minutes next we have activity level so if we want little activity more activity or a lot of activity to activate then once we find what we want we then press it to activate and then here we have an auto on and we can enable or disable so enabled makes it so that the sensor actually worked that the lights will actually turn on when somebody comes in and they'll automatically turn off after you leave if it's disabled that function will not work it's time to test it out so again it's going to turn red every time it detects me going down the hall so of course you should have it off the ground so let's see how it does with me trying to go in and out of these rooms without being detected [Music] oh hey there don't go extinct wash your hands so after using the Lutron motion sensor for a week I have some thoughts so originally I had placed it up here that didn't end up being a good spot it just didn't work very well so I moved it down here and I saw a recommendation by Lutron to put some stickers here to just place it to test it to see if it work well and then once you find a good spot you can use the official mounting bracket to mount it so I'm still waiting to mount this officially because I'm still testing to see if this is the best spot but I think so far it's gonna work really good so previously I actually use this smart things motion sensor up here and I was using smart things to interact with these lights but now that I have this I'm testing this out I think it works great you come in turned on the light and you leave after a while it will turn them back off now you only really have three different times that you can do you can do five minutes having 15 minutes or 30 minutes which I wish there were a few more options there so the two main problems with this is the lack of options so with smart things I could make it so that at night if I came in it would automatically turn on the lights to a lower brightness so you could have a dim to 10% as soon as you walked in but with this motion sensor it's either on or it's off so there's not many options there the second problem that I have with this is once it does activate and it knows someone's in the room if somebody turns off the light so let's say I turn off the lights and leave well the next time you come in it doesn't do anything unless it passes that five minutes of occupancy so here I can turn the light back on but that's really a problem when we have a lot of people in the home going and out so if somebody leaves and turns off the light if somebody comes right back in it automatically doesn't turn on and it kind of makes it a little problem where before with the smart things I could set it where after a minute it would automatically turn back on once it detects presence so that's been one of the main problems if maybe it's just you in the home it's not going to be an issue but when we got a lot of us coming in and out of the bathroom it does cause an issue so that's been my experience with the Lutron motion sensor I do prefer something that has a few more options like the smart things motion sensor that you can pair up with smart things or your Amazon device but for something that's simple that will turn on and off the lights this might be a good option for you to pick up there you go that is the Lutron motion sensor onto the next room okay so this is the room where I installed the new Aurora wallplate bracket with the Aurora smart dimmer switch now this has been so nice to be able to completely remove the light switch and add this bracket now some of the benefits of that is of course now nobody has the option to turn off the light switch to then make the philips hue light completely useless so now I have full control of the light at all times with my Google assistant or here with the light switch and the great thing is anybody can use this you simply turn to dim and turn it on and off just like that no problem now you could go out and pick up something like the Philips you remote here or I Philips you button and that gives you certain options so here I can turn on and off the light but I would recommend something like this as a second switch into a room here actually had this set up to a lamp over here but the Aurora switch is able to remove all the problems with smart light bulbs now the great thing about this new wall plate bracket is let's say you have a newer home that has the decor switch is and you weren't able to use the Aurora smart dimming switch well you can go out and buy the bracket you can replace that Decorah switch and add a Aurora switch into your room so that you have all these really cool functions now some of the benefits of getting like the philips you button one it does cost half as much and you can change different scenes and certain things like that but you still have access to the light switch so i would recommend having both in one room i would get one of these to take care of the light switch and then get a button for the other side of the room so that you can easily control it from wherever you are it just makes so much sense to have the light switch be completely removed so that you can then control the philips hue lights at any time you no longer have to put a piece of tape over life switch saying do not use this is able to solve all of those problems so i definitely would recommend picking up one of these if you have any philips hue lights at all it is the perfect solution and one other thing is i've had no problems with this integrated into the philips hue eco system I've had no issues I actually have these on three different light switches now and they were great in all the rooms that they are in so highly recommend this product onto the next room okay into the last room of the house so in here this is actually the first place which I installed the Aurora smart switch dimmer which has been really nice to have and then here we have the new Pico remote for the shades super easy to control we'll get to those in a minute but this room one of the unique things is the light switch is out here just it's kind of an awkward corner so the light switch is here so having a dimmer switch on here actually makes it super nice because I can now control the lights at any time with my different assistant and I don't have to worry if this is on or off and it just makes it really convenient and as I showed before of course I has the same options here I can dim I can make them bright and I can quickly turn them on and off let me give you a better look and so that is the media room and how I now control the lights in here with the Aurora smirk switch dimmer now again if you have Hugh lights in any room highly recommend this because now the light switch is always turned on I have access to these lights at any time now with the shade I have more full control of the lighting in this room speaking of the shades let's head over there okay so it's been about one week after I've installed the Tsarina shades you know I think it's a little bright right now shut the family room shades okay I think the lighting is a lot better now so after having the shades for a week they have just been awesome after I set the routine to automatically open at sunrise and automatically close at sunset they have just worked perfect we've never had any problems they've always run as scheduled now even the other day we were all sitting here I was playing some breath of the wild and the kids were crawling all over me we're having a good time and then the Sun was beating down right through this window and I couldn't easily got frustrated but because I now have these shades I was able to send a command to Google and close the shades and this is what happened so without skipping a beat I was able to close the shades get the Sun out of my face keep playing and we all had a great time you know some of the things that I really like about these shades is how quiet they are so I'll do a video here and show you the difference between these and my other shades but these were just so quiet now that is because there is only one of these there's three of those and they're a little bit bigger but I'm very impressed by how quiet this is and I'm just happy that everything ran smoothly once I had them set up [Music] I also like how easy it is to access the batteries you just pop the three little hinges at the top it pulls down you can easily pop out the batteries and put them back in now if you want to get that wired solution you could do that as well then you never have to worry about that but I don't think this is going to be a problem pulling out and putting in new batteries I really like that they are just automatic everyday opening and closing we used to have a problem where the kids were playing with these curtains here messing them up they've pulled them down a few times but now with these shades we don't ever have to touch them because it automatically closes at night to give us our privacy and then opens up in the morning so that's been nice to not have to worry about them messing those up and breaking my little rod there again now some of the things that I do wish is if there was a button just a manual button on top that I could push to open and close sometimes it's nice to have that accessible but there are of course tons of other ways I do have the Pico remote out there that I can turn on and off I have my app and then I have the different voice assistance as well no one problem I was having is I wasn't able to add these into my smartthings hub so you can go add new devices search for Lutron and add these but it wasn't showing up finally after a few attempts it is showing up and now here you can see that I have all the options where I can set the shade level I can quickly open and close and I can also go to the preset position so these have a ton of options and with this I can now go and get a temperature sensor for my room and I could have the shades automatically closed if this room gets to a certain temperature so that's really going to help save some cooling cost here in the summer now as you can see the Sun is beating down on the shades and there is barely any light coming through so if you are looking for something in a media room definitely get the media room ones I can barely see some light down there at the bottom and the top I'm surprised there is some coming in through the top because I put that backing but I think it really helped out on more coming through now one thing I can't really demonstrate with these shades that I ordered because I did get the blackout ones is that if you got the other ones it would allow for more light to come in so if you're looking for something to add privacy to your room but not close off all the Sun those options definitely are available so if you are looking for some new smart shades and you are already a part of the Lutron ecosystem it's actually very easy to add that to your home definitely check these out if you are looking for some new ways to control the lighting within your home definitely check out all the products that I saw here today I will leave a link to them in the description below and if you would like to see how to set up the hub and the other Lutron light switches make sure you check out the video over here on the side thank you so much for watching see you on the next one

Channel: Tech With Brett

Views: 97,948

Keywords: Tech With Brett, lutron serena shades installation, lutron serena shades review, lutron serena shades remote, Serena Shades Voice Assistant, Aurora Smart Bulb Dimmer Review, Aurora Wallplate Bracket, Lutron Caseta Motion Sensor, Lutron Smart Bridge Products, Philips Hue Light Switch, Friends of Hue Switch, Lutron Motion Sensor Review, Lutron Aurora Review

Id: bH4N3nmV5k0

Length: 36min 4sec (2164 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 01 2020