Lutron RadioRA 2 + HWQS App

First, my Radio RA hardware is bulletproof but this software experience after spending tens of thousands of dollars is so terrible i’m avoiding lutron all together for my vacation home for a number of reasons. 1. The app is dated, clunky and a pain to use. Fortunately i can control individual lights in my own scenes in homekit. Often times it feels like usability is restricted to protect installers. Which leads me to… 2. Nerfed product to please installers. I certainly understand the need to protect your installer base but that model is dying and you aren’t making any middle ground concessions to users paying cold hard cash for the system. I am happy to pay my integrator to spec, install and setup new additions. I am not fine paying hundreds of dollars for a house call to tweak a level setting for one set of lights in a scene. Not only are installers backed up like every trade, it’s ecologically wasteful, and it’s straight up robbery to require this process in this day and age. As a result, I’m no longer going Lutron in my new house that would have been a bigger install than my other. I advise everyone else to do the same until Lutron adjusts their customer hostile model for the modern age.

After investing almost $50-60k in full powered motorized shades, and a full radio ra2 system throughout my home, while I love what I can do with physical switches, it seems somewhat limiting that I cannot manage the button icons, room layouts, load names, and button types “toggles” vs “presses”, or manage any of the advanced setup without going through my dealer every time. I wish there was a version of the software that was also available on PC for homeowners, and that the mobile app allowed for more customization for end users. Regarding the UI, it would be much nicer if you could more easily raise and lower load levels in a room or area without having to first open the room, then open the load, and then finally control the load. If I’m looking to raise and lower individual levels in a room relative to one another on the fly, it’s just a lot of extra clicks. Additionally, while a dealer can add virtual keypads to rooms, it would be nice if I could define scenes specifically for use in the mobile app for certain rooms or areas. Just seems like lutron needs to spend some time with a UI/UX designer and really think about use cases.

When you consider the expense and effort that goes into upgrading your electrics and lighting system in your home you would expect the controls to be somewhat intuitive. You would at least expect to be able to adjust lights with a couple of simple clicks through your phone. Not the case with the Lutron App, the UI feels so old and clunky, there are so many click throughs to find what you need, it’s usually easier to just go to the manual switch as you would with an old system. Setting up a schedule is painful, I tried setting up 2 and I’m still not sure exactly what’s set up, how do I review, adjust, change, it’s really hard to visualize as you can never see everything in one place. Lutron - please take a look at the nest App or similar, think about a redesign because the App is a massive let down after investing in a quality system install.