Lutron RA3 driver is so bad, the navigators stop updating status every single day and need a Director reboot

[416to305]

I've used RA2 in both of my properties that have C4 without issue for years.  When the RA3 driver came out I upgraded my system in both homes to RA3.  Every single day, I'll use a T4 or the C4 app, and it will show every RA3 light as being off.  If you press the light icon, it turns it on, and then after 2 seconds immediately changes the value to 0% even though the light is still on.  Same with dragging the slider from 0% to 50%, it turns on to 50% and then after 2 seconds slides back down to 0%.  I'll run advanced lighting scenes that include 5 RA3 lights plus 5 Hue lights, and you'll see all the sliders on the Hue lights move properly when activating the scene, yet RA3 lights all stay at 0%.

Reboot director, works perfectly fine as expected, until about the next day, then back to the same thing.  It does this in both of my homes as well, EA1 at my condo and Core3 at my house and both of them have this exact same issue.

I had 2 Dealers check and they couldn't figure it out other than saying the driver is v1.0 and probably buggy.  (Edit: wanted to add they also are not Lutron dealers but just C4 so understandably not overly keen to troubleshoot Lutron stuff)

What's really weird is everything does work.  Like running advanced lighting does turn all the lights on and off properly as you'd expect, it's just the navigators and apps are always wrong or out of sync.  This morning it's showing all the lights as being on, like the scene from last night, yet all lights are off.  I reboot Director and now it's back to working again until probably tonight or tomorrow then it will stop again.

I'm finding that I don't even use the C4 app anymore due to this and just use the Lutron one since it never works.  It's more the T4s I have in each room of the house that is annoying having them not work!  Other than a program that reboots Director nightly, is there anything else I can check or anyone else experiencing this?

[jimbones]

Have you had your dealer(s) file a ticket with C4? Would love to hear what they say. I've been putting off installing the new RA3 hub for fear of instability.

[416to305]

25 minutes ago, jimbones said:

Have you had your dealer(s) file a ticket with C4? Would love to hear what they say. I've been putting off installing the new RA3 hub for fear of instability.

I haven't yet and only because they aren't a Lutron dealer they kinda have been throwing up their hands blaming Lutron.  I have no issue with Caseta or when I had RA2.  I'll reach out again and see if they can open a ticket.

In terms of stability on RA3, it's rock solid and is a great upgrade and works very well.  It's just the C4 integration that's poor especially compared to RA2.

- No support for scenes, so can't create a scene on the bridge and trigger it from C4

- All keypads import into programming with actions like "double tap, triple tap" etc, yet none of those functions work.

- No ability to control the LED lights on keypads at all

- Keypads come up under connections and let you bind the buttons to other lights or relays, yet it doesn't work or do anything when pressing the buttons

[LollerAgent]

On 9/8/2022 at 12:30 PM, 416to305 said:

I haven't yet and only because they aren't a Lutron dealer they kinda have been throwing up their hands blaming Lutron.  I have no issue with Caseta or when I had RA2.  I'll reach out again and see if they can open a ticket.

In terms of stability on RA3, it's rock solid and is a great upgrade and works very well.  It's just the C4 integration that's poor especially compared to RA2.

- No support for scenes, so can't create a scene on the bridge and trigger it from C4

- All keypads import into programming with actions like "double tap, triple tap" etc, yet none of those functions work.

- No ability to control the LED lights on keypads at all

- Keypads come up under connections and let you bind the buttons to other lights or relays, yet it doesn't work or do anything when pressing the buttons

I'm sad to hear this.  Hopefully the bugs get worked out and these features get implemented soon-ish!

[JackD]

I've had my C4 dealer (not a Lutron dealer) tell me I need to use c4 keypads and switches to work properly.   I appreciate you sharing your experience.  I'm building a new house and have some time to learn the issues here but would really prefer to to RA3 and Sunnata but also want the keypad's to recognized by C4 for further actions outside the Lutron ecosystem.  My question here is did your dealer use the newest Lutron LEAP driver released this September?  I'd be interested in knowing how that version performs.

[jimbones]

@JackD! Thanks for the post! Looks like V4 was posted on Sept. 9. Let's see what @416to305 says.

[416to305]

Hi @JackD and @jimbones I am happy to report that the new driver does seem to solve the issue!  I haven't noticed the lights getting out of sync at all since then which is great.  We also found out that you CAN do scenes off the RA3 processor with the phantom buttons, but it's super confusing because in RA3 Lutron Designer software you must add "Phantom Keypad" or something like that to your project first, and then that shows up in C4 as a regular Lutron keypad but with 100 buttons or whatever it is.

I have 4 C4 keypads, and then a ton of Lutron ones.  It's not surprising if your dealer recommends the C4 ones since that's what they'd sell and work the best with C4.  Ultimately with keypads it comes down to what you are controlling with them.  If you're like me, where 95% of what they do is just control Lutron lighting, then 100% I'd go Lutron.  But, if you're wanting the keypads to do non-Lutron things, like controlling Hue lights, or non-Lutron shades, or garage doors, etc, then the C4 ones are easier for the dealer to program as they can just connect the buttons to advanced lighting scenes or relays etc.  With Lutron you 100% can do that, but not with bindings, instead it's all through programming, like "If keypad button 1 is pressed, then do these actions."

FWIW when I say 95% of what my keypads do is control Lutron lighting, that's def true, but then I do have programming like including Hue lights into RA3 scenes and so on.  If I was starting over in a new home, I'd still go Lutron I think.  The ONLY downside with the RA3 Sunnata keypads is the buttons do NOT light up anymore.  They have a light bar on the right of them to show if on or off (not controllable yet with the RA3 driver in C4, but RA2 you could), but the writing itself does not light up.  I wanted to get ones for my theatre but had to pass because you can't read the buttons in the dark.  The C4 ones let you actually change the LED button colour and light up the text.  But... the Lutron keypads look way nicer than C4 ones.