I've been doing lighting control and lutron for over 10 years now. I still have brain farts every time I go to program scenes. Customers have no idea what they want and it's up to me to make something usable until they figure out what they want.

What do you guys program as your scenes when your sales department sells way too many keypads? Like 20 in a 4 bedroom home. I'm not even joking.

A 4 bedroom home could be 2000 or 20000 square feet...

Just because you have a lot of keypads doesn't mean they all need to be 6 buttons.

We use the 6BRL (6 button raise lower) keypads in most areas. This is the basic formula for every room.

Button 1: Current Room
Button 2: Next Room
Button 3: Next Room or First Single Fixture in Current Room
Button 4: Second Single Fixture in Current Room
Button 5: 3rd Single Fixture in Current Room
Button 6: 4th Single Fixture in Current Room
Raise/Lower


So for Bedroom 1 you would get...

Button 1: Bedroom 1 (toggles scene for bedroom 1)
Button 2: Hall (toggles scene for hall that leads to bedroom 1)
Button 3: WIC (walk in closet)
Button 4: Chandelier
Button 5: Sconces
Button 6: Lamp
Raise Lower

And if there is a fan...

Button 1: Bedroom 1 (toggles scene for bedroom 1)
Button 2: Hall (toggles scene for hall that leads to bedroom 1)
Button 3: WIC (walk in closet)
Button 4: Fan (toggles fan on and off)
Button 5: Chandelier
Button 6: Sconces
Raise Lower

What about shades and a fan?

Button 1: Bedroom 1 (toggles scene for bedroom 1)
Button 2: Hall (toggles scene for hall that leads to bedroom 1)
Button 3: WIC (walk in closet)
Button 4: Fan (toggles fan on and off)
Button 5: Sun Shade
Button 6: BO Shade (black out shade)
Raise Lower

So even though these rooms are all the same except one has a fan and another has a fan and shades...the formula stays the same. I try to use all 6 buttons and most of the time i would love to have 3 or 4 more buttons. I try to break individual loads out whenever possible but they get bumped when more important items exist. Same with the WIC button. If the closet has its own keypad i might bump that button if i need the space.

An example for a non bedroom room...

Button 1: Kitchen
Button 2: Dining Room
Button 3: Pantry
Button 4: Island
Button 5: Cabinets
Button 6: Table
Raise Lower

Ours a similar to above

1 Room 1 On/Toggle
2 Rom 1 Load - Recessed
3 Room 1 Load - Chandelier
4 Room 1 Load - Sconce/Accent
5 Next Room - Hall - toggle
6 Room Off

Are you asking specifically about lighting only?

Not interested in a goodnight button, or music On/Skip, or TV On, etc?

Similar to Mac.

Don't forget to do what I see a lot of dealers doing...putting double and triple taps on each button with commands that no reasonable human being could ever remember :-/ clearly programming by the hour.

Customers don't have any idea of what they want, they look to us to figure it out for them. While 20 keypads in a 4 bedroom home may seem like a lot (I don't think so), one thing I think we do is put too many scene buttons in those keypads. And mix up scene and load based programming. Then we hang pieces of paper on the wall and say 'Live with it a few months then we can come back and tweak it to the way you want.' Ugh.

I don't think people hire us to put buttons on walls and have them tell us how to program it, they hire us to make things simpler for them.

One thing that is confusing is mixing scene based and load based programming, unless of course a single load illuminates a room (eg: downlights down a hallway). Then mixing toggles and All Off's everywhere, which is sort of redundant.

Room
Adjacent Room
Load
Load
Load
Fan
All Off

Or the infamous There's a Button There So Program It With Something Logic, my personal favorite:

Hi - 99%'er Button
Medium - 1% of the time
Low - WTF?
Next Room - The Only Sensible Button
Load - Pick Me
Load - I Guess This One Too
All Off - Is this Room All Off or House All Off? Huh?

It's easy to program buttons. It's hard to make it super intuitive with the least amount of buttons necessary.

Kitchen
Dining
Hallway
Fans

What could be easier than that? If you ask somebody if they want more or less choices they typically choose more choice. Choice is good, right? Well, when I'm walking around and turning on lights the only choice I want to have to make is that I want to turn on lights. How often am I going to choose 'Well, I think I want the ropes on, and maybe the Island cans too, but not the Dining Cans." Those are the customized party scenes that can be done in software or on a hidden 12 button command center somewhere else. I don't think single load buttons on all keypads is good thing. I think it gets overdone and causes users to have to make choices every time they want the damn lights on. Call it Technology Microaggressions.

My philosophy is you come out of the gate with a simple and very basic program and build up. Keep in mind the market I live in: 95% luxury vacation homes that are lived in part time. This greatly biases my philosophy. But I don't think it changes too much with homes that are 98% occupied. 95% of the time people just want to turn on the damn lights: putting extra buttons everywhere to satisfy the 5% or less of the time they feel like playing around doesn't make sense to me.

Or


Bright
Dim
Path Bath / Hall / Kids / Pool
Path Kit
Scene
Shades
Off

Only if the client asks for it.
I was at a job yesterday that had to do the HOME/AWAY?VAcations sequence just right or it would trigger a panic function. F that.
Yes we will be reprogramming that sheit.

BTW. I live in a 4 bedroom house with 28 keypad locations and could use a few more. Many of those locations have 2G boxes with keypads.

Sometimes you get clients that have their own ideas, most of the time they rely on us.
I have found that not all clients like scene or room based programming, no matter how easy it should be or how well you explain why it works.
They want a button for this light, another for that.

The only advice you needs is "be consistent"
If you make the bottom button on a keypad a room off or all off type of button, do it on all keypads.

I typically do this

Scene based

Room or area ON (entrance - Home)
Scene
Scene or feature
Next room or area
Room or area Off (entrance Away)
R L

Fixture based

Room ON
Fixture
Fixture
Fixture or next room
Room Off
R L

Double tap sends lights to 100%
Shades can easily be incorporated.

Variation of this would be on bedside Keypad where I would have a night mode and a goodnight button

I have "fixed" more than a few Lutron systems over the years and the main thing that needed fixing was the programming.
If a client is going to have to stop and read each keypad to remember what the buttons do (because they are completely different from room to room), your doing it wrong.

As for setting scenes. If you are not a lighting designer, and really don't know what may or may not look good, find a designer in your area.
Tell the client that if they are relying on you to figure out the settings you are bringing in your designer and there is an extra cost of whatever, or build the designer costs into your system price. You only need them for a couple of hours or so. Walk through with everyone, let designer take the client by the hand while you make changes on the fly.
Everyone wins.

Never can have too many keypads!

-As others have mentioned, stick with the theme.
-Mixing scenes and rooms can add to confusion. So don' be afraid to have 2 keypads in important areas. One would do loads/rooms and the other could do the scenes.
-Top button should always be on for that room. This doesn't always mean every light. When I go into my kitchen at night, I don't always need the upper cabinet lights, the toe kick lights, the pendants, the general recessed, the range hood light, the undercounter, etc, etc. But that is me...
-The button should always turn off the area or room you are leaving.
-Only use "All Off" at entrance points. I prefer not to put those on the bottom button because you don't want someone "easily" pushing that button when others are home. 2nd up from the bottom.
-Don't be afraid to use LESS buttons. On/Path/Off for example.

This is our plan too. On at the top, Off at the bottom, Ceiling Fan in the middle, loads or scenes in the rest. All off in Master Bed and by outside doors.

Seems like a lot of those keypads are just programming loads, not scenes.

For example, at the top of the steps going to my basement, there is a button called Evening. It turns on the kick lights on the stairs and sets the HT lighting to the TV level. (Some day I am going to get it to turn on the components.) There is another button called Entertain and it does the same two plus turns on the Pool Table Light, Bar light and bathroom Toe lights.

Those to me are scenes.

I read his post and the bit about 4 bedrooms stuck in my mind so i immediately started thinking about keypads in bedrooms. I didn't even respond about "global scenes". (what i call scenes that control lights in more than one area).

The room button at the top is a scene. Most of the houses have 2-10 loads in each room so "Kitchen" or "Bedroom 1" is a scene where we choose the loads included and the levels they should start up at.

The main reason we break out "important" loads is because clients always want to adjust just the lamp or only turn on the sconces or chandelier (for example). Some clients pretty much just want an ON/OFF for each room while others will put 4 keypads in the family room just so they have individual control over all the fixtures.


Over the last 3 or 4 years Global Scene (home away entertain evening etc) control usually ends up at a second keypad near entrances. So instead of just the typical room control keypad there is a double (or more) gang box where a second keypad does the global scenes. The global scenes also end up on the touchpanels.

Years ago we did 2 gang keypads. One side was a 3 button ON-OFF-FAN (if a fan existed) and then the other keypad was a catch all for scenes/shades/loads/door unlock (for controlled locks) etc. That was a hard sell...not because of the cost but because no one wants to see 2 keypads anywhere.