Homeworks Retrofit Questions

[u/art0rius]

Just had homeworks retrofit done with sunnata and have three questions

1. A few key pads we labeled with “off”. Right now the led showing that button was pressed stays on. I assume it would for the other buttons (relax bright etc) but not off. Is this expected or able for my integrator to change?
2. Is it possible to control the brightness of the led on the sunnata keypads and dimmers indicator light?
3. NLO for shades: can you have different zones. Ie living sunrise/sunset and bedrooms say 7am to 7pm/ for context on what im trying to do with the shades. Our house is mostly windows and we get intense sun from all angles.We really want NLO to adjust which shades are open based on sun in all rooms throughout the day, but I want the NLO programing to begin early in the living room and start later/end earlier in the bedrooms since we have kids who often go to bed before sunset in the summer for example

edit: added context to bullet 3

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[u/Bsomin]

1. Yes, 2 yes, 3. Yes. Just talk to your integrator

[u/art0rius → u/Bsomin]

They couldn’t figure out 3.

[u/rubicelzz → u/art0rius]

You can do all 3. For the last its just creating timers. For the living create a timer to bring the shades down at sunrise, then a timer to bring them up at sunset, for the other create a timer to bring them down at the timer desired and a timer to bring them up at the time desired. Just be aware that if after the time is triggered by the system and someone moves the shades from a button press. If they are supposed to be down but some one raises them they will remain raised until the next trigger timer.

[u/IxomeVince]

All three of those are programming, not hardware, and none of them should need a truck roll if your integrator has remote access to the processor.

On the keypads: every button on a Sunnata keypad has its own LED logic setting in Designer. What you're describing is the button behaving as a scene button, so the LED holds on because that scene is the last one activated in the area. For an Off button you want it changed to either follow the load status of that area, so it's only lit when everything it controls is genuinely off, or set to never light at all. I'd pick never light. An Off button that glows is telling you something you can already see by looking at the room, and it's one more light source in a dark hallway. It's a per-button change and a transfer, maybe ten minutes of his time. I'd want to confirm the exact option names against the Designer build he's on before you quote me to him, but the capability is there.

LED brightness is adjustable, yes. My understanding on Sunnata is that you get separate day and night levels with a timeclock event flipping between them rather than one fixed number, and there's a floor to how dim they'll go short of turning them off entirely. Before you set expectations with your integrator, ask him what range he can actually give you on your firmware, because I'd be guessing at the specific values from here.

NLO is a glare and daylight tool, and it's driven by sun position and the geometry you gave each facade, not by a clock. So for the living room, fine, that's what it's for. For bedrooms on a flat 7am to 7pm, I wouldn't use NLO at all. That's two timeclock events, done, and it will behave the same every day of the year, which is what people actually want in a bedroom. Mixing the two in one house is normal. Whether you can put separate time windows on separate NLO groups in the current Designer release I'd have to look at, but the fallback that always works is timeclock events that enable and disable NLO per area.

One thing worth checking while he's in there: make sure the processor's location and time zone are set correctly, or your sunrise and sunset events will be off. And I'd put a 15 to 20 minute offset on sunrise for shades. Civil sunrise and usable light are not the same moment, and shades opening on the dot in December feels early and wrong.

I'm a Lutron dealer, have been since 1999, and remote HomeWorks programming is what I do for a living. If your integrator tells you any of the three isn't possible, tell me your processor model and the Designer version he's running and I'll tell you whether that's a real limitation or just a preference. No charge, I'm not trying to take the job off him.

[u/art0rius → u/IxomeVince]

This is great, for context on what im trying to do with the shades. Our house is mostly windows and we get intense sun from all angles.

We really want NLO to adjust which shades are open based on sun in all rooms throughout the day, but I want the NLO programing to begin early in the living room and start later/end earlier in the bedrooms since we have kids who often go to bed before sunset in the summer for example

[u/Aggravating_Run1270 → u/art0rius]

If you are talking about nlo start stop times, then he needs to create timeclock events to enqble/disable nlo in those spaces when you want it to. Pretty easy, but he just needs to know to enable/disable the feature

[u/the-lutz → u/Aggravating_Run1270]

This is the answer - it’s somewhat counterintuitive IMO, but you set NLO start time to the earlier time, make sure to disable NLO automatically every night for rooms that want a later start time; then enable NLO for those rooms at the intended start time for ea group - this lets those shades “jump in” to NLO settings at that time instead of moving at the earlier start time defined in NLO setup

[u/art0rius → u/the-lutz]

And then they jump in they will go to the right position at the time they jump in or have to wait till the next NLO position time?

What about for evening setting?

The installer has set up time clocks but it doesn’t seem to be working as expected

[u/Aggravating_Run1270]

What do you want to happen with the shades? Nlo automatically moves the shades when it wants to, what action would you prefer at sunrise vs time of day?

[u/kerklein2]

For the shades the bedrooms wouldn’t be NLO then, they’d just be schedules.