Lutron Caseta Without A Bridge (Still Work?)

Lutron Caseta produces smart dimmers/switches to let you control and manage your traditional light bulbs from the mobile app or voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant. With the Lutron app, you can remotely adjust the brightness of your bulbs, turn them on and off, set a schedule, or use smart mode to deter potential intruders.

Lutron Caseta starter Kit comes with an additional device called “Smart Bridge” which acts as a hub and allows you to monitor and operate wireless dimmers, Serena motorized shades, and a variety of other products through devices such as a smartphone, smartwatch, tablet, or smart speaker.

So people are asking if the Lutron Caseta switches and dimmers can work without this Smart Bridge?

The answer is yes, they will continue to operate without the Smart Bridge and all scheduled activities will continue to function, but the ability to remotely control from the app and voice assistant will be impossible. It is also impossible to schedule new activities or create scenes.

How the Smart Bridge work and why we need it?

The Smart Bridge will make sure that your lights have a super-fast and ultra-responsive time when you control them from the app, Pico Smart Remote, or voice assistant.

It will create a single and direct connection for the entire system instead of connecting each device directly to the router to avoid slowing down your Wifi.

This hub is required during the setup process, then you can continue without it unless you want to monitor or operate your Caseta products through the Luton app and device such as your mobile phone, tablet, smartwatches.

Also, integrating your system with your voice assistants like Sonos, Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant or other third-party apps like SmartThings or IFTTT will require you to have the Bridge. It is also needed for the communication between the Lutron Caseta switches and other gadgets like motion sensors.

These are all Smart Bridge features:

Features & functions.	Smart Bridge.
Support up to 75 Lutron Caseta devices.	Yes
Programmed via Lutron App.	Yes
Scene control via Lutron App.	Yes
Timeclock scheduling of daily events via the Lutron app.	Yes
Connects to Wifi router via Ethernet cable.	Yes
Local device operation will continue to work if the internet is down or the smart bridge is not communicating.	Yes
Remote access from the Lutron App.	Yes
Support Lutron Caseta Wireless gadgets.	Yes
Control outside the app via widgets.	Yes
Geofencing feature from the Lutron App.	Yes
Support voice assistant (Alexa, Google Assistant, Sonos, Siri).	Yes
Support Third-party apps (IFTTT & SmartThings).	Yes
Control from Smartwatches & tablets & Smartphones.	Yes

What are the features that will continue to work?

So as we mentioned before without the Bridge it’s not possible to control your Lutron Caseta products from the app or voice assistant or create scenes or utilize timeclock scheduling of daily events, but what are the features that will continue to operate?

The ability to adjust the brightness and turn the light on and off from the switches remains active when the bridge is not available. Also, if you have already programmed some settings, they will continue to work when the hub disappears.

The Lutron Pico Remote that you use to control your dimmers and switches will also work without an additional bridge.

How to connect Pico Remote to a dimmer without the Bridge?

The Pico remote is a smart device made by Lutron in order to communicate wirelessly with up to 10 Caseta Wireless dimmers, lamp dimmers, and switches sold separately.

You can follow the instructions below to connect Pico remote without the Smart Bridge:

1. Press the off button on the Caseta dimmer/switch for 6 seconds.
2. The LED green light on the Pico remote will flash.
3. Then Press and hold the “Off” button on the Pico Remote for 6 seconds until the light bulb flash 3 times.

Conclusion.

So it’s good to add the Smart Bridge to your Lutron system to get the most of it and benefit from all features that the switches and dimmers provide, but when this hub goes away don’t panic you can still control your lights from the physical switch.

So we hope that we answered all the questions related to this topic and you can visit other articles on our website to get more information about smart home products.