Tips From The Top

Looking to enhance your smart home’s lighting?

This spring, global lighting innovator Lutron Electronics acquired Ketra, a Texas-based lighting company whose Natural Light LED products emulate daylight inside interior spaces. Ketra produces high-quality white, pastels, and saturated colors, allowing customers the ability to specifically design their lighting scenes to meet the space. Think family dinner light, rainy afternoon light, homework light, date-night light.

Lutron now offers the largest array of customizable lighting solutions, controls, and shades for any environment. 

According to Mike Pessina, co-CEO and president at Lutron Electronics, “Ketra’s range of quality light complements the Lutron light control product offering and enables our customers to create a more comfortable, productive and pleasant environment at home and at work. We’re excited to deliver this expanded light control solution to the industry.”

Last month, Lutron announced the update to its HomeWorks QS software, simplifying the integration of Ketra and HomeWorks QS systems. 

The software update is good news for Lutron customers; integrators can import Ketra Design Studio programming directly into a Lutron HomeWorks QS database, cutting way down on programming time and costs. And home owners can use the same keypads to control both Ketra and HomeWorks QS systems. 

Importing Ketra Design Studio into the HomeWorks QS database is seamless. When Ketra Design Studio is installed on the computer and the user is logged in, HomeWorks QS software can access Ketra projects and designate lighting scenes as directed. 

Lutron also offers a new DIN rail panel with integrated AFCI breakers, removing the need for wiring and extra panels. DIN rail modules live directly on the QS link, eliminating the need for a dedicated panel link to control motor loads. So what does this mean for your smart home? Besides making integration simpler and more elegant, DIN rail modules support remote system management (RSM), so your integrator can monitor the device and troubleshoot from anywhere. The new DIN AFCI panel and motor module will begin early in 2019. 

This acquisition is good news for Lutron customers. Founded in 1961, Lutron Electronics offers an array of lighting control options, from single-light dimmers to lighting management systems for entire buildings. They offer more than 15,000 products sold worldwide. In the U.S. alone, Lutron products save an estimated 10 billion kWh of electricity, or approximately $1 billion in utility costs per year. 

To learn more about the wide array of Lutron lighting and shading solutions for your home, call us at Jackson Hole AV. We’d love to discuss the possibilities.