“Can Only Lutron Motors Be Connected to a Lutron Lighting System?”
A lot of people in the blinds industry would have you believe that only Lutron motors are compatible with a Lutron lighting system. But is this accurate?
To find out, we spoke to an expert. John Christoyannis, from OKTO Technologies, worked for Lutron for 16 years. So there was no better person to answer our questions than him.
Harry sat down with John to pick his brains, and the result is an eye opener. Check it out.
If you prefer to read rather than watch, keep scrolling to see a full transcript.
Harry: Okay, so John, you’ve spent 16 years at a company that claims to be the leader in light and control industry, and even though you’ve left that company, you’re still in the technology industry. What’s kept you there?
John: I think it’s, I mean, my personal interest is in wellness. Anything to do with improving people’s quality of lives and especially how technology can be used to achieve that. So that’s been always there. But I think you would agree if I say that the changes in both the lighting, and the window treatment, and the whole automation industry in the last 20 years has been phenomenal. So I think for anyone who has been in this industry, there’s been enough to keep them excited and intellectually stimulated.
H: Sure, yeah. Because I’ve seen a lot of changes in the way that people are buying, or the products, that people are buying. I don’t know if I’ve seen quite as many changes in terms of new products, but I’ve only been in this industry for eight years. You’ve been in there far longer than I have. What are the sort of changes that you’ve seen in the lighting and shading over those years?
J: Well, when I joined the lighting and shading industry, for example, in 2004, the electronic drive was completely new to the window treatment industry for example, it was at least ten years ahead of anything else in the market. These days, it’s become almost like it’s becoming the standard. So just the motors themselves have evolved from just plain motors, noisy, to something which is extremely accurate and with very low noise. On the lighting side, the changes have been revolutionary primarily because of the introduction of the LED. Not that the LED wasn’t there, but just the costs drop down to the point where everybody was using it. And the other big change in the lighting industry has been the circadian rhythms and how the temperature of light can affect your mood and your well-being, so all these things together have meant significant impact.
H: Sure. That’s interesting because I see a lot of people wanting smart shading and I see a lot of people wanting smart lighting and almost treating the two things as separate things, almost stand alone, like as if I’m just going to buy a smart light bulb, at its simplest form, and which you can do very easily at DIY level. And that almost seems to have split out the smart home market, I suppose. But you’ve seen the benefits of controlling both shading and lighting simultaneously. What are those benefits?
J: Yeah, I agree with you that the tendency is to treat them separately and that’s always going to be there. Even lighting designers tend to deal lighting separately, from daylight, for example. But there are obvious advantages. A classic example is delivering a presentation, and you want to quickly shift from what might be a welcome scene to a projector screen to let’s have a conversation, or something like that. And in each one of these, your lighting needs to be at a different level and your window treatments need to be a different level. And you can extend that to your home as well, whether it’s the kitchen or the living room. You don’t want to be faffing about with controls and chains and all that. And the concept of a scene, which is what this is about, creating a lighting scene which incorporates both artificial and daylight, has been around for a long time, maybe as long as theater has been, but it’s still not as commonplace as you might think. So I think there’s some education and that’s going to happen.
H: Yeah, sure. It’s a funny thing I was reflecting on the other day is that I actually haven’t had to open or close the blinds in my house for two years. I haven’t had to think about it. They go up in the morning, I think I’ve got set for something like 20 minutes after sunrise, and then they close in the evening, 15 or 20 minutes after sunset, and they just do that. I know that they’re going to do that, and I don’t even have to think about it. And it’s only when this past weekend I was away, staying away, and my mother in law was there opening up the blinds downstairs, going around each one, pulling the chain on each one. And I was thinking, I don’t do that anymore. I haven’t had to do that for two years, I think. I know that sounds lazy, right?
J: The irony is that even though you’re spending much less time, you’re using your blinds a whole lot more than the person with the manual blinds. And I guess if you take this to the extreme, especially in a commercial setting, if your lighting and your daylight are coordinated, you start saving a lot of energy, right. Because you start bringing in more daylight and reducing your lighting as well, which I think is going to be increasingly important given the situation today.
H: Well, that’s exactly the thing. I mean, you start multiplying my little house out by a floor of an office and then multiple floors of an office, and you start thinking about how much do people actually interact with their blinds or their lights. It’s quite easy, isn’t it, to have the blinds down because it was sunny this morning, and then do people bother to put their blinds back up again? No, often they don’t. And more often than not, they have a separate lighting system that might be based on a lux level that then actually kicks in because their blinds are down when they don’t need to be, and the lights come on automatically and nobody thinks about it because well, there’s not that, we sort of come up with the term, ‘discomfort trigger.’ You’ve got a discomfort trigger to go and put your blind down because it’s too bright or you can’t see your screen, but then there’s no discomfort trigger to make you actually go and put your blind back up again because the lights come on automatically so you can still see what you’re doing.
J: Yeah, that’s a good term.
H: Typically clients select their home automation system and then only later on they select their window treatments. How do you see that? Does that make sense in your opinion?
J: I think it does make sense when you’re designing a home automation system, your blinds are part of that, but you have to start with the centre and what the basic philosophy and the basic system is going to be, and then work out the rest. But you do have to think about the whole picture. It’s no use just deciding on a control system and leaving the consideration about the type, at least, of the window treatment you’re going to have later because that’s going to affect the wiring that you’re going to have, et cetera. So they are connected.
H: So there’s implications thereof.
J: Yeah, you have to look at the whole big picture right? Not just focus on the control processor, let’s say, and the protocol and forget about what it is you’re actually trying to control which happens.
H: So that’s the question I had. In one sense, you get this situation where people select their system, they select what they’re going to choose as the main backbone of the infrastructure of their house but then there are wider reaching implications and not just for shading,. I’m sure there’s implications on all the elements that you connect to that
J: Yeah, exactly.
H: I wanted to ask you about Lutron, and this is a question that I get asked all the time: ‘can only Lutron motors be connected to a Lutron lighting system?’
J: The answer is no. And I think you can generalise the question; “what window treatments can you control by any control system?’’ And then these days you can achieve anything right? You can control any window treatment with any control system with the right interface. The only question is not so much whether you can, the question is what level of functionality you’re going to get. And by functionality obviously, you’re going to be able to raise it open and bring it closed, that goes without saying but you have to think about, will you be able to stop the blind when it’s moving? For example. Will you be able to have presets? Will you have positional feedback back either to your control system or to your keypad or through your touchscreen? That’s what can vary depending on the control system and the window treatment type you’re controlling.
H: Sure, that makes sense. So we both know that Lutrons at the premium end of the market and I’m sure they would be the first to acknowledge that. What are the benefits of having a Lutron motor or a Lutron shade? What’s the point of difference?
J: I think the primary benefit, to be honest, is to the installer. It just makes the whole design and integration kind of seamless because Lutrons motors are native to the Lutron system. Obviously, at a secondary level, you’ll be able to take full advantage of the Lutron electronic drives in the sense that you’ll know the position of the motor at any point in your control system, you’ll be able to give a feedback to the user, potentially. I think that’s what I would say with the benefits would be.
H: Yeah, that makes sense. So that links back to what we’re saying about the results of your shading choices, in terms of both the type of blinds and the type of motors when you’re choosing that home automation system, you have to look at those things like you said. Yes, you’re expecting to go up and down. That’s the basic level. What are the other bits that you get both from an installer perspective and from an end-user perspective? Because both of those then will potentially feedback into making that decision on ‘what kind of system do I actually choose to operate my smart home’. Is that fair?
J: Yes. The only thing I would add there is that we as OKTO, for example, I’m sure any dealer will of course say this, the aim is to offer the best solution for that particular application, right. And then hopefully at the best value for the client as well. But we tried to really implement that by kind of leaving aside the additional complexity the control element might present. So if we’re selecting window treatments, we’ll try to select the best type of window treatment for that particular application, even if it means, for example, that we might need to apply to different control strategies because the window treatments are from different manufacturers, for example. So we tried to not worry the client with the control complexities and leave that to us, even though it will make our lives more difficult.
H: Sure. Yeah. So you’ve obviously got a lot of experience with the Lutron system. What are the implications of choosing a Lutron lighting system over other options? And I’m not talking about disadvantages necessarily, I’m talking about what difference does it make?
J: I think maybe the way to see this is more general level. It’s really the pros and cons of an open versus a closed protocol system. Lutron is a closed protocol. They have their own propriety communication language and all their components talk the same language. And that’s the advantage of the close protocol, is that as an integrator, you don’t need to worry about ensuring everything is going to talk to each other. And you have a reliability in terms of the performance. Whereas the advantages of an open protocol is that you can design a system that’s much more custom to a specific application. You’re not trying to fit the application around your control system, but the other way around. So each one has its advantages.
H: yeah, that makes complete sense. And it’s very much, and I think you must be at OKTO, you must be in the same kind of boat where, from what you’ve said, your aim is always to give people the best and the right solution for them. And doing that involves actually weighing up the pros and cons the advantages and disadvantages of the solutions that are out there that you could offer the individuals. So from your perspective, am I right saying that’s a case of, you look at the requirements of a project and then you look at your range of solutions that you have access to, and you’re able to then make a judgment based on what you know about all of those solutions, and based on what you know about that project, you can make a judgment on what is the most applicable.
J: Yeah, exactly. And we have to start from the central system and work our way outwards. You don’t reinvent the wheel every time, of course. If it’s a high-end residence with relatively standard needs, whether it’s in terms of the lighting, the window treatments and the AV, for example, that will push us towards some pre-packaged solution. Whereas if it’s a commercial application, it might be a bit more flexible, but ultimately, we don’t try to sell everything as a package. Look, this is it. Make it work.
H: Sure. Okay, well, that’s great. I think that’s really helpful. It helps us to understand what you need to be looking at, what you need to consider, when you’re looking at shading and lighting, and also the importance of not treating them as separate, standalone individual packages, but actually treating them as a complete unit. Lighting control, by the very nature of the word, involves natural light control as much as artificial light control, in my opinion. And so that’s very much the angle that we come at it is saying, right, you have both elements that are present. They’re going to be present in your building, unless it’s a prison, maybe, but you have natural light and you have the artificial light. And it’s about saying, how do we balance those? How do we make that comfortable for the occupants and do it in a way that is energy efficient and works for everybody who’s actually got to be using that system on a daily basis?
J: Yeah, absolutely. I think we’re still at the kind of early stages in understanding that concept. Even if you look at lighting design software models out there, they’re still primarily focused on artificial light. They don’t really take into consideration the daylight. So even lighting designers are starting out their journey on that.
H: Sure. That’s helpful. John, thank you very much.
J: My pleasure.
H: Your time is appreciated.
J: Thanks for the opportunity.