Smarthome RemoteLinc 2

The new RemoteLinc 2's from Smarthome come in a couple of styles and capabilities, all of which work differently than the previous RemoteLinc. We will discuss each here and some odd characteristics of each. They are, at their heart, controllers, so that article will apply to them just like the original RemoteLinc.

Note: These remotes are a bit finicky when trying to define them in Indigo. Often times you have to wake them up again after the linking process has begun. Press and hold the set button (again, even if you already did it once) until it beeps - that puts it into linking mode and should allow you to finish syncing the device.

The first, and most different in appearance, is the Switch version of the RemoteLinc 2. As you can see, it looks pretty much like a SwitchLinc - which was the intention. It's an easy way to add a switch to a location that may not actually have a switch outlet. By default, it works just like you would expect - the top part of the paddle will send button 1 ON or instant ON (if double-tapped) and the bottom part of the paddle will send button 1 OFF or instant OFF (if double-tapped). So, create your triggers accordingly - INSTEON command received button 1 and the typical commands.

You can, however, change the switch to two other modes: Scene Toggle Mode and Scene Non-Toggle Mode. See the RemoteLinc 2 docs for more information on how to switch between modes.

When you change the switch to this mode, the top paddle will toggle between ON and OFF for button 1, and the bottom paddle will toggle between ON and OFF for button 2. This is why you see both button 1 and button 2 in the INSTEON Command Received trigger dialog - because in this mode (and the next mode) the top part of the paddle is button 1 and the bottom is button 2.

Non-toggle mode is almost identical to scene toggle mode above - except that it doesn't toggle. The top paddle always sends button 1 ON and the bottom paddle always sends button 2 ON.

The 4 Scene and 8 Scene models look very similar - they have 4 physical paddle buttons, but how those buttons are assigned and used are quite different. Note however that you can switch a 4 to an 8 and vice versa. This leads to some of the problems with supporting these devices.

The default mode for the 4 Scene model is to have the left side of each button do an OFF/INSTANT OFF/DIM and the right side to do ON/INSTANT ON/BRIGHTEN, for a total of 4 buttons. You use INSTEON Command Received triggers to catch these commands and perform the tasks you like, or you can create INSTEON links between these buttons and other devices.

You can switch the 4 Scene device to function as the 8 Scene, just follow the instructions in the device's documentation.

The 8 Scene version works mostly as you'd expect: by default, each side of the 4 buttons is an independent button, and toggles ON/OFF. There is one really odd implementation decision that Smartlabs made when designing this mode: for some reason, while they mark the buttons like this:

The INSTEON commands sent aren't exactly what you'd expect:

Note that the button labeled “a” on the RemoteLinc actually sends out commands as button 2. Correspondingly, the button labeled “b” sends out commands as button 1. Silly, right?

We thought about trying to reverse this in our UI, but realized that it would require significant and potentially unreliable relinking if you ever switched between 8 and 4 scene modes. So, unfortunately, you'll just need to keep this in mind when using the INSTEON Command Received triggers or when creating links between the remotelincs and other devices - the button sides are exactly backwards from what you would expect. We don't understand this choice, but it is what it is.

There is another mode for 8 Scene modules - Non-Toggle mode. As described above, it will simply turn off the toggle mode - so a button will always send ON rather than toggle between ON and OFF.