PicoBlaster

Lutron makes amazing lighting control hardware, but their artificial limitations on their Caseta line of products is horribly unfriendly to consumers. Everything speaks the same RF protocol, but they've crippled the Caseta Smart Hub to disallow any non-Caseta branded hardware.

The PicoBlaster is a hardware + software project to interface a Pico Keypad with a ESP8266 module, such that any Lutron device compatible with the Pico can be controlled over wifi.

Lutron has dozens if not hundreds of devices compatible with the Pico that are artificially forbidden from communicating with the Lutron Smart Bridge Pro. They want you to buy identical hardware with a fancy label like RadioRA2 and pay $$$$ for an installer. Lame. Instead, buy the hardware on Ebay, pair it with a Pico remote, and interface it to a ESP8266.

Can be used to control RadioRA2 dimmers, PowPaks, and any other device compatible with the Pico. The pico back case needs to be removed for the modifications, but the front face and original functionality remain unaffected.

Hardware

• Pico Keypad (there are different versions - tested with SI4010 IC model with ON/OFF/DIM UP/DIM/DOWN/FAV buttons commonly sold at Home Depot)
• ESP8266 Module (Tested with Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266)
• Connect ESP8266 3.3V and GND Pico battery + and - terminals (remove battery first). According to Si4010 datasheet, the Pico can be operated with a supply voltage of 1.8-3.6V (3V recommended)
• Consider cutting out battery retention clamp for easier access to IC legs, not mandatory.
• Connect GPIOs to the SI4010 chip in the Pico as follows:
• GPIO12 ESP = ON = SI4010 PIN 12/GPIO2
• GPIO14 ESP = OFF = SI4010 PIN 10/GPIO4
• GPIO13 ESP = DIM DOWN = SI4010 PIN 14/GPIO8
• GPIO15 ESP = DIM UP = SI4010 PIN 8/GPIO6
• GPIOs are pulled low to trigger buttons. Suspect we should add some resistors in series so that it is safer if the manual buttons on the Pico are used at the same time the GPIOs are pulled high by the ESP.

Software

WifiManager + fauxmoESP + FauxmoESP fork + Custom Sketch. FauxmoESP 3 has some weird bugs that crash the ESP on ESP Core 2.4.0

Working well

ON/OFF Functionality

Working, maybe

Dimming - because the Pico does not know the state of the target device and only has the ability to send incremental DIM UP or DIM DOWN signals, I have implemented dimming to either turn it on fully or turn it off fully, and then simulate holding DIM UP / DIM DOWN for a length of time to approximate the behaviour of setting a specific dim level / percentage. This works quite well for lighting dimmers, but could be dangerous for things like Shades/Blinds. If you are exclusively using the PicoBlaster, remembering the state and avoiding this would be trivial. However, I assume you are using local control and/or additional Picos so this is not enabled. Perhaps this can be implemented as an optional feature later.

Watchdog functionality - if the ESP crashes, the watchdog does not reliably resume the firmware. This is very rare but needs fixing.

Not working

Customizable name + dimming parameters as a part of wifimanager config

WifiManager reset button

Trigger Pico pairing function from ESP

References

Pico teardown: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/news/teardown-tuesday-lutron-caseta-wireless-remote/

Pico reverse engineering: https://hackaday.io/project/2291-integrated-room-sunrise-simulator/log/7223-the-wireless-interface

Si4010 datasheet: https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/data-sheets/Si4010.pdf

Future work and better ideas

Firmware tampering or SPI Man-in-the-middle TI CC1150 based devices to masquerade as Caseta dimmers. Stay tuned.

Try to gain access to the UART on the SI4010 chip.