Use Pico remotes to start Activities

Would you believe that some of us don’t use the Staples Connect app when we’re at home?

Don’t get us wrong: we love the app. We use it daily, especially when we’re away from our home. But at home, instead of pulling out our phones and finding the proper Activity or device to control, we control our house with Pico remotes.

Pico remotes are small handheld remotes made by Lutron. With Staples Connect, you can use Pico remotes to do things like turn on a Philips Hue bulb and make it a certain color, turn off all the lights in your house at once, lower the thermostat and turn on fans, and much more.

It’s an easy way to control devices in your house or automate a sequence of things.

To use a Pico remote, you’ll need to add it to your Staples Connect system and then create an Activity with it. (If you already have a Pico remote paired to a Lutron product, unpair it by >resetting the remote to factory settings.)

To add the Pico remote to your system:

1. Open Device Assistant.
2. Click Add Device.
3. In the Manufacturer drop down, select Lutron, then click Find Device. A list of all Lutron products that we support will appear.
4. Find the Pico remote that looks like yours, click it, then click Confirm.
5. Review the setup instructions. When you’re ready to proceed, click Add, then follow the instructions to add the Pico to your hub.

Now that your Pico is in your Staples Connect system, it’s time to make it control the devices you want. To do this, we’ll create an Activity that’s triggered by a button on the Pico.

To create this Activity:

1. Click Activities.
2. Click New Activity, then enter a name for your Activity.
3. We need to tell your Staples Connect system what will start the Activity. Choose “The Activity will be started by one of my devices,” then select the Pico remote.
4. Your hub knows that your Pico remote will start your Activity but it doesn’t know which button on the Pico you want to use for the Activity. Click the Reason drop down, then choose the button you want to start the Activity.
5. Now you can select the devices you want to control during the Activity. If you need some ideas about what to control, check out our Activities section.
6. Click Choose, then tell each of those devices what they should do. You can adjust the device settings manually, grab the current settings, revert to the original settings, or test the settings before saving them.
7. You can make your Activity send you an email or push notification each time it runs. To set up a notification for your Activity, enter the text for your notification (up to 140 characters) and select the users who should receive the notification. If you don’t want to set up a notification, click Skip.
8. You’re just about done. Review your Activity, then click Finish.

Great! Now you can use your Pico remote to control lots of different devices in your house—even ones that don’t normally talk to each other.

Even though we don’t use the Staples Connect app at home, we still enjoy its benefits. It’s one hub that works with all kinds of different products from top manufacturers and makes our lives easier (and way cooler).

Staples Connect isn’t just a different way to control things. It’s a new way to control everything at once.

Now, if you’ll excuse us, we need to turn down the thermostat, shut off the lights, lower the shades, and turn on the outside lights with our Pico.