HomeWorks Keypad Buttons People Actually Use

A HomeWorks keypad is the most expensive light switch in the house, and in most houses at least two of its buttons have never been pressed. Not because the owner doesn't know what they do — because what they do isn't anything anybody wants. The scene was named on a laptop on install day and the family has been living around it ever since.

We have been designing these keypads since 1999. This is what we have learned about which buttons get used, and how to fix the ones that don't.

Buttons are named after moments, not fixtures

The keypad by the kitchen door does not need a button called "Pendants" and another called "Cans". It needs "Cook", "Dinner" and "Clean Up", because those are the three things that happen in a kitchen, and each of them wants the pendants and the cans at different levels together. A button that sets one fixture is a dimmer with extra steps. A button that sets the room for what you are about to do is why you bought a system.

The test is simple: could a guest walk in, read the engraving, and press the right one? If a button needs explaining, it is named wrong.

Fewer buttons than you think

Five is plenty on a room keypad, and three is often right. The layout that works almost everywhere:

• Top: the brightest everyday scene — "Kitchen", "Welcome", "Work".
• Middle: one or two activity scenes — "Dinner", "Movie", "Read".
• Near the bottom: a low scene for walking through at night — "Path" or "Night". This is the one owners tell us they use most and never asked for.
• Bottom: Off. Always the bottom button, always the same on every keypad in the house, so nobody has to look.

A keypad with ten buttons is a keypad where the family uses two. If you have one, the fix is not more scenes — it is fewer, better ones, and a new engraved button kit.

Entry keypads are different

The keypad inside the garage door or at the front door is not a room keypad. Its job is arriving and leaving. "Welcome" lights the path from that door to the kitchen — not the whole house. "Goodbye" or "Away" turns everything off, and does it with a delay long enough to get out the door. A "Goodnight" on the master bedroom keypad does the same thing from the other end of the day, and leaves the hall at a low level for ten minutes.

If your entry keypad has "Living Room" on it, somebody put a room keypad by a door.

Scenes should know the time of day

This is the part most systems never get. "Welcome" at 6 pm in July wants no lights at all; at 6 pm in January it wants the path lit. HomeWorks knows sunrise and sunset for your address, and a scene can check it. The same is true for a "Night" button that is a little brighter for the first hour after dark and dimmer at 2 am. One button, behaving correctly all year, is worth three buttons the owner has to choose between.

The buttons that need a second look

• A scene nobody uses. Rename it for something that actually happens in that room, or take it off the keypad.
• Two scenes that look the same. "Dinner" and "Entertain" set to nearly the same levels. Merge them.
• Raise/lower on a room keypad. Useful on a dimmer, wasted on a scene keypad — a scene is a considered level, and nudging it is how it stops being one.
• No Off. It happens. Every keypad gets one, in the same place.
• The shade button that moves every shade. Shades want to be part of the scene, not a separate button — "Movie" drops them, "Morning" raises them.

What changing it involves

HomeWorks keypad programming lives in the system's database, and changing it takes the dealer software and a way to reach your processor. Both of those are things we have — for systems we installed and for systems we didn't. If your original dealer is gone, we read the existing database first and change only what you ask for; nothing is rebuilt.

Pricing is per change. A new scene is $49. One that depends on the time of day or a timer is $99. Adjusting an existing scene — a level, a fade, a room in or out — is $29, and for thirty days after any job, adjustments in that room are included, because the right level is the one you find by living with it. New engraving is a physical button kit, and we will tell you the part before you order it.

If you want us to look at a keypad, a photo of it and a sentence about what the room is for is enough to start. Chat is the fastest way, and if you have inherited the whole system with no dealer, this page explains the first step.