Three keypad brands. Three programming tools. One job.
Lutron in the back of house because the lighting is Lutron. Control4 where the AV is. Designer keypads in the principal rooms because that is what the interior designer specified. Every one of them programmed in a different application, with a different idea of what a button is.
Buttons Machine puts them all in the same editor, in a browser tab, and lets a program written once drive buttons on any of them.
What the split actually costs you
- Three applications, three laptops-worth of setup, three sets of credentials to keep alive for the life of the job.
- The same scene written three times, because the button that runs it lives in three different systems.
- A change to that scene is three edits, and the one you forget is the one the client presses.
- Engraving and function drift apart, because they are maintained in different places.
- Handover is a truck roll, because nobody else can open the tool that holds the programming.
What one editor changes
Write once, link everywhere
A program lives on its own and reports how many buttons reference it. Link it to buttons on any number of keypads, across manufacturers; edit it in one place and every linked button follows. The scene stops being three copies that have to be kept in agreement.
- Eleven keypad families, one screen. Lutron over LEAP and LIP, Control4, Eaton, Zooz, Zigbee and Matter among them.
- Thirteen action types. Press, hold, double-tap and off-level behave the same way whoever made the keypad.
- LED logic and engraving alongside function, so what the button says and what it does are maintained together.
- Preview mode runs the real action, so you check it in the room rather than in your head.
- Save is the deployment. No upload to a processor, no vendor application to open, no site visit to move a scene one button along.
About designer keypads
Brands like Black Nova exist precisely because the keypad should be a design object rather than a consequence of whose processor you bought. They are deliberately technology-agnostic — depending on how one is deployed it may present over Zigbee, KNX, RS485 or IP, or through a host system such as Lutron or Control4.
Where Black Nova stands today
Black Nova glass keypads are in development in Buttons Machine, over KNX. They are not shipping yet and we are not going to say otherwise on a page a dealer might specify from.
If a designer keypad on your job presents over a transport already shipping — Zigbee or Matter, or through a host system such as Lutron or Control4 — it joins the same editor now. Tell us the keypad and how it is deployed and you will get a straight answer, including a date if it is one we are building.
Questions
Do I have to replace the processors?
No. The Lutron processor stays, the Control4 director stays. The appliance sits alongside and takes the button events, so the keypads and their engraving are untouched.
Can one button drive loads on another manufacturer's system?
Yes — that is the point of a shared registry. A load you touch in one view is the same load everywhere else, whatever system it physically lives on.
What happens at handover?
Programming is a browser tab against the appliance on site, so the next person does not need a vendor application or your credentials to change what a button does.
Is this cloud dependent?
No. The appliance is self-hosted on the site's own network and licensed per appliance.
Can I try it without a job to test on?
Yes. There is a working editor in the browser on the Buttons Machine page, with four keypad families and a room that answers, and dealers get a licensed instance to commission a real project on.
Lutron and HomeWorks are trademarks of Lutron Electronics Co., Inc. Control4 is a trademark of Snap One, LLC. Black Nova is a trademark of its owner. Ctrlable is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of them. Product names are used only to describe interoperability.