palayman

As an experiment I made a video of the largest scene I have at 60 fps, composed of 5 devices and about 20 pot lights (all the same bulbs) being turned on. They are on 4 breakers and spread across both phases. To make it worst case I made sure the heat pump was running along with the washer, dryer and a hair dryer. Video showed all 5 coming on in the same video frame. The only piece of additional hardware is my $5, home made, phase coupler. YMMV Not sure that Lutron could do better, but is would be at least 5X the cost, I'd couldn't do it myself and it wouldn't be integrated with all my other stuff.

Sorry you feel that way. I actually thought the discussion was good and should help anyone trying to setup Insteon in a new home.

Amazing! Pretty much settles any debate on the desirability of a coupler. Thanks for sharing!

This is why I have my PLM next the electrical panel so that the distances to devices are as evenly distributed as possible and why I have a a phase coupler so that I don't have to wait for the RF bridging to take place. As I said, I don't notice the popcorn even without adjusting ramp rates.

Perhaps. Even if several lights are in the same scene that could still take 3 message periods for insteon signal to propagate. Each message period is 6 zero crossings (5 +1 blank). This means worst case 2 message periods between first and last light coming on or about 10 ms. Since most people can sense a frame rate of 30 fps and some can sense 120 fps, this time delay is very perceptible. If you don't use scenes, it only gets worse. A slow ramp will make it seem better. To bad the insteon designers didn't keep track of hops and just have everything trigger at the end of the last possible message period.

I started using an Eaton CHSPT2ULTRA https://www.amazon.com/CHSPT2ULTRA-Ultimate-Protection-Length-Height/dp/B01AQAKRSS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1551131394&sr=8-1&keywords=EATON+CHSPT2ULTRA after reading https://www.stevejenkins.com/blog/2014/10/whats-the-best-whole-house-surge-protection/ The Leviton, although good, does not protect against L-G and N-G faults among other things. Paul

Thanks for the explanation. Must be some kind of delay calibration for each device. WIll have to do some more digging. Not sure that I can justify the additional cost (just the 100 or so dimmers would be $13,000+ vs $2,500 for insteon) to get rid of the popcorn. Actually, I don't notice it much. I have my plm at the panel and have a phase coupler right next to it so I think there aren't too many hops going on. Some day I'll pull out a scope and see if I'm right. Paul

Are you saying no popcorn with RadioRa2? Is this true if you need to transmit more that 30' and need to install one (or more) repeaters? Sorry, no idea how the repeaters are connected. Paul

My bad. Should have said myQ using polyglot. Schlage Sense is integrated directly into Google Home. Paul

I thought about using those for several fixed loads, but it looked like they were discontinued ("unavailable") on smarthome.com. Did see them on a few other sources, but had some concern about long term viability.

Don't want to jinx it, but I have 3 PLM's, all about 6 years old and still working.

I am also building a new house and have been considering the same questions. Decided to go with Insteon for all switches and dimmers (2477S/2477D). Have a lot of success with them in previous homes. Decision was made easy by a half price sale at Christmas time. With about 100 devices it was a considerable saving! Have used a number of 6 button switches in the past but have no plan for these in the new house. Find that we both pretty well exclusively use Google Home voice commands and the buttons don't get pushed very often. Plan is to have at least one google home device, probably the home hub, in each room. Have not had much success with the Insteon Ceiling fan controller. Had problems with the light flashing intermittently and replace with an inline module. Also find we don't change fan speeds often (never) and decided to got with 2477S/2477D combos for all fans - about 20. Found I don't use dimmers in hallways or the basement or garage so they are all 2477S. Still haven't settled on duplex outlets. Have recently added Z-Wave devices on my sump pump and water heater. Seems to work well and I like the power monitoring. Don't have a concern over synchronization with Insteon lights. Also still considering Motion Sensors. I tried a few of the original Insteon devices and had trouble programming. Should have consulted this forum a long time ago. However, I don't like lights that turn on/off when I enter/leave a room and don't want to spend my life tweaking programs to stop them from waking wife in the middle of the night when I use the bathroom. With LED lights using so little power I tend to leave the lights on all night if necessary and my cameras do I a good job without them anyways. Maybe someone can convince me to use motion sensors with a killer app? Have also started using polyglot to integrate Wireless Tags (temp and water montior - house, fridge, freezer, sumps), alarm (DCS) and Door lock (Schlage Sense). Still need to investigate pool equipment integration (recommendation needed!) and appliance monitoring (Thermador anyone?). Not sure how old you parents are, but I'm over 60 and have been doing all this without too much effort. I'm sure you parents will like whatever solution you chose. Paul

I have a number of lights that go on and off with random waits while I'm away from home. What happens to these if I have a power failure or I reboot the ISY during one of these? For example I have some out side lights that come on from sunset to 11PM. The else clause has a "wait 1 hour (random)" before they turn off. Will they just stay on after a power failure during the wait" Paul

I'd suggest one addition. Somewhere you need to change the init value for the state variable to 1 as well so that it survives a power outage while you are away. I have a program that is triggered by "Hey Google Away on" that does this as well as sending me a text message confirmation. Paul

Thanks

Thanks for the info. I like the idea that room information is stored somewhere other than just in google home. I have had to disconnect and reconnect mobilinc a couple of times and having to go through all the devices in the google home app to set the room information is a real hassle. The light thing is also a pain. I have some outside lights connected to on/off switches and some to dimmers. At first if I asked google to "turn off all outside lights" it would only turn off those connected to dimmers. I had to add the word "light" to the spoken name of those connected to the on/off switches to get the behavior I wanted. Are the icons that represent programs selected somewhere in the portal? I don't see it in the documentation on the wiki. This also seems like a big plus over mobilinc where they are chosen somewhat arbitrarily. Paul

Mobilinc: 1) uses the "Spoken" field from Notes on both devices and scenes as the google home spoken name. 2)devices show up as light bulb icons if they are dimmers and switches if they are on/off only. This has the side effect that you must put the word "light" in the spoken if it controlled by an on/off switch. 3)programs in a "Voice" folder use their program name as the google spoken name. They are not considered a light, so saying "all lights on" for example won't trigger one. Saying "on" after the spoken runs the "then" path. Saying "off" runs the else path. Does using the ISY portal work in the same way?

Has anyone done a detailed feature comparison of using ISY Portal vs Mobilinc Connect to connect to Google Home? I am currently using Mobilinc, but have ISY Portal also available. Thanks, Paul

Just went through this. Found a black one on ebay. Couldn't find another option.

I'm using a Schlage Sense lock that coordinates with the the handle on the front door. My considerations were that it had to have a key backup, that could be keyed to match other doors, and I had to have internet access. I settled on this lock, which is bluetooth and bought the wifi adapter. works great. connects to google home and there is a polyglot nodeserver (I haven't set up). I am very happy with it. Paul

Just noticed the documentation for the installation of this dimmer actually talks about installing a "bypass device" to make sure their is enough current to keep it alive if you are using some non-resistive load. They suggest a small incandescent bulb in parallel. Standby load is 0.8 watts or maybe 7mA. https://www.aartech.ca/related/ZW111-nano-dimmer-manual.pdf They actually sell these bypass devices and you can buy on amazon https://tinyurl.com/ycbsjnw4

Perhaps an over generalization. These dimmers actually can actually be compatible with the right LED bulb, as their documentation suggests. As you say it depends on the nature of their standby load as well, but some LED designs.

The dimmer you're using calls for a 20W minimum load when using it without a neutral. Perhaps the LED bulbs load less than this. Paul

If you read the specs for these devices they require a "minimum load". In other words they need maximum resistance on the load. Through this load, that has a neutral on the far side, they draw some current to make the electronics functional, perhaps a few uA, without making the light come on.

Check the voltage to ground on both terminals of the switch to ground (i.e. the junction box) when the switch is turned off. One should be about 0 which will make it the neutral. The other should be 120 VAC. Paul