apostolakisl

The srewless wall plate isn't part of the switch and can be done with any decora switch. The Insteon paddle on the switch is held on with 4 screws. Standard decora switches from HD or whatever are gloss white. It would be nothing to offer a swap out paddle that is matte white, or blue or grey, or whatever. I think Insteon offered a selection of colors in the past. But not offering the gloss white to match all the rest of the switches in a standard house would be a mistake. I have no problem offering all sorts of other finishes, just so long as the standard one survives. I don't think Insteon's problems were the look of the switches. Almost all the switches out there look basically the same. They went out of business because of how they positioned themselves in the market, not the product they brought to market. They were too proprietary. That rarely works. Apple being about the only company that manages to get away with that. They needed to let 3rd parties participate. If the new owners stay so tight, they will never gain traction. Z-wave has flourished because of all the parties involved. Insteon communication protocols could have been as ubiquitous as z-wave, but they refused. Insteon, in my opinion, is far better than z-wave. I bought a number of z-wave switches and have pulled the all and put Insteon in their place.

@stevehoytThat smart splitter looks easy, but for $500 I think I could do it for free. I already have CAI webcontrol boards which I can hook up to my AC units to know when they are running and I can do that in the attic. At that point, assuming the node server can tell the car to charge or pause charging, I just need to write a program on ISY. I haven't seen the node server working yet since it seems as though I actually have to have the car before the nodes will install. So, I'm not 100% that the node server can start/stop charging. Can you confirm that the node server can do that?

Thanks for the info. Directly in front of my parking spot at the office are my AC units. When I bought the space, I re-did the AC and went from 4 units to 3 units. So I already have a 50 amp circuit just sitting there doing nothing. I don't actually drive that many miles. My current car is a CTS-V, is 11 year old and only has 65,000 miles on it. We have largely used my wife's car for the bulk of driving, but perhaps that will change after I get this car. Back in the day I thought 558 hp was impressive. Now it is 1000+hp or I'm going home. Anyway, I have always loved the wolf in sheep clothing car. . . the 4 day family sedan that kicks ***. Probably talking about a few bucks/month, but whatever, I have to charge it somewhere and being a HA junkie, I just want to do it. The cost of the car itself dwarfs the cost of the electricity, so it is kind of joke, but again, whatever. Basically, I just need the node server to give me control of the charging. To tell the car to start and stop charging. Not sure if you have to keep the car awake to do that. Doesn't seem like keeping the computers in the car on should have much power draw, but what do I know, I don't yet own it.

It would only matter on command, not response. The max kw is based on a running 15 minute average, so even if there were a short delay of something under a minute, it would not likely affect the 15 minute running average much. I need to figure out the best method for getting the trigger data into ISY. It is 3 phase and Sense, which I use at home, doesn't do 3 phase. So I need to figure out a different way. Right off, I know I could use a webcontrol board and just monitor the AC units with that and only charge when they are idle. Though I might never charge the car the way this summer is going.

My new Tesla is finally arriving next week after a 6 month wait. This is my first Tesla. I was looking at charging at the office where I am on a kw + kwh billing system. In other words, your worst 15 minutes of wattage during the month determines about 2/3 of the bill and kwh is only ~5c each. So, my thought was, to only let the Tesla charge when my wattage was low so it only cost me 5 cents/kwh and doesn't bump up my high watt level. It sounds like this node could help. Basically, I would like to tell the car to charge whenever certain conditions are met. Either I monitor my overall power usage, or just monitor the big draw items, like AC units, and only charge when they are idle. Anyone have thoughts on this?

The vast majority of businesses know their best customers are their current customers. I'm sure any marketing consultant that Insteon might hire at this point would focus heavily on the current customer base. Repeat business is the cheapest to attain and repeat customers also tend to be referral sources. You already have their email, delivery address, and you market to them for basically free. The cost of attaining new customers is generally significant tp the bottom line, especially in consumer electronics. It sounds like your "fresh" look is just decora switches with a different gloss? I don't know, you don't like the "click". Not sure, I like the click, but I would be OK with a different click. Insteon switches as they are sit right next to regular old home depot decora switches and the color and texture is the same. The led's are the only difference. The Nokia line appears to just do away with the leds, not sure, only seen pictures of them. If the color and texture match, fine. I would not want a different set of leds, no leds is fine. Different leds would mean I have to replace all the Insteon with the Nokia, at least in that room. I don't want a mix and match, and I suspect most people would say the same.

You are not at the mercy of the manufacturer if they build to a standard, that standard would be decora. I can put "dumb" decora switches in, z-wave, or any number of probably 1000 different brands that make a decora style switch. What is behind the paddle can be lots of things, but the look should continue to be decora. I don't want a "fresh" look. It will soon be dated and it won't match anything else, not today, not tomorrow, not ever. I have no idea what you have in your mind that is a "fresh" look, that I could mix and match with my other decora switches that won't look like a patch job. And to say that Insteon is done with me as a customer is just a bizarre thought. I would venture to guess that people like me were their best customers on an ongoing basis. I probably spent on average $500+/year with them for years on end. The vast majority of HA people did not set out to automate their entire house. I didn't. I started with about 10 or so. Give them something that swaps out with their current switch and doesn't stick out like a patch job or they aren't going to buy it. At least in the early days, Insteon (and to some extent x-10) were the only products that you could ease your way into. The protocols main feature was just that, it worked over standard wiring. Now there are others, like z-wave, but it still holds. Heck, google "zwave switch" and search the "images" section. They pretty much all look like decora. There is a reason for that. If Insteon wants to go the way of Crestron and make it an all or none home setup, then fine, but good luck with that.

Kind of a jump from saying I want a decora switch appearance to wanting everything to "stay the same". Perhaps you want to tear out every single switch in your house, even the ones that get used once per year (or less), have absolutely no need in the world to automate, just so it LOOKS "fresh", but not me. I mean seriously, I just want regular looking switches that work great, not "fresh" looking switches that may or may not work great. And I don't want to replace every switch in my house to avoid a mish mash of switch appearance. I'm not interested in impressing my visitors with some weird *** looking switch that they never saw before and need a tutorial on how to use, I just want switches that work great and that don't require replacing all 300 switches in my house, even the 200 I barely use. And once you go for this "fresh" look, you are at the whim of THAT manufacturer, who may stop making that look or just go out of business. If Insteon fails this time, it may actually be the end, and that isn't the end of the world, I'll keep my Insteon switches, which look like decora, and replace them with other switches as they fail that also look like decora and could be made by anybody. I mean, if it were to happen that some industry consortium comes out with some new style and they all agree to adopt it, OK, that might work, basically that is how decora came to be 50 years ago or whatever it was. But if Insteon stops decora and starts some unique looking thing, I will be moving on. And the bulk of new customers who might want a 5 or 10 switches, or might want to just try it out and see if they like it, won't ever buy the first one cause it won't match.

1) Not sure why you need a "fresh" look. Nearly every home built in the US uses decora or toggle style switch. If people wanted something else, then regular switch manufacturers would be changing up the look as well. While there are some "fresh" switches out there, once you commit to one of those, you have committed to all of them. . . from now on. And who wants that? What happens when that company decides to "freshen up" again and stop selling that old design, now you have to redo all of them or have a mismatch. Also, what if you just want a select few switches? Standards exist for a reason, and mix and match between brands is a major selling point. The only folks doing these "fresh" style switches are the ones spending $100k+ on HA with 100% of their home on the system . . . like maybe Crestron. 5) That is my point. The specialty items drive profit in the non-specialty items. You can't make a profit on the profitable switches when you don't close the deal for any switches because you failed to sell the buyer on the system as a whole. It is a major angle for marketing to show all these devices to the prospective customer and say, "see, this system can handle all of your current and future needs like no other brand".

But it is. @MrBill has an experience that I have also seen and I have seen it on this forum elsewhere. I suspect that the rf and PLC feed the same processor and noise on the PLC overwhelms and crashes it. Kind of like a DOS attack. I would be interested to know what happens if @MrBill uses a device that is on the problem phase that is linked to a device on the non-problem phase. Assuming the issue is overwhelmed processing of the input, then output should be unaffected and radio from the device on the noisy phase should still control a device not overwhelmed by bad input on the non-noisy phase. Then test the opposite.

It isn't hard to prove a device is working on RF. Like many of us here, I have a bench test jig for my Insteon devices and it plugs into the wall. What I have done is plug it into a UPS that is itself unplugged and you now know if the device communicates, it must be by rf. And indeed, I have discovered a dead radio on a PLM that I recapped. No idea if I caused it when doing the recap or if it was unrelated. But anyway, 75 dual band devices, you can be pretty confident that unless the house is massive and the devices are all spread out, that the devices are, by and large, all in radio range.

@ase I agree, I had also expected that should SH go bankrupt, that it would be bought out of bankruptcy. It has to be, the protocol is not worthless and there are creditors that demand to get as much money back as possible. My hopes would be the following: 1) They do not abandon the current line. The backend hardware of the devices can be changed, but the look and feel of the current devices should stay, at least as an option. There are too many people out there who already have their homes filled with these devices who aren't going to want a mishmash of aesthetic looks. Furthermore, the current design blends very well with standard decora switches so you don't need to go 100% HA yet maintain a consistent look. 2) I would like to see them license. I think that licensing will ultimately bring about a bunch of new and exciting products. No matter how clever and imaginative the people at Insteon are, when you open up the protocol to the whole world, smart and creative people will start coming out of the woodwork with ideas that no one else ever considered. But I would like to see it done very carefully with a lot of testing requirements for the products. I don't want to see the protocol reputation diluted by a bunch of junk. In addition, licensing is a good way to increase cash flow with minimal increase in overhead. 3) I would like to see firmware upgradeable devices. The current devices appear to be upgradeable should you open them up and connect to the pads. Obviously they would never sanction that for an end user, but if they released the code as part of a way to program a new design, you probably could hack-it and upgrade the older devices. For new devices, it might be that you remove the faceplate and then there is a usb jack for flashing new firmware. I would rather not see any method that can be done over PLC or radio as it would be security threat. 4) Consider dropping the PLC, or at least allow it to be turned off. It is hard to know for sure, but I think noise on the power lines can drown out the radio signal. It seems that the radio and PLC share some internal processing and when there is noise it overwhelms the processor so that the radio comm is lost as well. It seems that the radio protocol is quite robust all on its own and that PLC is more legacy than anything. 5) Bring back all the specialty items. These are the items that have minimal sales, but land you the whole package. You might pick the Insteon protocol because it can integrate that unique device that no one else can, and then you buy 100 light switches. Certainly that worked for me, and I am guarding my io lincs, fan lincs, water sensors, and the like since I am not sure I will ever see new ones of those again. 6) And finally, for God's sake, embrace UD. The ISY controller is the only reason Insteon got as far as it did under the old management. I promise you, I would have dumped Insteon after my first purchase but for the ISY and I don't think I am unique in this at all.

sounds like you have 3 phase 120/208 which is very common in the US for light commercial. In other words, connect any of the 3 hots to neutral and you get 120v, cross any two hots and you get 208. Anyway, this power source is 100% compatible with USA rated items, assuming 60hz. Both my office and my church have this power configuration and I have Insteon at both locations. Most of the power is 120v, but we also have 3 phase AC units and single phase 208 to water heaters and such.

Not sure where the OP is, but in Europe at least, the 240v is single phase, not split phase. Interestingly, I just learned that in Europe on construction sites they do split phase 110v (two 180 degree legs of 55v). The 55v is generally too little voltage to get through skin and thus lowers risk of electrocution/injury at wet outdoor work sites. But it means they need 110v tools even though they won't work without the special work-site transformer. So anyway, it would seem to be that he needs a 240v to 120v transformer and would presumably then rely on radio for the PLM to work. I doubt the PLC works through a transformer.

I would say leave it alone. If you have the second gen dual band Insteon devices, they tend to last. And if you put high quality caps in your PLM, it is probably good for a long time as well. Might keep your eyes open for any good deals on used stuff as spares. But I am leaving my system alone, I have plenty of spares. Plus, I suspect someone will buy the Insteon technology sometime in the not too distant future and continue the product line.

I may be wrong on this. I swear it used to be that true/false status of a program would only trigger another program when it changes status. But I just checked in a very old 3.3.10 ISY firmware and it triggers every time regardless of whether the status changed or stayed the same. @larryllix

The comm topology is a mesh. All devices are equal and behave the same as far as comm (except I suppose battery devices). There are no switches or routers or any pre-defined pathways. There is no Insteon device that has a role in traffic distribution that is any different than any other device (battery things again). It is not like ethernet where a switch whose sole job moves traffic according to its destination. Nor is it like an ethernet hub that divides bandwidth among its outputs. Insteon has no direction to send traffic, everything goes out in all directions and everyone that hears that message propagates it until it hits the the max hops. The device that is sold as a "hub" is not a hub in any communication sense. It plays no different role than any other device with regards to communication. It is a hub only in the sense of how its user interface presents information to the user. It looks like a hub to the user, but it isn't. Calling your circuit panel a hub is not a very accurate description, especially since Insteon works by radio as much as PLC (probably more I would guess). A formal definition of a hub would need to be laid out, but I have never thought of a circuit panel as an Insteon hub and I'm not sure I have ever heard anyone else refer to it as a hub. When I think of a hub, I think of one client per spoke, but with Insteon, you may have multiple clients on the same circuit and none on any other circuit. In that case, would you call the gang box where the wires are spliced a "hub" now? I would say that a better description of these places as "distribution points", the same way an electrician would describe it from the standpoint of electricity. But again, radio bypasses all of that.

Insteon is a mesh network. All the nodes connect to as many other nodes as possible in a non-hierarchical format. The hub is a plm with a dedicated controller built-in. Somewhere on here someone published that they were able "hot wire" a hub to an RS-232 adapter and use it as a standard plm.

Yes, I just tested this and you are correct. Something has changed, a program used to only be a trigger upon changing status, now it is a trigger every time it runs regardless of if it changes. I just recently switched over to IoP and will need to look over my programs. I have had a few things happen that I wasn't sure why they happened and this might be a reason. But also, what Mr. Bill said. That fixes the problem and also solves hysteresis issues which very well may happen.

Mr. Bill addressed this as I would have. No need for a Boolean state variable ever because it just mirrors the state of the program and functions identically as a trigger for any program that references it. In your second post it looks like you stated you "couldn't do that". But you are mistaken. My guess is you need to put some hysteresis in there. Trouble likely is that temp is bouncing around. 79.9, 87.0, 79.9 etc. Each time it does that it will get you a new notification. Program 1 If temp is >=87 Then disable program 1 Else blank Program 2 If temp is < 79.5 Then enable program 1 Program 3 If program 1 is true Then do what you want Probably should do a "run at startup" on 1 and 2 as well. EDIT: After looking at this a second, I realized you don't need program 3. You can put your notification into program 1 then clause prior to the disable line.

If you restore from ISY and you still have incorrect behavior, that is a dead giveaway. Detecting orphan links is much more difficult since they don't create bad behavior, but they do take up space. Orphan links require a very good knowledge of how to read the links table. You could take a random sampling of devices, record their links, then delete/reinstall the devices and see if you get the same set of links.

Factory reset/restore PLM will make the PLM links the same as ISY's internal database. So bad links will only exist on the PLM if they exist in ISY, which can happen. The only way to get rid of bad links in ISY is to delete the devices that have bad links. This means starting over from scratch on those devices, need to manually put them back into programs and scenes.

Link counts get screwed up with any comm on the system. Have to do them while you are out of the house and programs disabled.

No, the PLM does not create a mesh. Every Insteon device does that on its own. The PLM, simply put, allows for a third party device (ISY) to become part of that mesh. The PLM can be thought of as a keypad linc with 1000 buttons on it that ISY can "push" to control scenes/devices. And just like any other Insteon device, it hears all the communication on the network and whatever the PLM "hears", so does ISY. As you add devices and scenes to your ISY, you are writing links to the PLM and to the other devices linking them together.

Here is to hoping Michel is playing poker with Smartlabs.