apostolakisl

Let us know how it goes. Just to be clear, you are NOT connecting the electrical systems with the extension cord. You are just putting a dual band device close to building 2 running it off building 1's power system. The idea is then that you have dual band device's inside of building 2 that receive the rf from the dual band device on the end of that 'extension cord" and "inject" the Insteon signal into building 2. This is the same concept as connecting power phases within a single building. My suggestion to you would be to trial it out before a permanent/trenched install. Perhaps you have 600 feet of actual extension cord on hand, if so, I'd just plug those guys in and stretch it across the yard. If all works well, get yourself some burial grade 14 gauge 2 plus ground and trench it over. You might also consider dropping some fiber in the trench if you want to share internet. I also did that.

I did a similar situation with my church. I basically ran an "extension cord" between the two buildings. This plugged into building 1 where the main network is located and at the end of that cord at the entry to building two is a dual band on/off module (with nothing plugged into it). That dual band device repeats the signal between the two electric systems. It works great. It is not 600 feet long, it is probably 150 feet. I have at home a 300 foot run of power cable that provides insteon com without issue. I think 600 feet would probably be fine if it is a dedicated wire without any interference.

I have several older Insteon outdoor on/off modules and I have never put them inside of any enclosure. I don't let them sit on the ground, but they definitely get hit by rain and they all are working fine.

I agree, just get an extension cord of appropriate length to get the on/off module in a better location. I would not put the on/off module directly on the ground, but you can pound a short stake in the ground somewhere out of site or set it on top of some random object, again, out of sight. Or maybe strap it to whatever it is your are strapping your holiday lights to.

I have one in my backyard running my pond aerator. We have had insane rain here. It has basically rained every single day for over a month and in the last 48 yours we have had about a foot of rain. Plus it was 100% humidity all night long every night the last month. My outdoor on/off switch is not protected, it is plugged into an outlet that is on a post, out in a field, and is dangling down below the protective door. It is working fine. Mine is pretty old too, it is pre-dual band.

I would remove the inlinelinc and use an Insteon micro dimmer switch in the post immediately before power goes into the post light. In this fashion, the outlet would now be hot all the time. Then you can plug the outdoor on/off module listed above into that outlet and turn it on/off at any time of the day or night. The micro dimmer is quite small (on purpose) so you can locate it like that. The micro dimmer is not waterproof, but the j-box you place the micro dimmer within in your light post should be.

I have Agave, which is very nice, but it is slow to connect. I may starting using google home (thanks to you pointing this out) for a quickey. Trouble is, unlike Agave, I will have to go through and add all of these things to Google Home one by one. Agave has everything by default. And I have a lot of stuff.

I don't see where google home app shows scenes or programs or anything besides devices.

There is a Nest node module within Polyglot.

If you have access to the top plate or bottom plate of the wall with the no-neutral box (ie unfinished basement/crawlspace/attic) you can always drill into the wall and pull new wires. You just need to tap into a hot/neutral from some other box accessible from that attic/crawlspace/basement. Or, if it is an attic, you can pull a new wire between the box and light fixture.

OK, so you had a 3 way set up between the two boxes and switch loop from one box to the fixture. That isn't code anymore (at least not here). You should expect this problem in other fixtures in your house (both 3 way and single). Unfortunately that means more cost for the micro-module.

Good to hear. I guess you had no unused conductors between the light fixture and any of the boxes. If you are new to Insteon and ISY, you need to go set up the scene so that your local on-level/ramp rate and scene on-level/ramp rate are the same. Otherwise your dimmer switches led indicators won't follow what the light is actually doing.

If you have the ability to cap a wire off, it probably means you don't need to use a micro-module. You need a bare minimum of 2 conductors in each box where one can be connected to a neutral and one to hot at the other end of said wires. If none of the boxes have any conductors left over after you do that, then you need a micro-module. If there are any conductors left between the load and any of the boxes, you can make that switch the load switch and get rid of the micro-module. Realize you can run neutrals and hots from box to box or box to load or any way that gets it there.

It depends on where you want to run the load wire. If you have 2 insteon switches controlling one load, only one will need a load wire. Color doesn't have to follow anything specific on 3-ways. Of course the bare ground wire always needs to be used strictly as a ground.

yes, ~0 ohms. Typically they have a buzzer mode that sounds when there is ~0 ohms so you don't have to look at the screen. If you don't have a neutral anywhere in the box, it might be that you can repurpose a wire that is no longer needed. When you go from regular hard wired 3 way switches to Insteon, you end up with unused wires that can be spliced into a neutral at one of the other boxes. When you get all the wires mapped out, you can see if you can make it happen.

This thread is pretty long with lots of wire descriptions that give me a headache to read. In short, if you are not someone who does this very often, you probably won't be able to just look at it and know right away what wiring technique was used. The sure fire way to figure this out when you are kind of clueless, is to 1) shut off power 2) remove all switches and fixtures and unsplice all associated wires from everything (you should just have free individual conductors now, nothing connected to anything). Now you will have cables coming into each box with none of the conductors connected to anything. Take an ohm meter and a piece of wire that is long enough to cover the distance between the various boxes and clip it to one of the two leads on your ohm meter. Now, clip that wire to one of the conductors in box 1. Go to box 2 and touch the other ohm meter lead to each wire until you find one that ohms out. If none do, go to box 3. Once you find out which wire it is, label both ends. Whatever wires are jacketed together with it, should also be opposite ends of the same conductor. You can ohm them out just to be sure. Once you have all this done, you should find that only a single black and white don't ohm out, those would be your hot and neutral from the main panel. You can turn the power one and test that you get 120v to be certain. Once you have your wires positively labeled, draw it out on a piece of paper and follow the directions that came with the Insteon device.

Elk would have to become a node. Michel mentioned a while back that UD has an ultimate goal of migrating everything to nodes. This was in the context of the weather module. I asked about the Elk module and he said yes, that this would be the ultimate goal as well. But I think it is well off in the future. In the mean time, you need to pick something else that is a node to be an intermediary (as mentioned by Benoit). The simplest solution is to have a program that turns the Elk output on/off using the then/else clause (leave "if" blank). Then set Alexa via the portal to run that program using the spoken words of your choice. In other words, have the Alexa word be "dog door". By saying "turn dog door on" it would run the "then".

I do not believe this is correct. As I understand, delete modem only deletes the PLM <--> Device links, not Device <---> Device links, regardless of how they got there. I have never done a delete modem, but I believe the purpose of it is to remove your PLM/ISY from the network but otherwise leave the Insteon network as is. Perhaps if one was using the ISY to setup homes but was not going to leave the ISY behind.

PLM is a member of a scene. The PLM is a modem (the "M"), so its inclusion in the scene is not for the purpose of itself (the PLM isn't going to directly do anything), but rather it is a modem for whatever is attached to it (The ISY). As a member of a scene, its host (the ISY) can thus control or respond to any of the other devices it is linked to. Like any device in a scene, if you remove it, the other devices will still still control or respond to the remaining devices in the scene. Not sure why you would want to remove it, though. Maybe if you had a "traveling ISY" that you used to set up networks and then wanted to move on with the ISY to the next job. If you were going to just be using an ISY to set up networks and move on, you would probably not want the other devices to keep it in their link tables. I could be wrong on this, but a missing device in an Insteon network makes the other devices do more retries since their will never be an ACK. It is my understanding, that performing a "delete PLM" does just that, goes through device by device and deletes the PLM from their links table.

In my experience, Google Home is much better at understanding what you say. It is also way better at answering random questions. And no, I do not have an accent. Maybe a little Texas after 20 years here, but mostly Midwest.

I have my phone and my google home in front of me right now. I turned a light on and off a bunch of times. Sometimes my phone did it, sometimes my Google home did it. When my Home did it, the phone wrote on the screen "answering on another device". When my phone was the one that controlled things, the home did not say anything.

In box 1, I see 4 cables, 2 with 3+1 conductors, and 2 with 2+1. Good chance one of the 2 + 1 is the power from the panel and the other is carrying power onto some other location. The 3 + 1 are likely running a standard 3 way in conjunction with the other box where there are also 2 3 + 1. The 2 3+1 cables from each box probably go (1 each) to the 2 light fixtures where two of the conductors feed the light and the 3rd is spliced together as the traveler. Based on these two pictures, I'm not finding anything so unusual. EDIT: If you open the light fixture box(es) and unsplice the wires, I'm sure you'll find that the 3+1 cables go directly from each box to the light fixture box(es).

"OK Google" on my phone controls my ISY just like my Google Home does. I suppose the whole thing could require a Google Home before it becomes active, but I don't think so. From day 1 of ISY portal, I have had a Google Home, so I never tried.

My cell phone responds to OK Google in my pocket when in standby mode. This is actually a bit of an issue since I regularly get my phone and my google home responding to my "OK Google's"

OK, I added a device that is used very often so it should be sending lots of updates to Google.