apostolakisl

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.

I don't know what you mean "all the wires are hot". That can not be. The first box looks to me like it has 4 cables entering it. One of those 4 is probably the wire back to the breaker box. The other sets would include cables going to the other switches and to the fixture itself. If you unsplice everything and then turn the breaker back on, you'll be able to find the cable that goes back to the breaker. The other cables can be ohmed out to figure out which of them go to the other boxes.

This has happened again. Google home reported that it was not connected to ISY upon issuing it a command. I tried the "send spokens" to Google and it failed, I believe it said it failed authentication. I had to use the Google "home" app and remove ISY then add it back in. Again, I had not changed anything with my google account or my ISY/portal account.

You also have to take into account anything you did with network resources. I have network resources with authentication to other things. And I have stuff with IFTTT which would be hard to separate my personal things from house things. Your approach in general is good, but if you didn't do it from the start, that still leaves you going back and re-doing all those things and possibly missing some things.

It looks like you have two stages of heat (W1 and W2). Hook it all up to the new thermostat the same color pattern as the old, except your blue wire is the common (not black as in the Insteon picture) and the black wire is stage two heat (W2), not the orange as shown by Insteon. If you don't have two stages of heat then I don't know what is up with the black wire. If you have a heat pump, then you don't have the right thermostat. The T1800 is switchable for either heat pump or standard based on jumper settings on the main board but the Insteon is not. Your color pattern appears to be: Red - 24vac hot Blue - common (shown as a black wire by Insteon) White - heat stage 1 Black - heat stage 2 (shown as orange by Insteon) Green - fan Yellow - cool stage 1

Best practice is to pull the HA before you put it on the market if it is your plan to take it with you, or at least not to be burdened by the transition to a new owner of all the fine details. But, at this point, the question is what does the new owner expect to stay? If it is screwed, nailed, or otherwise affixed to the house when you sell it, it is supposed to stay. So that pretty much includes any Insteon switch and thermostats. But the ISY, Alexas, and other free-standing items would not be expected to stay unless you advertised it as such. In other words, if you advertised the house as having features that these devices are providing, then you need to leave them. Otherwise, I would take them out. Not only because they are yours, but because they present a security issue for you and the new owner. No different then leaving your computers, routers, and the like. It might be that you leave passwords or registrations on these devices that give away your passwords or access to you accounts. You could factory reset it all, but then that leaves the new owner with a mess. Insteon works on its own, you can just pull the ISY and Alexa's and leave the Insteon stuff with all of its built in links. Frankly, I'm kind of shocked the new owners want it. Most people are scared that something is going to happen and they'll have no idea how to fix it. And they would be right!

Yeah, I think I like this better.

There is nothing that you have listed here that turns the scene on (or devices in that scene). You would have to share with us the program that turns the scene on. And/Or any other way the lights in the scene get turned on. My bet is you have another program that turns the scene on using that same remote linc button where the two programs are fighting each other.

It is hard to beat the second option you mention (the on/off module with a wall wart). On/off modules are dual band, can be purchased on sale for $25/ea (2 for 1 sales are common). You probably have a spare 12v wall wart sitting around and if not, they are cheap. This would be reliable and extremely easy to implement.

I understand, but maybe IFTTT/POST