apostolakisl

Not following you. You said I find it surprising that "the vast majority" have a load attached. You must have very few 3/4 way's or simply don't care to automate the ones you have.

I don't think it is any of these. I think it is simple profit motive. They figured it wouldn't change their profit. Cause 1) I think there are lots of people who like me have lots of 3 and 4 ways. I would probably have 40% non-load bearing if it saved me money. You'll notice zwave does have a 3-way non-load switch in their setup. So demand seems to exist. 2) Insteon sells a "non-load" thermostat and a real thermostat that look exactly the same. The non-load is cheaper. Do they have troubles? I don't know, but if they did I would expect a little more warning in the description. Plus, there are already 4 Insteon switchlincs that look identical, so if you're just looking at pictures, you'll get that wrong 75% of the time. 3) Don't buy this one either. Once you install a switchlinc, odds are you remove only because of failure of the switch or simply giving up on Insteon. I don't envision a whole lot of people rearranging their switches just cause.

Yes, I understand his request. However, the logic was that he is "wasting" that load capable device by not having a load attached. You can solve the "waste" by a) figureing a way to use the load capacity, or b ) substituting a non-load capable device. Since option a is not possible and super unlikely to ever be, I was pondering why a option b isn't addressed. I don't recall ever seeing SH sell the switch you refer to. It must have been quite a long time ago. I do find it surprising that you don't have any 3 way applications in your home, aside from perhaps your table top units. Most switches in my home are 3 way (or 4) resulting quite a few unused load capable devices. It may just be that the marginal cost of adding load capacity is so small that it isn't worth it for them. But somehow, it seems like the load circuitry would be the most expensive part of the switch.

Sounds like you need another garage/workshop/shed.

Certainly you could just unhook the insteon device and if the problem stops . . . Then hook it back up and if it starts again, that would settle it for me. I'm going to put my money on it being an insteon issue. There are some pretty easy, inexpensive and "secure" ways to control you GDO from ISY without Insteon. There are a number of network devices that control relays. ISY can use IP on your LAN to control those devices behind your homes firewall. You can use https or ISY portal to control your ISY securely from outside your LAN. I don't really know too much about zwave secureness and tendency to mis-behave. For example, a CAI webcontrol board hooked up to a relay board. Or a global cache. Or lots of others. You can wire the relay directly to your GDO or you can wire it to a rolling code garage door remote. In my situation, I have an Elk relay wired to a rolling code remote. Had I had the foresight to run a wire from Elk to GDO while the house was under cunstruction, I would have it hard wired. But, this works perfectly so no worries.

Add me to the list of people who would not use Insteon to control a garage door. I would not use Insteon to control anything that really matters.

I've never understood why they don't make the switchlincs without the load circuitry. The load circuitry has to add significant cost to the manufacturing and probably half of all devices (or maybe more) don't use the load portion. They could sell them for less money and still make the same profit, pleasing both customer and manufacturer.

You don't have to have the portal. But it requires you set up a security certificate on your ISY (not a big deal, but its something) and port forward 443 to your ISY. IFTTT can then talk directly to your ISY using REST.

If possible it would be nicer to look at integrating with the 5.x firmware which supports native nodes in ISY for your development pleasure. As an example, you could look at how ioguys node servers work. I have a CAI webcontrol board which shows as native nodes on ISY. It does require a PC running to handle the interface, but if your device has more internal computing power you may be able to install the node server directly on it. This would be discussed under "polyglot" link above.

Your troublesome devices might be ones that are also affected by the same power line noise/sucking that was "blinding" your PLM. At this point, I would suggest you figure out what is in your house that is so horribly disruptive to your communications. If you installed anything new in your house (I don't mean Insteon, I mean anything that plugs in), start with that. Otherwise, you may have something in your house that is on the fritz. A wall wart that is in the process of burning out, or who knows. Odds are, it is something on the same circuit that your PLM was on.

Yes, they do go through the PLM. Your plm would be dual band, so it could be working off of RF where the PL signal is getting sucked or interfered with.

My only Insteon thermostat setup is at my chruch. We have a total of 9 of them. I have ISY set to do a final shut down (just like how you describe with lighting) and then it repeats every 3 hours through the night. The idea here is that if the "final" shut down is at 9pm, but someone is still there and sets it back on, it will kick off again at MN, and then 3am again. My "final" shutdown program sets the mode to auto, the heat, and the cool setpoint, so all of the parameters get set. Basically, I'm dealing with "security" issue where a "jokester" might change the settings, but the system is set to recover. Of course here, it isn't really security since those "jokesters" aren't really jokesters but rather well intentioned parishioners with poor memories who forget to turn off the AC when they leave.

I would suggest creating a backup of you current ISY, then loading a backup from when everything was working. Then restore PLM. If the PLM now has links, then somehow "delete plm" happened in all of this and you'll need to rebuild from that point. Just a point to consider, as with any memory device, backups are a really really really good idea. As for myself, I pretty much put on all the beta (and even alphas) and do a backup with each of those, so I have lots of backups only a few months apart. Frankly, I'm not certain how the PLM restore write process proceeds. If it tries to write to devices first then the PLM and it is failing to write to devices and hanging, then I suppose you could have 0 links on the plm and still have the links in the ISY record. However, I don't think this is the case. Michel would be able to say more accurately. But again, backup your current status, restore a backup, then restore plm. . . .just to see what happens. You can always restore this latest backup and get back to where you are now. The restore PLM process really does work, I have done it (sadly) 3 times, or maybe 4, I forget now.

I have always said, NEVER use Insteon on anything "mission critical". Not because of security, but rather it simply isn't reliable enough. If a missed Insteon signal or false signal could harm you or your home, then don't use it!!! I use it for convenience items only!!!! It works ~99.something% of the time. But I would never want my sump pump (I don't actually have one but if I did) to fail to start because of that 1/1000 or whatever missed Insteon event. If you want to MONITOR your sump pump, great, but I would never let it CONTROL my sump pump. I do not recomment it for the garage door at all, nor the sprinkler system, though SH does sell stuff advertised for those purposes, I wouldn't do it. How would you like to come home and find that your sprinkler system failed to shut down the last zone and ran for a whole week? I use Elk for all of that sort of stuff. It is hard wired, never "misses" a command and, yeah, super secure. For Insteon, the RF means that someone can physically get near my house, set up camp, wait for me to use my Insteon stuff, and sniff out my addresses and then turn my lights on/off. But wow, that is just a lot of work for a little laugh. Maybe add 20 cents to my electric bill (ISY would shut it all down at 3am even if they turned the whole house on and I was out of town). But I also have security cams around my house and you really can't approach my house without being seen, so I'd find you. and get you! Regarding thermostats. I suggest having your ISY run a program at least once a day that puts your thermostats to the correct settings. Even if someone "played" with it while you were away, it would self correct. Furthermore, I would (and do) have ISY send out all kinds of notifications in the event of any funny stuff (like if the actual temp was out of range). Regarding RF range, I can tell you that with wide open line of site, Insteon thermostats/PLM will do wireless communication for at least 50 feet based on a PLM thermostat only install I did at my church.

As MWester metions, the problems you are describing does sound like the PLM is not communicating with your devices rather than a problem with ISY restore. Try moving your ISY/PLM combo to a different circuit in your home and see if things go better. Perhaps your old PLM isn't even bad but rather you have something in your house (or in particular on the plm circuit) that is messing things up.

Insteon protocol is not home automation. It is home control. Home automation is done by ISY and other similar devices. ISY for one has excellent security. Again, I simply don't see where a home owner should be concerned about some jokester sneaking up to their house to turn lights on and off. For example, when I was 12 I thought it was great fun to sneak up to someones window and point the cable remote at their tv and change the channels on them, but I quickly tired of that trick, as I suspect an Insteon trickster would.

Are you guys worried that someone is going to come up close enough to your house to pick the radio com between Insteon devices and start controlling your lights? I'm not so worried about that happening. Maybe that is why Insteon doesn't make door locks?

You can uncheck the "query at startup" box on the config page and restart.

Just checked my laptop power supply. It is rated from 100 to 240 vac with 18.5 v 6.5 amp output. With .05 amp output (~Insteon power draw if it functions at 12v), I wouldn't be surprised if it would work down much lower. I wouldn't be surprised if the Insteon switch was limping along at 12 vac or perhaps it was actually more like 15 vac until the additional lights were added.

I don't disagree. Just saying, if a wall wart or laptop power supply can get plugged into 120 or 240 and work equally as well, I assume that SH can do the same with a switchlinc. Going from 12vac all the way through 240 is a big range. However, a switchlinc is only pulling about .6 watts so it might get away with a little more.

There are lots of wall warts that are 240 and 120 without changing anything.

I think they are actually good at 240vac. I may be wrong, but I believe the Euro models use the same guts, just different plug. That would make the functional range 12 to 240. I suspect that, as you observed with doorbell transformers (and I have seen with a variety of transformers), the output was higher than the spec'd 12vac until you start pulling amps. Maybe it was actually at 15 or 16 volts and when he added the additional lights, it drifted down to a point that the Insteon device couldn't get enough "push" for the amps it needed.

It appears that amazon does not have a different item description for different sellers. There is only one description and you can select different sellers.

Yeah, something doesn't add up here. Either it isn't 12v or the transformer has been modified.

I would doubt you need a high wattage switchlinc. If your landscape lights are led, it would be a hell of a lot of leds to get past 600 watts. The normal way to do this is to use a dimmable transformer and, like you said, install a lamplinc or switchlinc on the 120vac supply side to the transformer. OR, screw the dimmable part. Most folks don't dim their landscape lights, they put the size bulb they want at each location to control brightness. In this case, you need an appliancelinc or on/off switchlinc (2477S). Install that upstream to your transformer and no worries about a dimmable transformer.