apostolakisl

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.

It appears this version is "sold and shipped by Amazon" https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B002X8W4SI/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1 It is $55.

How in the word did you do that? You must have wired up standard NEMA 1-15 plugs onto the low voltage wires? You should not do that. I someone else comes along they would rightfully expect that those lights are 120vac based on the plug. I'm shocked it worked. I guess the circuitry in the lamplinc was able to rectify the 12vac into usable current. Perhaps it was actually outputting a bit more than 12vac until you added more lights. Adding more lights would increase current draw which may have dropped the voltage below what the lamplinc could function on.

The description is quite confusing. "New revision (2.3) addresses issues with hardware longevity – buy from ‘ships from and sold by Amazon’ to ensure you receive the latest revision" This particular item appears to be sold by a 3rd party seller. This description is very misleading since you would think the description is applying to what you are buying. I don't know how Amazon works, but I would think that each seller creates their own description, but perhaps the description is generated by Amazon regradless of the seller? I don't know.

I am wondering why the issues. I have done 3 replace plm's in the last year and all went off without a hitch. I have done it with 5.x firmware and 4.5 firmware. Two on one ISY and one a second ISY. The second ISY, at the time, was only sparsely populated with Insteon devices/scenes/programs, but the one that I did twice has like 60 devices, hundreds of programs, and dozens of scenes. And if you go back several years, I have done I think 4 replace PLM's (thanks SH for that one). All I did was plug in the new plm, reboot the whole lot, and hit "replace plm". I didn't even bother to boot the PLM first, just plugged the whole thing in at once (or at least very nearly all at once).

The echo dot with the 1/8 stereo jack is a big plus for sending audio to my whole house system. Amazon prime music is included in your prime membership and is pretty good for those of us who aren't super picky about our background music. The full size Alexa does not have the jack. Dot is super cheap. At $35/ea on prime day, echo dots quickly became a "one in every room" device. Home is "smarter". In other words, it has a lot more answers to questions you ask Home works super easily with other google things like your calendar. Echo's new "drop in" function is nice. At $35/ea during prime day, I bought a bunch of them and have them all over the house and have since abandoned my intercom system. Now I just say "drop in on . . . " and I'm talking to my kids in their bedroom or whatever. Home works better with IFTTT. No need to say "Trigger" wth every command and you can have multiple variations on your statement and you can use variable substitution and you can have customized responses. Not sure any of this matters if you use the ISY portal, which I suppose I should go ahead and subscribe to. "Home" is basically any Android device that you have Google Assistant installed on. I was able to install it on my Android 5.0.1 phone (took some phenagling) but now the same commands that I use with google home also work directly from my phone (though the phone takes a few seconds to understand me). "Home" gets confused when I say "ok google" to my phone and it is in audio range. In summary, both have their reasons to be owned and as such I own both. If Google had a "dot" version that was similarly priced, I would say that Google would be the hands down winner. Dot is super tiny and thus goes with me when I travel with the greatest of ease.

I would start by 1) creating a backup as is currently. (it would have been best if you had done that prior to replacing the plm, but oh well) 2) try "restore plm" function from ISY menu. 3) If still doesn't work 4) restore you backup from a year ago 5) use "restore plm" function again If still no luck, put a repair ticket in to UDI.

Yes and No. It is not uncommon for two companies making complimentary products to have agreements. Provided the products are complimentary and it doesn't involve monopolistic or otherwise illegal behavior one may give the other access to information and resources in return for specified things from the other.

Both need to be Insteon. If you left the other as a regular 3 way switch, when you switch it "off", that will literally turn the Insteon switch off . . . as in no power to it all, not just the light off, but the entire switch goes dead. Of course you can leave one of the 3way switches and keep it in on at all times. I have one spot that I did this where the other switch is in a place where God only knows why my architect put a switch there.

I would do what DonB did. Pick up an Insteon hub, they can be had for pretty cheap on ebay and just use it to configure the device. Who knows, you might find other uses for the hub.