apostolakisl

I have seen this as well. Especially after moving some devices and doing a "replace with" command. I suggest a factory reset and then restore device.

I don't know about the portal, but IFTTT can do all REST commands. So, yes, you setup an IFTTT account, link it to your google home, and use a webhook to set whatever you want on the ISY.

No, you do not. IFTTT can be used for google home and alexa.

I was looking at the smarthome/insteon forum. I wasn't aware of the forum you have here.

Ha, just checked the forum and it appears that thread is locked. Unless they have another one somewhere else, but the sticky one at the top of the forum under Insteon is locked.

Not at all true. An insteon switch can be linked to any number of switches. Removing the load circuitry has nothing at all to do with which switches it can be linked to. Precisely. Like I said, they figured they could make the sale because the switch did what it needed to. . . so what if it does extra if the customer will pay for the useless part anyway.

If a house is not fully done, it seems like there would be ample opportunity to find new locations for just about any type of switch. I don't follow. If you have a non-load switch in a box where there is no load, then having a capped load wire provides no functionality under any circumstance. Just to be clear, I am not talking about Insteon making a 3-way slave, I am talking about a non-load switchlinc. Insteon basically already makes this in a battery version.

I'm not saying the person is fake, I'm saying the person is full of it or has bought into the company line. By the logic provided, Insteon should be discontinuing a whole slew of products. They just figured they could still get the sale anyway.

For my part. Voice activation is fun, makes for a nice party trick, and is sometimes actually useful, but it is definitely not a replacement for a switch at each entry/exit location. Saying the words and waiting for the response is quite a drawn out process compared to the reflexive and simple "tap" it takes to turn the light on using the 3-way that I'm walking right past. I use voice in that unusual situaton where I want to change the light after already engaging myself in an activity within the room. Somehow, I don't think I'm unique in how I function. The rest of my family behaves the same as I of their own accord. For my part, I have never re-purposed a switch. I have replaced failed switches and I have upgraded to dual band. But every location that I have ever installed a switchlinc still has a swtichlinc. I have only kind of sort repurposed some switches when I replaced an otherwise working single band with a dual band. But mostly not. I'm just not into the idea of wasting my time instaling an old, inferior switch, that is likely to just give me trouble and need to be replaced again. I just don't know what sort of re-purpose you would even do. You might, I guess decide to just go back to old fashioned switch, or maybe go to a KPL, but how many times might you do that? If a regular Swtichlnc with load costs $49.99 and a non-load swtich cost $29.99 . . . .I would absolutely buy them. If it were $49.99 and $44.99 . . .no, I wouldn't bother. But $20 a piece times a lot of switches adds up. And a non-load Insteon swtich would be better than a zwave slave since does not require 3 way wiring to the desired load, it only needs a hot and neutral. This popy-cock from whoever mystery person at SH that they had too many returns becuase of confused customers. Well, that is just on them. It just isn't that hard to make it clear in the description what it doesn't do. If they wrote their descriptions better for all of their dfvices I bet they would have a lot fewer returns. Sure, sometimes you just can't fix stupid, and that is going to get you no matter what you sell or don't sell. Personally I have 18 switchlncs that have no load attached (and another 39 with loads). If I could have saved $360 installing otherwise identical no-load switches, heck yeah!

Yes, well it makes perfect sense that a house retrofitted for electric would be lacking in 3 ways. In your situation, Insteon is quite a game changer. I would say, however, that this sort of home is the exception, not the rule. Seems like these would be good for you http://www.smarthome.com/mini-remote-switch-4-pack.html I'm not sure just how they work, I assume you can still push and hold for dimming scenes. More or less, these switches are the load free switch I've talking about at the lower price. Just I wouldn't want to deal with charging them, so I'm not doing these until they come out with an AC powered one.

Did SH publish this information? If someone on the phone told you this, well we all have had curious conversations with people on the phone at SH where plenty of information that was incorrect either because of ignorance or just to shut you up. The tact switch issue comes to mind until finally the owned up to it. And the excuses on the failing PLM's seemed to have been company policy until just the past few months. Of course having full capabiity on a switch where the load is capped does not benefit anyone. If indeed SH had a high return rate, I place the blame squarely on the item description. It would be easy to make it clear what it did not do. SH sells a "slave" thermostat right now. Frankly, the description on it could be better and I wouldn't be surprised if they get returns on it because of that.

So, did you build your house with just one switch for each load or have you capped off the additional locations in your 3 ways? Personally, I haven't yet learned how to teleport from room to room, so I do still walk through the doors and nothing says convenience like having a switch right there.

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.