brians

Different revisions of Insteon switches behave differently with the backlight level setting. The most recent dual band seem to be ok entering a percentage, but an older V5.2 2476S (ISY says v.37) with sense (I have 24 of these) pretty much any value will cause the backlight to turn off. I have to put in value of 0% for it to come on and a value like 1 or 2 to turn off (I use in program to turn them off at night in bedroom and I use 2 for some reason and I can't remember why). Some other higher values seem to make the LED go very dim but I didn't feel like going through all 100 values to test. I don't like the default brightness on new switchlincs - think its too bright. It is a challenge to make the LEDs look sorta same with different switch revisions. I had it figured out before but forgot so now I am experimenting again and determine 5% in a new switchlinc seems to match the older revision brightness of V5.2 set at 0%. But if I put in a value of 3% it jumps down to a very dim level. to 4% matches an older 2476D dimmer I have that I can't remember if I set backlight on it or not - but this new switch is replacing a V5.2 in a dual gang with this 2476D so I have it matching closer now with 4%. I will mention here, slightly off topic, but many of my V5.2 seem to be failing and in last year or so I have replaced 5 of them due to reliability issues with responding. I set another 2477D dual band v.41 at 12% to match a similar brightness as a V5.2 at 0. Very old versions of Insteon didn't allow backlight adjustment at all - it was something added in later on and seems took SmartHome a while before they added more levels rather than on/off. Pick a value that looks good... document it using Notes or some other means if you ever need to replace it or add another one and want same value.

Yes that works but I was trying to have option to just tell it to turn on/off the Bedroom Fan without specifying a speed and have it default to Low. I am going to try adding an additional "Bedroom Fan Low" along with "Bedroom Fan" and see what happens.

New FanLinc arrived yesterday and I installed last night. Seems to work good and fixed problem with old FanLinc not working on all settings. I made a mistake in ISY and replaced the new one with the old in ISY (backwards LOL) then spent an hour or so after fixing all my scenes, programs etc. New FanLinc says v.45 in ISY and on the label is Rev 3.1 4318. Fan still makes hum at low and med speed but that is not necessarily FanLinc's fault. I have Alexa spoken setup to turn fan and light on/off... works great except I have three spokens... "Bedroom Fan" (set to low speed scene), "Bedroom Fan Low", "Bedroom Fan Medium" and Alexa doesn't recognize the medium one and turns on "Bedroom Fan" unless I change first to something like "Bedroom Fan Low" or the medium spoken to something completely different. However it still recognizes the difference with "Bedroom Fan Hi" - that's an Alexa issue though probably something to do with too many similar devices and order of picking.

I took my failed EZFlora apart and seems to be a 2412 board. You think I should change the capacitors anyways - do these fail the same way as a 2413? Can I also take the Ez rain board and plug it into any other working plm or do the revisions have to be same as original?

I may try this. Mine just died. Just the two caps?

I just ordered another FanLinc after researching and no solution.

Here we can buy things like this.... https://www.amazon.ca/Universal-Ceiling-Receiver-Replacement-Complete/dp/B07DN7J16T/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=Eogifee+Universal+Ceiling+Fan+Remote+Control+and+Receiver+Kit+Replacement+of+Hampton+Bay+Harbor+Breeze+Hunter+KUJCE9103+FAN-11T+FAN-53T+2AAZPFAN-53T+Kit&linkCode=gs3&linkId=ec71f17165cbc791f7887a0eb5839212&qid=1570668205&s=hi&sr=1-5 Should be simple for a Z-Wave manufacturer to take something like that and add Z-Wave control to it. https://www.amazon.ca/Enerwave-ZWN-RSM1-PLUS-Wireless-Control-Required/dp/B01G7OD3ME/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=zwave%2Bmicro%2Bswitch&qid=1570670413&s=hi&sr=1-4&th=1 This we need with a power output control for fan speed. It can work as simple fan on/off with light though and adjust speed via pull chain.

If it weren't for ISY I would have dropped Insteon a long time ago. UDI was able to take a mess of different Insteon versions and devices, along with all their bus and quirks, and make it work all together seamlessly... Insteon by itself, using Smart Home's controllers, is a disaster. I remember when I first got Insteon, I was trying to do a simple task like make two SwitchLinc dimmers have the LEDs dim level synchronized in a virtual 3-way configuration... there was no way in hell I could get that to work... but as soon as I redid everything with my ISY99i it was like magic. Since then I have a 994i and lots of Insteon. Last year I got the new Z-Wave module. In order to get my Schlage lock working, and to make reliable I had to purchase a couple Z-Wave plug in wall switches to act as repeaters. Before all this I that I had a HomeKit lock which was 100x easier to get working but I wanted one integrated into my ISY and only real option is Z-Wave. Now that I have Z-Wave I can easily add more switches but I would rather stick with Insteon for those because it is reliable (when it works). Z-Wave seems more suitable to add weird devices that Insteon doesn't support eg. my WaterCop water shut off device, more options for leak sensors etc. Having said all this, a Fan controller seems like it would be a good fit for a Z-Wave product and am surprised nobody has made one yet that works similar to Insteon FanLinc.

@zxplod Yes I have had PLM fail recently and discovered that an IOLinc, LampLinc dimmer, and ApplianceLinc, and EZFlora would no longer work. Tried doing manual resets and nope (think all the Insteon devices that use the plug-in design are flawed). I have been with Insteon since beginning and went through the micro switch recall/replacment. Most of my switchlincs are still single band but over the past couple years have replace about 10 of them (very old versions) that failed with dual band versions which I think are much more reliable. At this point I have about 40 Insteon devices and it is easier to just swap out the odd switch that fails rather than spend time introducing Z-Wave versions and redoing system. Couple rooms I have not done I will try some Z-Wave wall switches but anything that is in a scene I like sticking with Insteon.

My FanLinc failed a couple years ago... it only runs at High speed and anything else won't turn the fan at all. I can't be bothered to order a new one because of the price, high failure rates, and hoping that something else could be used, but there doesn't seem to be any other solution. I may order another one after all but I am frustrated with all the Insteon devices I have failing lately.

How do I access Polyglot cloud? Or is this still in beta?

My Ring Pro in Alexa app using Ring skill only allows a trigger by Motion, not when someone presses the button. Other reviews for the ring skill also mention this as a limitation. How are you doing this?

You can also try adding a message notification which may provide better troubleshooting rather than the voice to make sure your routines are triggering.

I had setup my old 2421 TriggerLinc several years ago in my newer ISY994i (had old ISY before). I bought that ISY994i in Jan 2014 so must have been around that time. I bought the 2421 in 2009 and I don't ever remember using it and can't remember if I ever had it tested on old ISY. I actually misplaced it because i never found a use for it but it stayed in my ISY994i config, and I just found last month in its original box. The battery still works in it and I was playing with it and seeing it update in ISY. However since it has not been used really this probably is not a very good example of its battery life but it has been sitting in box "working" for past 4 years.

I always wondered how MobiLinc does this to make slaves devices turn on/off when you are using the device to turn on/off rather than the group. Either there is some Insteon method they know which nobody else knows about (unlikely), or they have some specific code which handles this in mobilinc when it knows a device is part of a group. I solved by writing programs in the ISY for all my 3-way setups and lamplinc etc. which turn on/off the slaves if detect a light is turned on/off

Regarding announcement to multiple echos, I don’t have messaging option in actions. I just setup messaging by letting it access my contacts so maybe I have to wait for it to appear.

Because I don't intend on using them to playback music at all. I can buy around 3 dots for price of one Echo plus which give me more coverage to place more around the house. I only care about home automation. I don't really sit around and listen to music, but if I did then I would get a Sonos One. I am an Apple user and subscribe to Apple Music... at least with a Sonos One I could airplay to it and Sonos also supports Apple Music using Sonos app.

Pretty much the same for basic control - turning on/off a light is no different except the trigger word (I prefer saying Alexa over Hey Google or OK Google) Now as far as more complicated features... Google Home uses Rooms and Alexa uses Groups. There are pros and cons to each implementation and neither is perfect - you have to tweak each one to how you like. I decided for each room to place common lights (ie. main lights) in a group along with an echo dot. When I am in a room talking to that dot and say "Alexa, turn on the lights" it only turns on the ones in the group. This makes it easy to remember and doesn't affect other things in the room like lamps, fans, outlets etc. Google home Rooms work well also but are different... in some ways better but here is a problem I had in Master Bedroom: when I walk into my bedroom and say "Hey Google, turn on the lights", I don't want the ceiling fan, closet, bath fan, bath light, outlets all turning on along with the main light so the solution is to take those out of the room which sorta is contrary to idea of a room. Groups make more sense to me since they are independent of rooms. You really have to experiment with both to understand the differences. A feature which makes Echo more attractive at this moment is its routines and now ISY portal can present pretty much anything as a device, which can trigger these Alexa routines. There is more discussion of this elsewhere. As far as using Alexa to tell me notifications, I honestly think its more of a novelty right now... realistically the odds of me being near one of my Echos when something happens and hearing it is not very high, and even if I am then there is a chance I am not paying attention and would miss understanding what it said. More useful is making custom Alexa commands which can trigger things on ISY. If you don't have one already, I would highly recommend picking up a cheap dot version 2 (they are on sale now) to experiment with this feature so you can experience firsthand. For example, in reference to above bedroom problem: in ISY portal present a program as a switch and use spoken like "bedroom bath". Since program is setup as a switch, turn on runs then, turn off runs else. and program will do exactly what I want by turning on or off bath light and bath fan, and could even put some logic in the ISY program, could have play bath time music etc. Just say "Alexa turn on bedroom bath". Additionally could make an Alexa routine with a custom voice command like "Alexa I am going to have a bath" and get this routine to turn on the program switch which also runs the program then. I use iOS. Alexa app is much nicer... Google needs to learn how to use colors other than white. But since I started using Alexa last month it seems to have evolved significantly so maybe was a good time to get into it now. I have seen the recent update Google Home app and how it shows rooms and light bulbs but it still is plain looking to me.

I am in process of moving from Google Home to Amazon Alexa (Of course I will keep both because never know... Google may come out with something compelling). I always thought the Echo Dot was cheap looking compared to my Google Mini, and especially the larger Google Home I have, but I bought one to test anyways. I have to admit that the blue LED is nicer than Google's tiny LEDs you can't even see but otherwide the thing is pretty ugly. I just picked up a couple of the 3rd gen dots today. Pretty nice and far superior to the old 2nd gen dots, nicer than the Google minis and even would go as far and say is better than the larger Google Home for sound quality. I don't have a full size Amazon Echo to compare but I have even read that the new dots sound better than those.

One thing I found it seems that Google can do and Echo cannot... If I assign two Google homes to different Rooms along with some lights (eg. Family Room, Master Bedroom) and I have a light in respective rooms called Family Room Ceiling and Master Bedroom Ceiling then I can just be in Family Room and say "Ok Google, turn on the Ceiling" and it will turn on the Family Room Ceiling. Echo doesn't do this if there are multiple devices in house using word ceiling. But I think a better way to approach it is to just group lights you actually want to turn on or off in a room... for example, in my Master Bedroom I have a whole bunch of lights and fan etc... but 99% of time I just want to turn on/off the main light... so no need to group anything else. Therefore Echo Groups may be better idea than Google Rooms. BTW, seems strange I cannot add my dot to the group in the web app but I need to use my iPhone app to do it. But then if I go into web app and save that group it removes the dot. However, iPhone is much nicer interface than Google Home app.

I just picked up an Echo Dot on sale... After adding that the iPhone app works when discovering devices. So far Echo seems more responsive than Google when initially waking up.

Hi, just trying out Amazon. I have Google Homes but something is making me want to try. I installed App on my iPhone. Issue is that when I add a device on the isy portal, when I press the Add Device button in the App (Smart Home, Devices) it fails. However if I speak to it, "discover devices" it adds fine. Is there a way to add them without speaking?

I tried Agave but I think MobiLinc is nicer. Only complaint I have is the MobiLinc HD on an iPad ... I do not like the landscape with the actual pictures of the switches and layout. Wish there was an option to make portrait with list view similar to iPhone but taking advantage of iPad's screen real-estate.

I get the error sometimes but it often still processes the command (eg. turns on/off the lights). Subsequent commands seem to work fine. Seems to be when I don't use it for a while.

If you have a google home assigned to a room but don’t actually have any lights assigned to the same room it will still shut off all lights in house. Therefore make sure you have at least one light assigned to a room which contains a google home. Not a big deal but may be cases where this is an issue.