fasttimes

When I first got insteon switches, I hired an electrician to install them. I had a couple of switches stop responding, so I kill the breaker, unscrew all the switches to be greeted with a rats nest. I can't believe what this guy did. Just as a "for instance" it seems he didn't have different size connector caps, so he screwed three wires together (one of them a smaller gauge) and then led that to another pair, when he could have used a larger connector and did them all together. In any case, when the switches were removed from the box I was greeted with a tension explosion of wires and caps flying everywhere. Now I don't know what goes where. So this is a 4-gang box, with the left two switches being a 2476D and 2476S that control a ceiling fan light and switch respectively. The right two switches control 2 different overhead lights -- and these were originally each part of a 3-way setup. Those other two switches (not shown) don't have the red wire connected and they run purely in "slave" mode. So with the wife at the breaker with phone in hand, I kept experimenting to see if I could figure this out, but I'm stuck. But I did make a few discoveries and perhaps you can help me out. Connecting the following pairs yields the following result: POWER to Fan the fan turns on POWER to Fan Light turns the fan light on Power to Light 1 turns Light 1 on Power to Light 2 turns Light 2 on As you can see wires A,B,C,D,E I don't know what they do. D and E survived the "explosion" and it looked they the were connected by a nut. I connected them as the picture indicates. So I have 4 switches, with Red,Black,White wires and I need to figure out where they go. I'm fairly certain B and C are travelers and probably need to be capped off. But what about the rest? What goes where? Fan Light R ---> Fan Light B ---> Fan Light W ---> Fan Switch R ---> Fan Switch B ---> Fan Switch W ---> Light 1 R ---> Light 1 B ---> Light 1 W ---> Light 2 R ---> Light 2 B ---> Light 2 W ---> and where do A,B,C,D,E get connected to?

Replacing switches can be a real bitch. Especially when you have multiple wires to connect. Have you used anything like these before? Can you recommend a brand? I often find I don't have a lot of room in my gang boxes, so I was hoping these would help. Wago 773 Push Wire Wall-Nut Assortment Pack https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071Y1LX9L/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_E6dAzb86RJXRS Wago (50) 222-412 (50) 222-413 (40) 222-415 Lever-Nut Assortment Pack https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GVTVY12/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_y9dAzbY9AF532

My ISY is not being detected in the portal. It went offline today about 1:30PM. A power cycle hasn't helped. I can ping the ISY, and access it through the Admin console. The Portal Integration tab says it it is offline (duh) but it is registered. Any ideas on how I can bring this back online?

Are there any published naming conventions for controlling ISY via Alexa or Google? Choosing your ISY device names/scenes/groups carefully is important, especially if you want to avoid having Alexa excessively yuck at you if she detects conflicts. For the most part, I setup insteon scenes and assign those to the portal. Before the portal, I used a web app I wrote (it has a forum here) that you could turn scenes on and off. Adding them to the portal was a snap, and within 5 minutes I was able to control every scene from Alexa. However I had lots of conflicts due to the ISY names I chose. Eventually I found the following works pretty well. <Location><scene/device> (blank) fan master fan den fan Alexa turn fan on (turns on family room fan. Note I left the location blank, as we use this a lot) Alexa turn den fan off Alexa turn master fan on However I have to be careful of other devices not controlled by the ISY. For example, I have the Harmony hub which turns on my TV, receiver, cable box, etc. So with the following commands, Alexa gets confused. I have no idea why. Alexa turn on TV (Executes a harmony scene) Alexa turn on TV LIGHTS (Executes an ISY scene) My only solution was to change TV LIGHTS to MOVIE LIGHTS. Using Alexa, I haven't found a foolproof convention. Perhaps Google does a better job.

Maybe I'll buy insurance on one of these to extend the warranty to four years, knowing they should die in this time frame.

OP here. I just received my $40 PLM. V2.2 What does 1629 mean? Is this a "good" PLM? Worthy keeping for a backup? BTW, what is the 2 year "failure clock"? Is that just how long you expect these to last plugged in 247/?

Spotlights, reading lamps, etc, I still can't find a decent bulb that gives a full range of dimming as those of incandescents. Are there any decent bulbs out there yet?

Then how do I get the new isy loaded?

Are you suggesting I do a backup, swap the PLM, then do a backup and then restore the backup to the new ISY with new PLM?

Wish I knew this might be old inventory. I went ahead and purchased the $199 zwave isy & plm from smarthome. Still cheaper even though I will have to pay to return the other items.

I don't have any. But if you do, please share I'm waiting on Google to get off their butts and give us a Google Dot.

BTW, smart home has a good deal on the ISY zwave with PLM. $199 with coupon code E17MEM http://www.smarthome.com/universal-devices-isy994izw-controller-insteon-z-wave-support-with-insteon-dual-band-plm.html

They retail for $80. This is selling on Amazon for $40. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002X8W4SI/ref=asc_df_B002X8W4SI5009316/?tag=hyprod-20&creative=395009&creativeASIN=B002X8W4SI&linkCode=df0&hvadid=167139094796&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=10321343519981188412&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=t&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9008168&hvtargid=pla-500526571872 Too good to be true?

I'm having loads of performance problems which I think ithe culprit is the PLM. Since I want to play with zwave, I'm getting a new ISY as well. So basically I will have all new hardware. Is it possible to copy my entire network using a backup? What happens with any modules I may have purchased, do they come over too? What about the portal?

Good advice. Turns out the scene is not reliable. Now what? How can I fix this scene?

I have a couple of problem scenes where some of the devices within are not being controlled reliably. When I issue a "Alexa, turn off Fan" I get an "ok" but the device doesn't actually turn off. I have to issue the command several times.

When Google Home goes live on the portal, will it be a trivial task to swap out Echo? I really don't like Amazon's AI capabilities compared to Google.

The navigation is indeed the annoyance. Persistence of some sort would make it more palatable. Personally I would have developed the pages to use a more RESTful Uri pattern. So if your session times out, a new call would bring you to an authentication page and then bring you right back to where you left off. That would prevent the use of the pop-up modal dialogs, but that is a good thing IMO. The current design looks like it is a single web-page application so it would probably require a rewrite to use such a pattern. The easiest thing to do would be to bump up the timeout period. 15-30-60 minutes, there is little difference. "We've already established that you ARE that sort of woman, said Mr Churchhill. Now we are just neogotiating on price"

Idle. I'm usually working with the admin interface, Alexa or IFTTT trying to get something working. It is not unusual to not come back to the portal for 15 minutes. After it logs me out I have to navigate back to whatever screen I'm working on

I have a group of lights (which may or may not belong to an ISY scene) that has turned on to full bright. I don't know when or what causes this to happen but it is annoying the wife. How can I track this down?

How about increasing the timeout period to an hour? It is a major pain in the neck working with scripts, IFTTT, etc with it timing out on me each time and then i have to navigate back to the same spot.

Currently the portal logs you out due to inactivity. Can you add a checkbox called stay logged in below remember me so that the portal won't log you out? Most sites allow this (like ITTT.com). Thanks

Insofar your phone isn't secure

I setup additional accounts, A & B on both the portal and Amazon, however all of the triggers on A appear on B. Is this supposed to happen?

The reason for multiple accounts is so that you can group commands, right? So if you have a kitchen and bedroom accounts, you can say "Alexa, turn on lights" and Alexa will trigger your portal to control the device. Is this correct? If so, how do you associate the multiple accounts in the portal?