scm2000

The only safety concern I can think of is the way Insteon does it a small voltage is always present in the lamp/appliance. However, in these days, there exist things that can sense whether a switch is open or closed without sending a voltage through it.. Such as, I have LED bulbs that have an internal battery. When the power goes out, you can still use the lamp switch to turn them on or off. Even without power it can sense the state of the switch.

From what I've read energy monitoring allows you to get stats on the plug's power usage... nothing in the user manual speaks about "load sensing" Load sensing is an Insteon term, it means that the module, an AppliancLinc or an OutletLinc, while in "off" mode, can sense if someone toggles the appliance (In my case lamps). in which case the module goes to "on" mode. It allows users to operate something like a lamp with it's normal switch, while having the benefit of having the controler turn it "off" remotely

Moving over to a mixed Insteon Z-Wave setup... I did not carefully consider the single source nature of Insteon when i bought bunches of it 9 years ago.

As I said in another thread... I'm limping along with my existing Insteon network, and plan to migrate over to Z-Wave as Insteaon devices fail. I know very little about Z-Wave, but I know all about Insteon load sensing, and I need it. I've searched every which way on the net to see if any Z-Wave outlets, or plug modules do load sensing... The concept is just not addressed as far as i can tell. Reason being... I had an ApplianceLinc fail that I was using with a lamp with load sensing, and 1. They don't make those anymore, 2 - they don't seem to sell anything any more (as people already know). Am I stuck?

I opened up the access point... it is looking similar to what was posted on capacitors for the PLM. I have the board out on my bench and I'll think about trying the capacitor replacements.

I just checked the label. It's a 994i. OK I see the problem... I had looked in my email for the earliest order from smarthome and it was 2007... now I found the actual order confirmation for the 994i was in 2012. Still that's about 10 years of service.

Well, I purchased most of my Insteon modules in 2007, including the isy994i (the isy has worked flawlessly for 14 years), and all have mostly been working ever since. Early on one PLM failed, and an appliance linc or 2 have failed along the way.. But for years, I've had no problem. Now my access point failed which was needed at the time for a bridge... without it one of my toggle switches could not be accessed. and Now I see one of my remotelincs has failed (the battery swelled). So Of course I expected to go to smarthome and just order replacements... ha. after a few days it's clear that I can no longer get replacements. Well I was able to repurpose a dual band outlet module to get my toggle accessible again, and even opened up the access point to see if I could repair it, but I really don't want to get in the mode of trying to keep alive a failing system. So as I assume others have done I've begun looking for alternatives. I really don't want to toss out all my working Insteon modules, so I think the way I'd go is to upgrade the isy to support zwave and start adding zwave modules as insteon modules break down. so my question is... what way should I go to upgrade my isy? I see there may be a zwave plugin module for my existing unit, but I also see the Polisy can run ISY on it, and it uses a USB PLM, and may also support zwave via a usb stick. I can limp along for a while, is Polisy is almost ready to be a complete replacement for isy with zwave and with a supported PLM? or should I just upgrade to the zwave capable isy and hope my PLM doesnt fail?