Rob

The Roomba you can confine to a certain area using their "virtual wall" devices. The Neato uses magnetic tape placed on the floor to limit its path. Neither, AFAIK, can be told to clean a specific room without having to physically pick it up and place it in the area to be cleaned. That would be a nice feature, though. My Neato can do 90% of my first floor, finds its way back to recharge, and complete the rest of the level. I still get a kick out of how well it navigates the house and can find its way back to the docking station.

I have the Neato XV-11 for a few years now and love it. It'll map out the room and vacuum it rather methodically, compared to the seemingly random fashion of the Roomba. I have it scheduled to clean 2x weekly all I have to do is to empty the dust bin after every cleaning. It does a great job but I have mostly hardwood floors with a single room of berber. I can't really see how adding Alexa to it would make it any more useful.

The Venstar (at least some models) support remote wired and wireless temp sensors. You could add one in the basement and configure the Venstar to average the 2 temps. I was going to do this but ended up replacing my HVAC system. Check the Venstar site for more details on the remote sensors.

Disabling the LED is mentioned on page 10 of the full manual (not the Quickstart). - Press and Hold the All On and Dim buttons for 3 seconds until it beeps. LED should be blinking at this point - Tap the All Off button LED should turn off Rob

I did a bit more troubleshooting by adding the 2 problem devices into a my "dining room" scene as controllers. If I trigger the scene from the dining room, all devices operate as expected and the ISY status is correct. If I trigger the scene from either of the 2 problem devices, all devices operate as expected but the ISY status is incorrect for the 2 bad devices. Querying them fixes the incorrect status. thanks rob

Hi Michel, I've upgraded to 2.7.12 and re-added the unsupported device, which now shows up properly as a SLR Remote Control On/Off Siwtch v.3a. The other problem device always was auto-detected as a SLD w/ Sense v.38 which is actually incorrect. It's a SLD but has no sense. Both are installed in a 2-gang box in a bathroom. Since it was easier to move the ISY and PLM I plugged it in to the outlet next to the problem switches (and on the same circuit). I am still getting about a 5-10% success rate with status when controlled locally. There is no activity in the event viewer. Repeatedly pressing On or Off will eventually make the status update but sometimes throw an "ISY is unable to communicate w/ Guest Bath Fan" or "w/ Guest Bath Lights" depending on the button I mashing. With the ISY still in the guest bathroom, it was still picking up other device updates through the house and had 100% success in the scene test for the problem lights. Just local status. I think I'm about ready to RMA them but I find it strange that both a new relay and new dimmer in the same location have the same problem. I don't think it's a loose neutral otherwise I would think the scene test and querying would be failing. Any suggestions? many thanks, rob

OK, seems like adding the new SL Dimmer and SL Relay to scenes didn't fix the problem with local status. I'd say approx 10% of the time the ISY has the status correct. The new dimmer controls 2 60 watt incadescent lights and the relay controls a bathroom vent fan. I have a passive Signalinc at the panel and the ISY and PLM is near the panel. Testing the scenes I added the devices to proved 100% success rate of 15 attempts. Querying the devices directly takes only a single hop. All of this indicates to me that the linequality is fine. I even added a spare AP on outlets either side of the problem switches to no avail. The dimmer shows up as a v38 dimmer with sense, which it does not have. I forced the relay as a Relay (no sense) and it shows up as v00 as I understand it will be recognized in the next release. thanks rob

When you say you're not able to get status updates, do you mean it doesn't seem to detect local control (from the switch)? If so, I seem to be having the same problem. Even a new SL Dimmer v38 I just added seemed to have issues as well. I "fixed" both of them by creating scenes that were empty except for the problem device as a controller. By doing so the ISY now picks up local status change just fine. These are my first devices I've added in quite a while so I'm not sure if the problem is with the ISY or the new devices.... thanks rob

Upgraded from 2.7.9 no problem and everything looks good. I had made only minimal changes in 2.7.9 (swapped 2 thermostats and modified a few programs so it appears everything carried over properly. rob

Thanks Steve for the suggestion, I'll give that a try. Your posts are always very helpful.

I finally created new scenes where the RL is the only controller as I tried everything else to no avail. I also bought rechargeable batteries. It's only been a few days since I created the new scenes so I won't count a success until the batteries last more than a month. I haven't had any problems with leaking batteries nor have I read anything about others having that issue.

I had an original silver RL that lasted months on a set of batteries. After the i1/i2 linking problems during the December ISY betas it started chewing through batteries every couple of days. I got it replaced at the end of Jan. and the batteries are dead again after extremely little use. Most of my RL scenes have multiple controllers and have from the beginning. I wonder if this is a problem with the newer RLs. I have another RL that's over a year old that gets much more use and I only recently replaced the batteries in that for the first time. The only other thing I can think of is I recently (a week or so ago) moved an AP that was in the same room as the battery-hungry RL to the other side of the basement. I'll put the AP back to where it was when I replace the batteries and see if that makes a difference. Rob

Thanks for another good tutorial. I've upgraded my thermostats to Venstar units in anticipation of picking up the insteon adapters when I purchase an ISY. This will certainly help me get up to speed once I get my new toys!