MustangChris04

Everybody brings up some good points about gaining access to the garage. Ever since I saw the episode on Shark Tank about how easy it was to break into a garage, I programmed my interior door that goes to the garage to automatically lock with a z-wave deadbolt. Assuming I don't use an Insteon remote to open my garage, there is a whole ton of other Insteon traffic on the network that would have the same security vulnerabilities as the remote. Even the I/O link connected to the garage could be controlled through a repeating Dual-Band device, and anybody could park up next to my house and plug an extension cord into any of my outdoor outlets to gain access to the powerline. You have to weight the convenience factor with the security vulnerabilities. What are the changes of somebody near my house sniffing my insteon traffic to open my garage? Slim to none. What are the chances of somebody pushing up on the garage door to forcefully get the chain off the track, or using a clothes hanger to pull the quick release? Much higher... PS: I love the idea larryllix came up with using your own encryption code, it made me laugh. I'm sure the wife is going to love that idea!

Thanks Michael, completely understandable. I assume companies such as the Philips Hue or Wemo had some type of partnership with Amazon in order to develop the tight integration that we see, allowing us to use an emulator locally?

Hi Michael, Yes, I've taken a look a the log, and you are correct in that it does show the status of a device at any given point. But the status it shows is what the status should "theoretically" to be. If there was some type of communication issue or other factor preventing the device from responding correctly, the log would still show the status of the device as if it responded correctly. This was something that I mentioned in a prior post which sparked me to want to run debug logs 24/7: http://forum.universal-devices.com/topic/16539-program-ran-but-scene-not-triggered/

Hi Guys, I'm trying to Install the Somfy RTS wirefree tilt motor in my horizontal blinds and I am running into an issue. My blinds are 51 1/8 wide, and I only have 2.5 inches on each end in the headrail where the motor goes. The motor sticks out another inch or so because I need around 4 inches of space before the first tilt drum. The blinds are mounted inside the window sill, so they must be flush. My blinds were custom cut to the windows from a blinds manufacturer a few years ago. I called them and they wouldn't customize the spacing of the route holes if I made a new run. I went to my local Home Depot and Lowes to see what they had and if I were to use their out of the box blinds and cut them down to fit, I wouldn't have enough room either. If I only cut one side of the blind to fit, it would work, but look rather unusual. My blinds look very much like the ones in the picture edokid posted, with not much room on the end where the first set of route holes are. Does anybody know of a custom manufacturer that could cut blinds to fit inside my window 51 1/8" wide window while giving enough room to fit the motor? I think I need the route holes 6" on centers.

I would say so, now that you have another party involved that has access to control the ISY. But the question is, how much are we really exposed and what type of security is in place? This was why I was asking Michael in my earlier post about the Portal. I don't use IFTTT (because of the 15 minute delay on the recipes), but for the Echo, I'd like commands to remain on my local network so nobody outside could gain access. I have a Nest thermostat, which is connected to the internet through their own portal. If my account was compromised or Nest was hacked and somebody gained access to the thermostat they could turn my heat on when it is 90 degrees in Florida and cause some serious issues. It is all about mitigating risk and asking yourself how much are you willing to expose.

IFTTT has hundreds of other providers that they support. Yes, this functionality is built in the ISY, but it doesn't extend beyond that. For example with IFTTT, you could create an recipe to turn on a light when you receive a certain email, or flash your lights when ESPN has your favorite sports team playing, or know when you are out of town (based on your calendar) and set your home to away, or have your HVAC and lights turn on when you get near home, etc.

Thanks for pointing that out Stu. That's unfortunate, and misleading since the product description says "Connect to an INSTEON Wireless Thermostat to externally monitor temperature". I guess by externally, they mean external from the thermostat and not actually being to monitor it remotely. buhie, Here is a thread with the modification Stu is talking about: http://forum.universal-devices.com/topic/9152-how-to-monitor-water-temp-via-isy-and-catch-more-fish/

I don't see why you couldn't do this all with Insteon products, and much less than $1000 You could use an I/O Linc with a temperature threshold kit like this: http://www.smarthome.com/i-o-linc-high-and-low-temperature-threshold-kit-insteon-24950a7.html Since you need temperature of the water and the roof, which is outdoors, you could use the Insteon Thermostat with the waterpoof sensor: http://www.smarthome.com/waterproof-temperature-sensor-for-insteon-2441zth-wireless-thermostat.html and the thermostat: http://www.smarthome.com/insteon-2441zth-wireless-thermostat.html Insteon says you can extend the waterpoof sensor up to 100' with 22 AWG wire. Just mount the thermostats in a dry location and run an extension to the sensor. I don't know about controller the variable speeds, but you can get the Insteon 220V Load Controller to turn on and off the pump: http://www.smarthome.com/220v-240v-30-amp-insteon-2477sa1-load-controller-normally-open-relay-dual-band.html Just create a few programs in the ISY for the schedules as well as a program that would run based on the temperature of the thermostat. You can use MobiLinc for iOS/Android to view the temperatures of the thermostats, and have multiple programs in the ISY that you could enable/disable based on the temperature you want, or create a program to turn the pump on/off based on the set temperature of one of the thermostats.

Thanks larryllix, that's what I was looking for! I have a micro USB charger in my car for my phone, so I suppose I could use that when it dies. Any ideas on the time it takes to charge?

Their website has been down for a while, but it said "ACT is splitting up into several companies and will not operate as ACT after the end of this year."

Just a typical clicker that most openers come with: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/gudS4XDizCI/maxresdefault.jpg

How's the battery life on the remote? I could go a year or two with the CR2032 batteries in the garage door opener without having to replace.

I have a 48 port PoE+ switch and a 10 port PoE Switch, both powering 9 IP cameras, 3 access points, and some other miscellaneous devices. While they are supplying power to these device off the grid, I suspected that the UPS it is connected to was causing noise which was giving signaling issues on that circuit. I used the ACT AF120 filters on these and have seen signaling improvement. ACT is going out of business, or selling off their product lines, so grab them while you can. They were selling them on eBay. I purchased 3 of them last week and received them yesterday with an offer of $15 each plus $4 for shipping, much cheaper than the filterlinc. The seller had absolutely no feedback at all, but what I received to my door was a package straight from ACT with their packing, invoice, and packing slip.

Over the last year my garage door openers for my car have slowly died. (Replacing the batteries didn't help). I was thinking, rather than purchasing new garage door openers, (or a new garage opener unit if that is what is failing), I could use one of the Mini Remotes. I already have the IOLinc to control my garage, so the Mini Remote would be a simple addition. I was thinking I could get the 8 scene Mini remote and use it for the garage door, as well as turning on/off garage lights, outdoor lighting, etc. I have about 5 dual-band devices inside my garage and I don't think the signal from my driveway will be an issue, as I have some battery sensors outside that work reliably. Is anybody using these remotes for garage door control?

I've been gone for a while and I come back to see this exciting news. I can't wait until it is available! Michael, In regards to the Portal, I have no issues paying for this as it is a nominal fee for such a great convenience, but why is this required? Does this mean that Echo is making the calls to the ISY over the internet through the portal? If so, what is the latency like for this? I'm always adverse to adding services like this, which is why I never purchased Mobilinc Connect. I'm using the Echo bridge with the emulator, and it is communicating locally to the ISY without requiring an internet connection, although the echo uses the internet to process the voice commands. The devices respond before the echo can even say "OK". Thanks!

Thanks Michael. Teken, ideally I would want to be able to capture logs without leaving the java console open 24/7 on my server. Either saving those to the ISY's SD card or somewhere else for retrieval later. The syslog was a suggestion. Some of my other network devices report their logs to my server using this standard, and others have an option to set a debug level and it will be recorded, regardless of having to be logged into the interface. I understand it takes resources, but this should be a decision the end user should make to enable. The reason being is that I will randomly have something behave in a way it isn't supposed to, such as a random light was on, or something on a schedule didn't run. Sometimes I have to play investigator to find out it was something my wife did, but other times there is no explanation. Although this rarely happens, I'm never able to get to the bottom of it because I don't leave the java console open.

Yes LeeG that is correct, the scene was technically turned ON, but the scene is setup so the ON LEVEL of all the devices is 0%. Would you suppose that the group broadcast message was received by the outdoor on/off module, but the 0% ON LEVEL was not received by the module, so it simply turned on? Checking video surveillance shows that all the responders turned off at exactly the same time, and the exact same time as the outdoor on/off module turned ON.

Thanks Michel, any plans on anything like this in the future?

I have a scene called "ALL DOWNSTAIRS OFF" which will turn all lights on my first floor in my house off when I go to bed. This scene is controlled by a single keypad button near my master bedroom. I haven't made any changes to any configuration in a while, and my routine is the same every night. Tonight, I hit the button as usual, and all the lights in my house turned off as expected except for one light. I have a workbench light in my garage connected to an Outdoor On/Off module. The status of this was OFF at the time I hit the "ALL DOWNSTAIRS OFF" scene. As soon as I hit this scene, the workbench light TURNED ON! It responded in exactly the opposite manner in which the device has been setup in the scene for. I cannot reproduce this issue at all. I've been doing this for years, yet it decided to respond oppositely this one instance. This drive me nuts because I need the piece of mind that all my switches are responding in a reliable manner. I'm lucky I noticed this on my surveillance system that the light was on, but it got me wondering, if this just happened, how many times could this happen again with something else? If it is programmed to respond a certain way I NEED IT TO RESPOND THAT WAY. Anybody know the cause of something like this? The "ALL DOWNSTAIRS OFF" scene has about 50 responders. Out of these 50 responders, 3 of them are keypads that have a button on them called "ALL OFF" which I have setup to respond ON, so that I can look at the keypad and see that all the lights are off. Besides these three buttons, everything else responds OFF. Could there be some type of collision issue, in which the Outdoor On/Off module mistakenly responded to the ON command to one of those three keypads? Thanks!

Is it possible to capture event the Event Viewer logs on level 3 without leaving the java console running, or report these to a syslog server?

I'm sure Insteon's lawyers have already reached out to EVIL Pete in order for a fix before this information goes public. Security concerns can be detrimental for a business and the consumers so I wouldn't doubt if Insteon is doing everything possible to keep this from going public. Possibly why there is no proof of concept yet...

Any limitation on the number of devices with the wemo emulator?

I'd like to know this as well. My current opener is hooked to an IOLinc so I can monitor garage status as well as open/close it. I want to replace the unit with a new belt drive unit, but they come with those fancy "smart" buttons. I don't want to use their WiFi bridge and their app to open my garage. I want to continue using the IOLinc and my issue. If the wires are shorted and that doesn't trigger an opening/closing, then I can't use an IOLinc.

I cut my chain where it comes out of housing. Been like that for a few years with no issues. If I ever needed to pull the chain if something went wrong, I could pull off the light kit and where the chain feeds into the assembly, there would be an inch or so available to pull.

As Teken pointed out, it's going to be quite rare that someone would target a house that has an Insteon network. They'd have to be on my physical property in order to get a signal, which means I'd see them on my video surveillance. I don't have any red necks but I have a lot of old seniors with their oxygen tanks. I doubt they even have a cell phone (maybe a jitterbug), so that doesn't worry me. I don't use insteom for any security related actions. I use a DSC alarm, all hardwired.