DAlter01

Fair point on the liabilty. One would need to set up an LLC and purchase liability insurance if they wanted to have economic safety. The PLM repair price just went up to $200/unit. Even still, for those with the need, it would be a bargain compared to the massive investment of time and money into an otherwise operating system. Shoot, comared to the cost of even a single Lutron/Crestron/C4 device, $200 is a steal for getting a system back up and running.

I suspect @Brian Hand a few others have the skill to make any PLM repair. It is WAY out of my league. IF the PLM doesn't come back in stock within 6 months, I bet the repair service could be $100 and still get a fair amount of business.

Just last week Smarthome received a new shipment of the 2413S PLM. They sold out quick with people probably picking up "back-up" units. If you have a little bit of patience I suspect Smarthome will have more of these in stock in the coming months. Last I knew, the official position of Smartlabs is the 2413S PLM is not discontinued but is only out of stock and affected by the worldwide chip shortage. I am suprised to hear of your continued problems with multiple unit failures on your 2413S. I know they are the most frequent point of failure with an Insteon system as reported on this forum, but in 9 years and a couple systems I've only had one PLM failure and that one was my fault. In my experience, they have a pretty good lifespan.

Teken, don't let facts and common sense get in the way of a good government policy. I'm kidding about California making such devices required. But, after living there many, many years, there were many things California implemented/required that didn't make sense, at least in my opinion.

It is possible that California will make outlets/surge supressors that are NOT antimicrobial illegal to sell within the State. Tripplite may be ahead of the curve and have their lobbiest convincing the esteemed leaders of the once great state of California the virtues of such antimicrobial devices. Of course I no longer live there, so I'm out of the loop, but that is where it was heading.

I just shot down that theory. I needed two dimmers, ordered them Saturday, and got confirmation of shipment a few minutes ago. It seems they do sell and ship hardware. It seems they are still in business and seem to be doing exactly what they said they would be doing which is focusing on keeping stock of the high demand items. Given the very real difficulty in getting supplies (not just chips), it seems they are doing what they can given their reliance on others for materials. I know I'm having all kinds of trouble getting materials for my line of work so I imagine Smartlabs is also. Granted, Insteon is no longer the favorite child of Smartlabs. We all can likely agree that legacy Insteon products are closer to extinction than their brith. But, as of now they are selling the product and acting like a going concern. I know it is fun to speculate and joke about their demise and will do so myself upon occaision. But, I did want to set the record straight for the benefit of other readers with relevant information I can attest to. Not everyone reading this thread will understand Upstatemike's sense of humor. Personally, I think he is usually very funny, but we don't need to hurt the Insteon line by decreasing sales by having somone conclude the Insteon brand's demise is eminent. It's end will come like anything, but it could still be many, many years away.

Yeah, I was being captain obvious.

Is there something wrong with this thread? It seems to be repeating posts from 20 pages ago..... or, is this starting to be a bit repetitive?

On airplanes, trains, etc. the pilots are "independent redundant safety systems". These safety systems sometimes work and sometimes they don't such as your Boeing pilot example. Cars are heading down that same path to be autonomous but with independent redundant safety systems (humans). I'm not suggesting more autonomy than that on the public roadways in the 10-20 year horizon I've articulated. Though, the auto system will take more control with making evasive manuvers, etc. Circling back to the Boeing example, I haven't folllowed it closely but on one of those doomed planes didn't the pilot turn off the automation several times to regain proper attitude only to turn it back on again? I assume he did so thinking the plane knew more than him.

Teken, I took a ride on a TGV in France not long ago. There was a human conductor. His role, I'm sure, was to push the start button. He also might have given the command to accelerate at the start and decelerate at the end. Though, I'm sure there was a safety loop that would have caused a deceleration at the end if he wasn't paying attention. After the button push to start we accelerated to well over 200 MPH. What good was the conductor then? Could he have used his five senses or his brain in order to avoid a crash, no. Safety was entirely in the hands of the computers. I don't know why they have a conductor on the train. Was I safer with him on board more than any other type of indepenent redundant safety system? No. He was there for window dressing to help people that can't think about the risks, the process, etc. to feel comfortable. That too will change in time and the conductor will become obsolete someday. However, that is probably more of a union issue than anything.

For companies with fleets, it will have nothing to do with trust which seems to be the topic discussed most in the above posts. For these companies it will be a simple math calculation. Will there be cost savings? When they get to the point where that question gets answered with a yes, the decision will be made to adopt. Maybe not at every company but at many. Large scale adoption begins at that moment. Somewhat slow at first but it starts ramping up.

Good point on the staticts being skewed. That is a certainty. There are hurdles. With regards to the legal side, with 50 states, several of them will pass laws that makes the liability issue tolerable enough for self driving to happen. Other states will eventually follow. On the terrorism/hacking idea, yeah, that one might be a challenge. They may have to run two processes simultaneously with one of the processesing being independent of the network. Not sure how they handle that one, but the first time a car in public hands gets hacked (even if not for an accident), there will be those that panic. No tech is perfect, there will be accidents. Accident free will not be required before the tech gets mass adoption. There will be lifelong holdouts but 10-20 years from now will I feel safer with an Uber/taxi driver who is a person vs an Uber/taxi driver that is autonomous, I'll take autonomous. I've been in a taxi when the guy fell asleep while driving, etc. To say trust is required before it is adopted is true but we trust uber/taxi/bus/plane and other drivers on the road with our lives every day. Many of those don't deserve that trust. There are really bad drivers out there. They get drunk, the fall asleep, they read/email/text while driving. Those people are really unsafe to share the road with. But, we do it all the time. If the tech resolves the risks generated by those drivers does that make me safer while I share the road with them, you bet. This is why the laws will get passed allowing it and this is why it will end up getting adopted. Think about all the liabilty claims companies pay for their delivery drivers, workers, etc. that are using a company vehicle. Its many billions each year. Once the tech is refined enough that accident decreases are confirmed, you don't think those companies will move quickly towards reducing those claims costs by having their fleets go autonomous (with human back-up)? This will not only reduce claims costs by having fewer accidents but by being able to shift some responsibility for those accidents that do happen. Fleets will be early adopters of the tech for these reasons. There will be other reason such as the company having more control of the employee's time. No longer will a company employee pull off and stop at a friends house to talk/play games/loaf on company time to the degree they can now. After fleet adoption and people see the safety benefits, time savings, and ultimately cost savings, the regular population will adopt it willingly starting with the young who are "invulrnerable", in their mind. They will do it for the time savings, so they can sleep, drink, text, etc while they use transportation. Its coming.

You are right, of course, but only for today and tomorrow. But there will be a tomorrow when that course will be tackled autonomously. My point is that it WILL happen. I don't know when but that tomorrow will be sooner than you seem to think which you have stated is never. I live in Phoenix and we have a fair number of autonomous cars running around here collecting data on what could happen. There is a driver behind the wheel to solve problems the car cannot solve on its own. This doesn't mean an accident, just something where the car didn't do what is considered a "good" decision. The engineers then study the problem to figure out how to teach the car to solve that type of problem on its own in the future. There are other cities that have the same process with different problems that Phoenix doesn't offer. They have logged tens of millions of miles in real world experiences. Already their accident rate (accidents/mile) is lower than the average human driver. But it will need to be much, much lower before the technology is commercially viable. I've read those back-up drivers can go weeks without intervening (having a problem the car cannot handle). Talk about a boring job, I couldn't do it. One of the stories I heard that I thought was funny is down in Tempe there was a car stuck at a stop sign and it couldn't enter the intersection because the car was programmed too defensively. The human controlled regular cars were more assertive and the autonomous car would just sit there waiting for its "turn" which didn't come until the human took control. That was probably three years ago and I'm sure they figured out a solution to this problem.

Considering the massive numbers of these people, how can you doubt it will come to pass?

Just looked it up, that is a beauty. I haven't seen one in person or online before.

Never is a long time. For cars the "millions using it" threshold might not be in 10 years but will for sure be here in 20. Of this I'm sure. It will be 20-50x safer than a human controlled auto. The winter driving you speak of isn't the norm for much of the world. That complication will hinder adoption in some areas that experience those conditions but that objection will not be much of an obstacle for a large portion of the population. I'm not suggesting only autonomous vehicles will exist in 20 years. But, for those wanting an autonomous vehicle (with human control as a backup for winter conditions, etc), it will be available and the choice of millions.

What do you define as a "train". I've been on plenty of light rail systems that are without a human at the helm. Most of those were in europe, a few here in the US. Maybe someone on a control panel off-site, but they are not on the car and I'm sure they were just redundant. With regards to trains, I have a relative that is high up at UP. They would love to destaff but have union considerations and since they need the government on their side they think the fight isn't worth it, just saying. Or, at least that is the word I've hear.

What is your GV?

That would be hilarous to see.

I may be in the minority on this topic, maybe not, but within a five or ten years I think technology will be advanced far enough that I will feel infinently safer having the constant attention, multiple eyes, lack of getting drowsy/distracted, redundent systems, etc. more than my own when driving. Don't get my wrong, I enjoy my high HP car, its fun to drive. But for long routine drives, I'd rather use my time doing something else.

I'd put big money against that statement.

That ship sailed 30 pages ago. Everyone still tuned in knows the role this thread holds. You can start a new one on Insteon being discontinued if you want to be a purist. If not, then the posters on this thread will likely continue the takeover/banter. No harm is being done. The group subscribed has found a method to enjoy the back and forth. If that isn't you, maybe unsubscribe? This thread is no longer about Insteon being discontinued.

Before correcting the wiring I put the HVAC thermostat into test mode. It didn't do it's blink and flutter when I manually turned on/off the circulation fan nor did it blink and flutter when I turned on/off the HVAC compressor. Both the HVAC and Ecobee thermostats have a lot of signals they are processing and generating at various times other than turning on the fan/compressor so maybe it is related to those other signals. Those low voltage electronics would would have been behind the 24 transformer of the HVAC unit so should have shielded by that, I would think. Maybe the transformer was failing or allowing the HVAC signals to back feed into that lighting circuit. Normally lighting and the air handler are on different circuits so this isn't a typical situation encountered in most houses. I wish I had insalled a filter link on the air handler and tested before correcting that wiring error to see if that would have solved the issue. It would have been telling.

That sounds like a government specification so they can charge 10x the price. Must be for a DOD vehicle.

It's basically a handle to help you get in and out easier. ?