fisix

Thanks Brian, more great info. I see a few nice looking switching 5V 2A warts that cost the same as the UD 12V one (with Prime shipping) but come with a range of additional plugs, including a 2 screw terminal plug that I can attach to any wart with the 5mm/2mm barrel plug. I'll probably go with that, just for the sameness and the additional plugs. I looked for some 12V warts with similar amenities and the normal safety features, but either they were the kind of wart that blocks other plugs or they didn't look/spec out as super sturdy.

Thanks all - great info. I guess I'll go with the 12V wall wart... I hesitate to switch up from a 5v supply - that's lasted me this long without issues (will an internal regulator be working harder/hotter with a 12V input?), but seems alright if UD suggests it.

Sorry, and one last question - the wall wart I have is a 5v 1A one that the 994i came with. Is there a way for me to purchase a new one, and/or is there perhaps a better way to power the 994i? Thanks!

Ah - appears to be a power supply issue. I have a programmable power adapter (with a range of plugs) and once I used that to power the 994i, it booted right up. Scary though. Is there a way for me to backup the firmware image as well as the user settings, in case the on board memory dies? Would I just contact UD and ask for a new SD card to be shipped to me, then rely on the user setting backup to get the insteon and the smart meter integration back up and running? Thanks!

I have my 994i hooked up to a UPS, but after a ~4 hour power outage (I was away), the 994i won't boot back into a stable state. When I power cycle it, regardless of what cables are attached (modem/network), the Power LED is almost solid blue with no other lights coming on (it's flashing at a high frequency). I haven't been able to access the device over the network. How do I proceed trouble shooting it? Does this seem like a wall wart issue (not providing enough power), or an internal storage/sd card issue? If I have a backup just prior to moving to the 5.x series of firmware, will reloading that onto a re-imaged sd card (with the most recent 4.x firmware) bring back both my insteon setup/programs and my zigbee access to my smart meter? Thanks for any help.

aww. miss Grant. hopes and dreams talk, where did they go wrong?

this is the guy i saw. this might be the talk i saw - sometimes there are breakout rooms with more demo/detailed stuff, so i'm not sure.

i found and skipped through the talk you're referring to - that's not the talk i saw. the one i saw was by a fairly clean cut guy, running the talk by himself (though he had a helper), in one of the small rooms upstairs in Paris? - different talk, different people. he had a laptop, SDR dongle, and a 2x4 with two? retrofit plastic outlet boxes and an incandescent light bulb receptacle screwed to it. there was a lamp cord and two? dual band switches wired up to the light bulb, all plugged into the wall. he ran his software on the laptop, enumerated the device(s) (just a bunch of command line text to me, similar to what was shown in the Shipley talk), and then he toggled the light on and off using his laptop. i think he talked about how useful/not useful it would be to use the technique to cause mayhem or to get access to something important... he thought the enumeration could be useful, but that the wireless range was rather poor for a safely distant enumeration process (like in a car down the street or similar). i think i remember people in the audience discussing a previous demo that failed (perhaps the Shipley talk). i don't think this guy and his work were based on Shipley's work, but i do think it was meant to show that the proof of concept was doable fairly easily. whenever i broached the subject of protocol security with the smarthome folks on Alton, it was treated dismissively, and i think they tended to make public statements to that effect. that treatment of the subject was not warranted. what i took away from the talk i saw was that the insteon protocol was inherently insecure, but that it wasn't easier to leverage into unwanted access or vandalism than someone with a rock or basic lock-picking tools... as long as you didn't allow insteon devices to turn off your security system. kinda the same thing people have learned with Alexa - don't allow Alexa to unlock a deadbolt or open a garage door if you don't want an intruder to just yell their way into your house. likewise, don't allow an insteon device state change to turn your security measures/monitoring/alerts off. anyway, i think we're future proof in terms of getting centralized control of an insteon network; even once the smarthome manufactured PLMs and hubs die out, there are inexpensive ways to hack that access back into life. it'll be interesting to see what happens to Smarlab's IP. with freedom to operate, i really think powerline and dual band devices could be a $400M market, as long as someone can make the devices less expensive and smaller without making them unreliable. securing the protocol would probably be a necessity (if getting devices in many homes is the plan), but i'd want the ability to enable backwards compatibility.

weird. i watched a demo maybe 5 years ago at DEFCON and they had free reign over an insteon network - the protocol was simple to control once the hardware to access the network was worked out. i believe they used an SDR dongle for the wireless band, but noted that it wouldn't be too difficult to create a powerline module.

1) there are no falsehoods in my post. i'm just not in the state of denial you seem to be in. 2) insteon devices were never "cheap" - how many of your friends and family have insteon devices that you haven't installed for them? the reason why that number is low or zero is because very few if any middle income consumers wanted to make the $$ investment needed to have a reasonably complete smart-controlled home based on insteon devices. compare x10 and Hue or alexa dot, google home, etc. those devices (aside from Hue) are roughly half the price of an insteon wall switch, and the Hue was an actual light fixture. 3) maybe you haven't installed insteon devices in old (1980s) housing, but the outlet boxes are shallow and the apertures for the switches themselves are narrow. an insteon switch about 0.5" shorter in depth and even just 1/4" narrower side to side would have been a huge reduction in installation woes. size always matters. i don't know why you care about zwave so much. 4) did insteon improve in quality since the purchase by the current owner (at least, current in January 2022)? no. did insteon improve in quality since 2007 or so? maybe? did they ever solve the PLM issues? not that i can tell (from posts on this and other boards). my personal PLM has improved, but i'm the one who improved it (with properly spec'd and quality caps). 5) the insteon hub and its integration with other devices has always been poor. insteon didn't adapt (meaning make purchase and installation of their devices easier) throughout any of the home assistants - they just kept selling pretty much the same old stock they had on hand; zero development of devices the new install base was looking for, and really poor advertising. in fact, insteon reduced their product line (because they ran out of old stock?) as time passed, and right at the time the market was looking for devices that pushed the edge of automated control. maybe they were trying with Nokia, but that seems more like it was a paper mache mocked-up attempt to make the company look like it was worth buying. 6) i know they had a 240v load controller - i have one, and i use it to control my ancient, inefficient pool pump. what the 240v load controller can't do is select a particular flow rate, such as what's been offered in new, much more efficient pool pumps for at least a decade now. most of the new pumps have an interface of some kind that provides for two way communication, but insteon never worked out a way to partner with any of the pool companies to get their protocol integrated with a pump, even as an after-market module. instead, insteon continued to sell fairly expensive fan links based on a fully electrical control module while even the cheapest fans in Lowes have zwave, zigbee, or some other wireless protocol built into them. management failure after management failure, vision failure after vision failure, basic business skills failure after basic business skills failure.

a company can petition for different types of bankruptcy, and a court can deny any petition. in particular, a company can petition for a chapter 11 bankruptcy or reorganization, and a court can deny the petition if the reorg plan appears deficient in some way. courts tend to be pretty lenient on how they evaluate reorg plans, but people file plans that aren't complete or are way, way too optimistic all the time, and courts shoot them down. creditors also get an opportunity to voice their opinion on the likelihood of a successful recovery to solvency... they're usually pretty negative on the outlook, but their opinions can be devastating if there's been a history of poor management and the reorg plan attempts to keep the present management in place. a chapter 7 bankruptcy (liquidation) petition can be denied for various reasons, ranging from incompetence to fraud. i'm guessing, if Smartlabs attempted and failed to successfully petition for bankruptcy a few years ago, it was a reorg chapter 11, and the plan was probably deficient on its face. from what i've read, it appears that the primary creditor was the CEO, and he wouldn't have argued against his own bankruptcy petition... but a judge isn't going to allow the CEO to give everyone a haircut on outstanding corporate debt except for the CEO (and I'm sure their plan tried to sidestep that obligation). so, after getting denied relief, the company limped along losing money on facilities rent and salaries, keeping some aspects of the business looking shiny while they looked for a buyer. due diligence or stubbornness probably killed the sale, and Smartlabs exited all further expenditures and are now using what's effectively an auctioneer to sell dead assets (an active company or "going concern" will always be worth more, but they couldn't keep a pulse going). i feel for the guy who purchased the company and tried to run it, but he ran it into the ground. they had the install base and a lot of powerline expertise... if they'd have just worked hard on making things a little smaller and cheaper and more reliable, they could have easily cornered the smarthome devices market. instead, they kept trying to force devices onto the market that people didn't want to buy, they kept making unforgivable decisions about capacitors, and they kept their prices so high that most consumers wouldn't even think of installing their products... until voice assistants came along (and they STILL didn't adapt). on top of that, whatever licensing and/or partner outreach strategy they had utterly failed. i still find it ridiculous that there was never an insteon-linked pool pump. if there's one group of people who will buy overpriced smart control of appliances, it's people with pools.

Just in case y'all haven't see this yet: https://www.insteon.com/news2022 So, they thought they'd be sold in March, and weren't. I have no idea what "the company was assigned to a financial services firm" means, but I have a fair idea what "to optimize the assets of the company" means, and I think we'd all agree that the "financial services firm" screwed the pooch on the whole "optimize" aspect.

does this still require a working insteon PLM?

all seems to be back to normal.

interesting failure mode. i knew this going in, but it's always nice to be reminded why i've coded in controls that don't rely on Alexa/networking.