Still having paddle failures

[windrockwater]

I have been using insteon for years. And I have already replaced About 40 switchlincs because of the old paddle failure. I had a bunch of insteon devices fail due to a power surge from hurricane sandy. I seem to still have paddle failures even on switches that are only a year or two old. It's always the same. The switches respond to ISY just fine. But the switch paddle itself either doesn't respnd at all or only with some button mashing. Is anyone else still have this problem? Since my whole house is insteon it's kinda hard to change. But I am tired of replacing sooooooo many devices. Can I fix the paddle issue myself? Is something causing the failures? Heat?

[madcodger]

Assume you have tried air gapping them via pull-out at bottom of switch before declaring them truly dead? And turning off breaker, air gapping, turning on breaker, putting air gap back in? I just did that to a switch I thought was dead, and it's now back in service.

 

Also, might want to have a surge suppressor at the panel.

 

Just a couple of thoughts...

[Brian H]

You may also want to remove the paddle from the switch and verify something has not gotten out of line.

My early ones had a very small spring in them that would get out of place.

 

If they are lees than 2 years old. You should be able to get warranty exchanges for them. I had to do an Appliancelinc and Smarthome even prepaid the the return shipping costs.

[arw01]

That does seem like a massively abnormal level of failures.

 

Would have to lean towards the power issues in the house, or if you have kids, is one or more of them just mashing the button?

 

I would take a failed one apart and put a multi-meter on the button traces and see if the really stop working when it get's pushed, if it still works then the failure is electronic, and the whole house surge protector would be my start.

 

Also do you have any noisy, in the electrical way, large power pulling items? Something like an arc welder, maybe an old heat pump? Something that could put so much funny voltage down the line that the switches are just getting overwhelmed with interference and failing?

[windrockwater]

I hope to finally install a whole house surge suppressor this week. I also just put a filterlinc on my plasma TV since I think that was causing some interference. I have 40 insteon switches in this house! It's my annual motivation to try and troubleshoot all my insteon scenes and programming. And i would like to get some fun programs working for the dArk winter coming.

 

There are about 3 or 4 switches that seem to frquently lose connectin via the ISY. A 'query' usually gets the connection again. But the same 3 or 4 keep losing connection. Some of these switches are in 'bank' of many on the wall so it doesn't make sense that they would be not receiving insteon signals. So I figure they are just faulty and need replacing. Right?

[arw01]

I have a bank of three older dimmer switches, the middle one, cannot be programmed unless I move the PLM via extension cord to the outlet right by the bank of lights. The others work just fine with programming, however. So who knows.

 

Alan

[apostolakisl]

I had to replace all of my switches, some of them twice years ago because of the paddle issue.

 

I have not had any of the post-paddle-problem-switches have a paddle issue. These post-paddle-switches are maybe 3 years old plus I add a few more every year. I am up to about 60 devices.

 

I have had switches lock up and need a power cycle using the disconnect tab, very rarely. But when this happens the switch does not respond to anything, local or remote. I have a few icon switches and these are the ones that do that.