oratzes Posted January 6, 2014 Posted January 6, 2014 Hi, New to the forum. Have been using X10 some 10+ years ago and when it came to remodel a house we just moved to in 2013 I went for ALL INSTEON gear. About ~100 devices (all dual mode) on a single floor over approx 6500 sqft. This has been on painful experience so far. Moved in at the end of September and dealing with such a fragile setup it is almost impossible to rely on anything. Latest ISY994 with all options available. All INSTEON gear including PLM directly from SmartHome via Amazon. The INSTEON devices seem to communicate within scenes without issue (other than having lost 8 or 9 switches so far - they all went bad after a few months and had to be replaced). The ISY994 is almost impossible to use as certain devices on the network always lead to communications errors when e.g. adjusting a scene or modifying anything related to some of the larger scenes. Sometimes takes 30 min of manual retries to get the changes written. The ISY994 also misses 60-70% of events. If I write programs that should react to changes on certain devices, chances are more often than not that it will no 'see' the event. Can't get the water circulation to work reliably in the various bathrooms because of that. Home and Away buttons on scene controllers are virtually useless as you never know how many times you have to push them before the ISY994 would react. The entire house is 99% LED - even had all transformers for halogen removed and bulbs replaced with 110V MR10 LEDs to avoid issues from the transformers. On top of all these communications issues, most of the LEDs will blink to the rhythm of the INSTEON signals. Very annoying - but that's for another day. The ISY994 and the PLM are located in the very center of the house and are surrounded by dual mode dimmers in all directions. Communication issues occur close to the ISY/PLM as well as on opposite ends of the house. 8 button scene controllers seem to be the worst but also some of the dual band dimmers take many attempts to make the work. I am about to give up on the entire setup. Any ideas?
LeeG Posted January 6, 2014 Posted January 6, 2014 You obviously have Insteon Mesh Network issues. There are appliances/devices that will generate interference or absorb Insteon signals making some Insteon devices difficult to communicate with. Insteon should be more reliable than X10 but the sources of interference have to be located and handled. Also some devices such as baby monitors use the same RF frequency as Insteon. Try turning all circuits Off except the ISY, PLM and another circuit. It sounds like there are issues that may be house wide that will have to be located and resolved. If Insteon devices that are powered can be controlled add another circuit. There are no good independent Insteon Mesh Network analysis tools. It comes down to an evaluation of each circuit, finding the issues on that circuit, correcting those issues and moving to the next circuit. Actually before working on individual circuits run the 4 tap Set button test and see how well the Insteon RF portion is working around the entire house. Easy test to initiate and important to know how well RF is actually working throughout the house.
oratzes Posted January 6, 2014 Author Posted January 6, 2014 Thank you for the suggestions. I did the 4 tap test and see about 8-10 devices blinking green with the white LED at various levels up to the max and about the same for blinking red. If I read that correctly it should mean than there are 8-10 dual band devices on each phase transmitting the RF signals into power line signals. One of the devices with the most communications issues is within that range. 2 dimmers and an 8 button dimmer (3 devices) together behind one 3 way plate. One dimmer blinks green, one red and the 8 button dimmer blinks red (sits in between the dual band dimmers). That 8 button dimmer has no load attached to itself. It only serves as an 8 way scene controller. If I am not mistaken that would mean the 8 button dimmer is within the 1st RF hop of the PLM and has two dual mode dimmers in its vicinity each on a different phase. I would understand if all the comm issues where with devices on the very end of the house, but this one is just too close. Not getting the fact that this mesh network is suppose to get stronger with more devices.
oberkc Posted January 6, 2014 Posted January 6, 2014 Given your description (scene commands between devices work well, but ISY having trouble), I would start to look at what other electronic devices and gadgets are on the outlet and circuit that includes the ISY. PLM is NOT on a surge supressor, correct?
oratzes Posted January 6, 2014 Author Posted January 6, 2014 Given your description (scene commands between devices work well, but ISY having trouble), I would start to look at what other electronic devices and gadgets are on the outlet and circuit that includes the ISY. PLM is NOT on a surge supressor, correct? The PLM is on a dual outlet. The PLM is directly plugged into one of the two 110V outlets, the second one goes to an iMeter Solo that has a protecting powerstrip for all other central home gear sitting behind. (Cable Modem, Airport Extreme, Mac Mini, 16 port gigabit router, ISY994 power supply, ATT Wireless micro cell, 2TB cloud storage...) -> Some 46W according to the iMeter. Planning to move all of that gear on a dedicated UPS.
oberkc Posted January 6, 2014 Posted January 6, 2014 the second one goes to an iMeter Solo that has a protecting powerstrip for all other central home gear sitting behind. My perception is that such powerstrips can be a problem for insteon communications. My temptation would be to temporarily get an extension cord and plug it into a different room and circuit. Plug the PLM into this extension cord. If this solves your problem, I would conclude that your powerstrip is a problem, and put it on a filter.
oratzes Posted January 7, 2014 Author Posted January 7, 2014 the second one goes to an iMeter Solo that has a protecting powerstrip for all other central home gear sitting behind. My perception is that such powerstrips can be a problem for insteon communications. My temptation would be to temporarily get an extension cord and plug it into a different room and circuit. Plug the PLM into this extension cord. If this solves your problem, I would conclude that your powerstrip is a problem, and put it on a filter. Thank you for the suggestion. I will give that a try. I have also ordered a couple of the filters and was planning to try one before that and other powers trips (office, media center, ...)
oratzes Posted January 7, 2014 Author Posted January 7, 2014 Tried an extension cord and it definitely improved communications. Still some time outs, but far less. I can even update my monster scene that has all major lights in it (emergency lights on in and around the house) and it will complete without an error. I was also able to remove all manual 1 sec waits in my more complex programs and they still activate and deactivate all targets listed. I should be getting a few filters in 2 days and will give them a try. Good to know that a close-by powerstrip can cause issues even if the PLM is not plugged into that strip. Having said that it could also be because the extension cord by luck hit the other phase of the house. The 4 button test of the PLM has the colors (green/red) reversed on all switches that it reaches with the RF signal. Finally making some progress. Also figured out that some of the 'dead' switches I got today fixed themselves with a factory reset of them. Thank you very much for the help!
oratzes Posted January 10, 2014 Author Posted January 10, 2014 This issues appears to have been solved. Here is what I did after some feedback earlier in this thread: Put filters in front of all powerstrips in the house (central computer, office, media system) and added 5 Access Points throughout the house so all switches would be in direct RF site of at least one Access Point. Together the signal reliability has gone up to a point where I no longer can get devices to time out or drop their connections. In fact various tasks that used to take a long time on the ISY not finish in a fraction of the time. One particular scene that contains 90% of the devices/lights in the house (emergency ON) that used to fail changes made to all devices not finishes applying changes to all devices in less than a minute without failure. Now I just need to get the flickering LED MR10 lights under control. They show every INSTEON traffic pattern and flicker like crazy. Many thanks for the help!
RichardL Posted January 11, 2014 Posted January 11, 2014 Glad things are working out. Question: Which filter model(s) did you use?
oratzes Posted January 13, 2014 Author Posted January 13, 2014 Question: Which filter model(s) did you use? SmartHome FilterLinc Hope this helps!
Brian H Posted January 13, 2014 Posted January 13, 2014 If you have any loads that are above the FilterLinc's ten amp rating. Some have used the the ACT AF120 that has a fifteen amp rating.
oratzes Posted March 19, 2014 Author Posted March 19, 2014 One more tip concerning Apple Airport Extreme base stations: They are really strong signal sinks as it turns out. Had to run a switch to out gate system and could not get it to communicate. Once I removed a collocated Airport Extreme (latest gen) it started working. Have now started to add FilterLincs to all Airport base stations on the property.
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.