Repair of 2413S PLM When the Power Supply Fails

[Brian H]

There is a power supply portion of the 2413S PLM schematic in this forum. In this thread I believe.

Right now my main computer with the exact link is down. So I can't supply exactly where.

[xgfreon]

Those that have recapped older plm's how long are they lasting after this? Has anyone recapped more than once?

[Schlyguy]

I’ve recapped two EZIO modules which have the same main board as the PLM and they’ve been running fine for about a year. Would be interested to hear other experiences. 

[matapan]

There is a separate post asking the question about PLM longevity after recap here:

The two users who responded say they are going strong 4-5 years after recaps. Haven't seen a post from anyone who said they recapped their unit twice yet. Fingers crossed.

 

[upstatemike]

On 10/31/2015 at 8:41 PM, jerlands said:

 

Better yet.. hopefully it'll last till when UDI gets Smarthome to supply them the chips for their PLM.

 

 

Jon...

So that never happened but I don't remember if the feasibility of using chips from old PLMs to make the new ones was ever explored. Dead PLMs would have to be shipped to the manufacturer (additionlal expense) and they would have to be paid to remove the chips from the old PLMs (another expense) which would never be practical in the old model but I wonder if the new world of chip shortages now makes this at least borderline viable?

[Brian H]

Are you talking back to Smartlabs or using in a different manufacturers designed PLM?

Maybe.

You could run into Smartlabs having the patent on the technology and if they would put up a big stink. Or call a lawyer and send threatening legal paper work.

I would probably pick only the revisions with the latest I have seen firmware 9E. There are two chips in the 2413. Main controller and the RF interface controller. Each has it own firmware. 

Unless you used your designs own RF setup and controller. Then the main controller would need moving.

[upstatemike]

If you use old PLMs as your chip source then Smartlabs has gotten their due from the original sale of the unit and have no claim, patent or otherwise, on what you do with it after purchasing it from them. Think of the conversion van market as a parallel.

UL listing and safety liability are still concerns but I don't think Smartlabs would or could do anything about it.

[arskiracer]

Being that Insteon provided a reference design for the two IN268xx chips, they are wanting people to design their own Insteon devices, probably including a PLM, because Insteon would be supplying the chips.  I was considering designing one myself, but I'm a hardware engineer, and although I could probably do the firmware, it is a little more challenging for me and would take a long time.  Plus if I were to go through that much work, I would want to sell it to make some money for my time, but I would then have to go through FCC testing and certification and I don't know if I want to put in that much effort.

[lilyoyo1]

2 hours ago, upstatemike said:

If you use old PLMs as your chip source then Smartlabs has gotten their due from the original sale of the unit and have no claim, patent or otherwise, on what you do with it after purchasing it from them. Think of the conversion van market as a parallel.

UL listing and safety liability are still concerns but I don't think Smartlabs would or could do anything about it.

That is blatantly incorrect. You would clearly be violating patent and copyright law in doing so. Granted, if you did it for yourself only, they would never know. Should you attempt to sell any, you would be in violation

That would be like me saying i could get away with buying a bunch of iphones, pulling their chips out and making my own phone with them. 

[upstatemike]

4 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

That is blatantly incorrect. You would clearly be violating patent and copyright law in doing so. Granted, if you did it for yourself only, they would never know. Should you attempt to sell any, you would be in violation

That would be like me saying i could get away with buying a bunch of iphones, pulling their chips out and making my own phone with them. 

As long as you paid for the iPhones and Apple got the money they were due you could. Once you purchase a durable good it is yours to do with as you please. Patents protect the owner from their intellectual property being used without them getting compensated. If you bought an iPhone and reverse engineered it to make a dozen more iPhones and sold them without Apple getting paid then that would be a violation. As long as there is a one to one ratio so that Apple got paid for each original iPhone sale and no copies were made that they did not get paid for, then there is no revenue lost and no actionable harm. Apple does not have the right to make additional money from you off of any single iPhone beyond what they got when you originally purchased it through normal legal channels. As long as you are reselling the original item, that you now own, and do not infringe on any patents when making modifications or improvements to it by upgrading caps, loading your own firmware, adding memory, painting it green, etc., then Apple has no say in what you do with your property. You do however have to disclose to the buyer that you are selling a modified product that is not supported or authorized by Apple to avoid potential action related to reputational harm to the Apple brand.

[arskiracer]

6 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

That is blatantly incorrect. You would clearly be violating patent and copyright law in doing so. Granted, if you did it for yourself only, they would never know. Should you attempt to sell any, you would be in violation

That would be like me saying i could get away with buying a bunch of iphones, pulling their chips out and making my own phone with them. 

Have you found a patent on the assembly level 2413S module specifically?

If they provide a reference design, they intend people to use their chips to build products out of them. This is a very common practice.  I've used many reference designs in my career, because it reduces design time and reduces the chance of mistakes.  It also helps to understand which pins are supposed to be connected to what, when the data sheet is unclear.  Companies guard their schematics very closely and they rarely make it to the public unless the company chooses to make a reference design out of them, which then means they are wanting engineers to use their design as a reference when designing their own products with the chips they supply.  Almost all IC manufacturers have reference designs for their components.  Sometimes the component manufacturers will also provide complete designs to end-users, and still provide reference schematics for other companies to design their chips into competing products, as appears to be the case here with Insteon.  Other companies that do this include Spark Fun and Arduino.  Adafruit even makes their own versions of some of the simple Arduino boards that are nearly identical to the Arduino reference designs, with slight changes to adapt the original reference to Adafruit's purpose, and Arduino doesn't care, because they provided the reference designs for that exact purpose.

 

*edited to correct model number reference.

[lilyoyo1]

18 minutes ago, arskiracer said:

Have you found a patent on the assembly level 2314S module specifically?

If they provide a reference design, they intend people to use their chips to build products out of them. This is a very common practice.  I've used many reference designs in my career, because it reduces design time and reduces the chance of mistakes.  It also helps to understand which pins are supposed to be connected to what, when the data sheet is unclear.  Companies guard their schematics very closely and they rarely make it to the public unless the company chooses to make a reference design out of them, which then means they are wanting engineers to use their design as a reference when designing their own products with the chips they supply.  Almost all IC manufacturers have reference designs for their components.  Sometimes the component manufacturers will also provide complete designs to end-users, and still provide reference schematics for other companies to design their chips into competing products, as appears to be the case here with Insteon.  Other companies that do this include Spark Fun and Arduino.  Adafruit even makes their own versions of some of the simple Arduino boards that are nearly identical to the Arduino reference designs, with slight changes to adapt the original reference to Adafruit's purpose, and Arduino doesn't care, because they provided the reference designs for that exact purpose.

If you think so, go right ahead. Let us know how that works out for you. 

[lilyoyo1]

50 minutes ago, upstatemike said:

As long as you paid for the iPhones and Apple got the money they were due you could. Once you purchase a durable good it is yours to do with as you please. Patents protect the owner from their intellectual property being used without them getting compensated. If you bought an iPhone and reverse engineered it to make a dozen more iPhones and sold them without Apple getting paid then that would be a violation. As long as there is a one to one ratio so that Apple got paid for each original iPhone sale and no copies were made that they did not get paid for, then there is no revenue lost and no actionable harm. Apple does not have the right to make additional money from you off of any single iPhone beyond what they got when you originally purchased it through normal legal channels. As long as you are reselling the original item, that you now own, and do not infringe on any patents when making modifications or improvements to it by upgrading caps, loading your own firmware, adding memory, painting it green, etc., then Apple has no say in what you do with your property. You do however have to disclose to the buyer that you are selling a modified product that is not supported or authorized by Apple to avoid potential action related to reputational harm to the Apple brand.

I'm not going to debate you. A 5 minute google search will show how wrong you are. Any lawyer will tell you about copyright law. But again- feel free to go for it. 

[lilyoyo1]

2 hours ago, arskiracer said:

Have you found a patent on the assembly level 2413S module specifically?

If they provide a reference design, they intend people to use their chips to build products out of them. This is a very common practice.  I've used many reference designs in my career, because it reduces design time and reduces the chance of mistakes.  It also helps to understand which pins are supposed to be connected to what, when the data sheet is unclear.  Companies guard their schematics very closely and they rarely make it to the public unless the company chooses to make a reference design out of them, which then means they are wanting engineers to use their design as a reference when designing their own products with the chips they supply.  Almost all IC manufacturers have reference designs for their components.  Sometimes the component manufacturers will also provide complete designs to end-users, and still provide reference schematics for other companies to design their chips into competing products, as appears to be the case here with Insteon.  Other companies that do this include Spark Fun and Arduino.  Adafruit even makes their own versions of some of the simple Arduino boards that are nearly identical to the Arduino reference designs, with slight changes to adapt the original reference to Adafruit's purpose, and Arduino doesn't care, because they provided the reference designs for that exact purpose.

 

*edited to correct model number reference.

If that was the case, don't you think UDI would have done so with their own PLM? Building an assembly and buying chips directly from them to sell (with permission) isn't the same as buying old parts and reselling with your own assembly (without permission).

Using your logic, I can buy a bottle of head & shoulders, put it in my own container and resell as my own product. 

As I said before, go for it and try to sell without permission. 

[upstatemike]

1 hour ago, lilyoyo1 said:

I'm not going to debate you. A 5 minute google search will show how wrong you are. Any lawyer will tell you about copyright law. But again- feel free to go for it. 

By your thinking I cannot sell my Toyota to the guy up the street because I have modified it by putting an aftermarket muffler on it when the original one rusted out and therefore violated Toyota's patents on the vehicle.

[lilyoyo1]

11 minutes ago, upstatemike said:

By your thinking I cannot sell my Toyota to the guy up the street because I have modified it by putting an aftermarket muffler on it when the original one rusted out and therefore violated Toyota's patents on the vehicle.

That's completely different. The surpreme court already ruled that selling a purchased item does not infringe on any patents. Buying a PLM, taking the chip out of it and reselling it as your own module does infringe on copyright law. 

Using your analogy, taking that same Toyota with a new muffler and trying to resell it by calling it Eleanor will cost you. IP laws are very clear on the matter. A simple 2 minute search can educate you (or a lawyer on retainer)

 

[upstatemike]

You don't have to sell it as your own module. You can sell it as a purchased item that you have modified. If that modification includes a new case to house the other modifications so be it. If you couldn't do that then conversion vans and most RVs would be impossible to make.

[arskiracer]

3 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

If that was the case, don't you think UDI would have done so with their own PLM? Building an assembly and buying chips directly from them to sell (with permission) isn't the same as buying old parts and reselling with your own assembly (without permission).

Using your logic, I can buy a bottle of head & shoulders, put it in my own container and resell as my own product. 

As I said before, go for it and try to sell without permission. 

UDI could, but I imagine they don't have a desire to make an identical product to one already on the market.  Companies often look for new market share for high yield returns.  It's often thought to be more profitable to enter a new area, rather than trying to overtake existing products with a competing product that has no new features.

I'm no lawyer, but I know if I created a schematic, then posted it online for others to use in their own designs, it would be perfectly legal for them to use it in their own designs.  As I said earlier, this is very common, because companies that sell ICs want to make it as easy as possible for engineers to integrate those ICs into their own products, so the company who created the reference design can sell more of those ICs to the downstream company, which then sells their product to the end user.  I didn't know Insteon made their own ICs, but that appears to be the case, according to their reference design.  They even gave it a model number starting with IN (probably for INsteon).

In 2007, Insteon created a reference design for engineers to use in order to integrate Insteon powerline and RF ICs into their products.  The reference schematic appears to include the 2007 version of the 2413 main board and the serial and USB interface boards.  At the time, they mentioned that they were working on an IC that integrated both the RF and powerline functions into a single IC, but that wasn't complete yet.  Their goal for making these reference schematics public is likely the same goal of most companies who have public reference designs, which is to sell ICs to companies who want to use them in their designs.  This is very common, you would know this if you were an electrical design engineer in new product development.  My designs probably use 50% or more reference designs in them, because it reduces the design time and reduces the mistakes in the first prototypes.

Reprocessing is also very legal.  It is big in medical devices where single use products will be refurbished and sterilized for additional uses, then sold at a discounted price by a 3rd party.  Although the manufacturers don't like this, it is legal, and companies integrate crypto chips into electronic products to help reduce the ease of reprocessing.  Although this happens in the US, it's more prevalent in other countries, but not for legal reasons, but because US healthcare has a lot of money and generally targets quality over price.

[Brian H]

11 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

If that was the case, don't you think UDI would have done so with their own PLM? Building an assembly and buying chips directly from them to sell (with permission) isn't the same as buying old parts and reselling with your own assembly (without permission).

Using your logic, I can buy a bottle of head & shoulders, put it in my own container and resell as my own product. 

As I said before, go for it and try to sell without permission. 

UDI did develop their own PLM. I understand there are a few production samples made. With a promise from Smartlabs to provide the needed chips or license the firmware source file to them.

They changed their mind after UDI did development work. IMHO screwing UDI. They have said they would not be doing any PLM from their development again.

[lilyoyo1]

13 minutes ago, Brian H said:

UDI did develop their own PLM. I understand there are a few production samples made. With a promise from Smartlabs to provide the needed chips or license the firmware source file to them.

They changed their mind after UDI did development work. IMHO screwing UDI. They have said they would not be doing any PLM from their development again.

Yes they did..WITH PERMISSION and with the understanding that they would be selling the chips to them not UDI buying old units to pull chips from. 

That is the key where you go from a completely legal act to an illegal one that could potentially cost you millions.

[lilyoyo1]

8 hours ago, arskiracer said:

UDI could, but I imagine they don't have a desire to make an identical product to one already on the market.  Companies often look for new market share for high yield returns.  It's often thought to be more profitable to enter a new area, rather than trying to overtake existing products with a competing product that has no new features.

I'm no lawyer, but I know if I created a schematic, then posted it online for others to use in their own designs, it would be perfectly legal for them to use it in their own designs.  As I said earlier, this is very common, because companies that sell ICs want to make it as easy as possible for engineers to integrate those ICs into their own products, so the reference design company can sell more of those ICs to the downstream company, which then sells their product to the end user.  I didn't know Insteon made their own ICs, but that appears to be the case, according to their reference design.  The even gave it a model number starting with IN (probably for INsteon).

In 2007, Insteon created a reference design for engineers to use in order to integrate Insteon powerline and RF ICs into their products.  The reference schematic appears to include the 2007 version of the 2413S main board and the serial and USB interface boards.  At the time, they mentioned that they were working on an IC that integrated both the RF and powerline functions into a single IC, but that wasn't complete yet.  Their goal for making these reference schematics public is likely the same goal of most companies who have public reference designs, which is to sell ICs to companies who want to use them in their designs.  This is very common, you would know this if you were an electrical design engineer in new product development.  My designs probably use 50% or more reference designs in them, because it reduces the design time and reduces the mistakes in the first prototypes.

Reprocessing is also very legal.  It is big in medical devices where single use products will be refurbished and sterilized for additional uses, then sold at a discounted price by a 3rd party.  Although the manufacturers don't like this, it is legal, and companies integrate crypto chips into electronic products to help reduce the ease of reprocessing.  Although this happens in the US, it's more prevalent in other countries, but not for legal reasons, but because US healthcare has a lot of money and generally targets quality over price.

You're right, you're not a lawyer but do you have one on retainer? If so, you should probably ask them. Feel free to use mine if you don't know one. Her name is Faith Fox. I can dm you her info if you need it. 

I'm glad you bought up medical reprocessing. The key word is here "reprocessing" which is not what we were talking about. Nice try though. 2 completely different situations and subjects. Had you or upstate said refurbish old units to resell, I'd completely agree.but you didn't. His idea was to build new ones and use old chips from bad units. 

It is completely legal to refurbish equipment. However, where it crosses the line is them taking those same parts, making their own chassis and rebranding it. That would then become illegal and subject them to lawsuits.

While I may not be an Electronics design engineer,  I was an O.R nurse in my younger years and my wife is a physician. In addition, a friend of mine owns a company that does exactly as you say. His company is called US Medical Systems based out of Ft. Mill, SC.

US healthcare having alot of money isn't why reselling doesn't happen more often here. Hospitals and doctors offices are like any other business in that they generally look for the cheapest cost like any other business (unless a physician or surgeon wants something specific... especially surgeons). It's the legalities associated with refurbished equipment and the liabilities behind it. Legally, it's what law requires locally to federal in regards to the use/re-use of medical equipment. Liability wise, it's about what happens should something go wrong. With lawsuits, no one is about to take a chance on a 3rd party refurbished infusion pump. Saving a couple grand isn't worth the millions a single lawsuit could bring due to giving someone the incorrect dosage of something.

You feel having a schematic for something makes it legal which it does not. The legalities start where the permission ends. You even stated yourself, the end goal was to sell their ICs to the companies making plms. That's where the permission comes into play. 

Just like UDI tried to do, they still needed to purchase the chips from insteon...Since they didn't get permission, they could not sell their creation..

Just because some companies operate their businesses certain ways does not mean their way is open for every business. Yes Arduino allows you to build your own cpu. But try reselling it and calling it an Arduino. See how quickly you get a letter in the mail. It comes down to the permissions given. If you think a 15 year old schematic of a chassis gives you permission to do as you state, why don't you? You'd make a lot of money.

[arskiracer]

1 hour ago, lilyoyo1 said:

You're right, you're not a lawyer but do you have one on retainer? If so, you should probably ask them. Feel free to use mine if you don't know one. Her name is Faith Fox. I can dm you her info if you need it. 

I'm glad you bought up medical reprocessing. The key word is here "reprocessing" which is not what we were talking about. Nice try though. 2 completely different situations and subjects. Had you or upstate said refurbish old units to resell, I'd completely agree.but you didn't. His idea was to build new ones and use old chips from bad units. 

It is completely legal to refurbish equipment. However, where it crosses the line is them taking those same parts, making their own chassis and rebranding it. That would then become illegal and subject them to lawsuits.

While I may not be an Electronics design engineer,  I was an O.R nurse in my younger years and my wife is a physician. In addition, a friend of mine owns a company that does exactly as you say. His company is called US Medical Systems based out of Ft. Mill, SC.

US healthcare having alot of money isn't why reselling doesn't happen more often here. Hospitals and doctors offices are like any other business in that they generally look for the cheapest cost like any other business (unless a physician or surgeon wants something specific... especially surgeons). It's the legalities associated with refurbished equipment and the liabilities behind it. Legally, it's what law requires locally to federal in regards to the use/re-use of medical equipment. Liability wise, it's about what happens should something go wrong. With lawsuits, no one is about to take a chance on a 3rd party refurbished infusion pump. Saving a couple grand isn't worth the millions a single lawsuit could bring due to giving someone the incorrect dosage of something.

You feel having a schematic for something makes it legal which it does not. The legalities start where the permission ends. You even stated yourself, the end goal was to sell their ICs to the companies making plms. That's where the permission comes into play. 

Just like UDI tried to do, they still needed to purchase the chips from insteon...Since they didn't get permission, they could not sell their creation..

Just because some companies operate their businesses certain ways does not mean their way is open for every business. Yes Arduino allows you to build your own cpu. But try reselling it and calling it an Arduino. See how quickly you get a letter in the mail. It comes down to the permissions given. If you think a 15 year old schematic of a chassis gives you permission to do as you state, why don't you? You'd make a lot of money.

My argument is that the existence of a reference design is Insteon's permission to use the reference design at other development companies, because that's how it always works.  If it didn't there would be legal language about not re-selling, etc, (as is often the case with publicly available software).  Firmware is different than hardware and often requires a per-device license to resell, if the company even wants to provide the firmware at all, often they don't.  But a hardware reference design is always based on the chips that they're wanting to sell, because the reference is useless without those foundational chips, so anyone using the reference design is automatically using the chips the parent company is wanting to sell.

[arskiracer]

1 hour ago, lilyoyo1 said:

You're right, you're not a lawyer but do you have one on retainer? If so, you should probably ask them. Feel free to use mine if you don't know one. Her name is Faith Fox. I can dm you her info if you need it. 

I'm glad you bought up medical reprocessing. The key word is here "reprocessing" which is not what we were talking about. Nice try though. 2 completely different situations and subjects. Had you or upstate said refurbish old units to resell, I'd completely agree.but you didn't. His idea was to build new ones and use old chips from bad units. 

It is completely legal to refurbish equipment. However, where it crosses the line is them taking those same parts, making their own chassis and rebranding it. That would then become illegal and subject them to lawsuits.

While I may not be an Electronics design engineer,  I was an O.R nurse in my younger years and my wife is a physician. In addition, a friend of mine owns a company that does exactly as you say. His company is called US Medical Systems based out of Ft. Mill, SC.

US healthcare having alot of money isn't why reselling doesn't happen more often here. Hospitals and doctors offices are like any other business in that they generally look for the cheapest cost like any other business (unless a physician or surgeon wants something specific... especially surgeons). It's the legalities associated with refurbished equipment and the liabilities behind it. Legally, it's what law requires locally to federal in regards to the use/re-use of medical equipment. Liability wise, it's about what happens should something go wrong. With lawsuits, no one is about to take a chance on a 3rd party refurbished infusion pump. Saving a couple grand isn't worth the millions a single lawsuit could bring due to giving someone the incorrect dosage of something.

You feel having a schematic for something makes it legal which it does not. The legalities start where the permission ends. You even stated yourself, the end goal was to sell their ICs to the companies making plms. That's where the permission comes into play. 

Just like UDI tried to do, they still needed to purchase the chips from insteon...Since they didn't get permission, they could not sell their creation..

Just because some companies operate their businesses certain ways does not mean their way is open for every business. Yes Arduino allows you to build your own cpu. But try reselling it and calling it an Arduino. See how quickly you get a letter in the mail. It comes down to the permissions given. If you think a 15 year old schematic of a chassis gives you permission to do as you state, why don't you? You'd make a lot of money.

Also, any reprocessed medical device sold in the US still has to be approved by the FDA to be both safe and effective.  I think it would be difficult to go after a hospital for using refurbished equipment when the federal government has already put their stamp of approval on it.

[hart2hart]

I’ve got lots of respect for contributions on this forum. Respectfully, could this be a separate topic? While related, it’s not at the core of what seems most would be looking for when reading this thread.

If you disagree, feel free to say. I’m not trying to prolong and will not be replying.

[lilyoyo1]

51 minutes ago, arskiracer said:

My argument is that the existence of a reference design is Insteon's permission to use the reference design at other development companies, because that's how it always works.  If it didn't there would be legal language about not re-selling, etc, (as is often the case with publicly available software).  Firmware is different than hardware and often requires a per-device license to resell, if the company even wants to provide the firmware at all, often they don't.  But a hardware reference design is always based on the chips that they're wanting to sell, because the reference is useless without those foundational chips, so anyone using the reference design is automatically using the chips the parent company is wanting to sell.

We can go back and forth but unless it's done (or you speak to a lawyer which I've done), it's a moot point.

If you feel you're correct, why don't you pursue it? You'd make a lot of money from reselling your own design.