Longevity of Insteon switches and dimers?

[Cfreeland]

I am a newbie building a new home and I plan to automate all wall switches in bedrooms and major commen rooms. I am leaning toward a Isy 994i ZW, and was leaning toward Insteon switches for light switches, and the new GE Zwave ceiling fan wall switches for fan controle. However in my research I am finding a lot of reports of the Insteon switches only lasting about 2 or 3 years and when I am about to spend around $1k for these switches I would like for them to last much longer, is this the normal lifespan for Insteon switches? If this is the case I may go with the Leviton zwave for my 3 ways and the cheaper Linear for the other locations, do these have a longer lifespan?

[Teken]

I am a newbie building a new home and I plan to automate all wall switches in bedrooms and major commen rooms. I am leaning toward a Isy 994i ZW, and was leaning toward Insteon switches for light switches, and the new GE Zwave ceiling fan wall switches for fan controle. However in my research I am finding a lot of reports of the Insteon switches only lasting about 2 or 3 years and when I am about to spend around $1k for these switches I would like for them to last much longer, is this the normal lifespan for Insteon switches? If this is the case I may go with the Leviton zwave for my 3 ways and the cheaper Linear for the other locations, do these have a longer lifespan?

 

That is kind of a loaded question and really depends upon who you ask, where they live, and when they got into Insteon. As you have already read numerous threads about this topic hence why you asked.

 

Note some basic facts: Millions of these units have been sold and based on that percentage there have been failures. This is common with most devices you can think of.

 

Having said this Insteon quality has gone up since day one of release. Their most recent products are more robust, energy efficient, and look better too.

 

It comes down to random luck, how crappy the power is in your area, and what kind of surge inducing devices you have in the home. Speaking only for myself I would not hesitate to purchase more Insteon products for my home.

 

I would however temper that statement in saying I have key rooms / areas that no high tech gear is used or allowed. This is to ensure fail over and basic control when the fancy gizmos decide to die. 

[Techman]

Seems the biggest reason for the Insteon device failure is caused by black outs/brown outs and power surges .

 

It's best to add a whole house surge protector at the main panel(s) especially if you're located in an area that has an unstable power grid.

[oberkc]

I have had a few failures over seven years of using insteon. Only two were random, that I recall...one PLM failure, and my single "icon" device (no longer available). The other failures were arguably induced.

 

I view insteon devices as not very robust, rather than having a limited life. Dont load them at max capacity. Dont change a light bulb while energized. Dont allow your house to be subject to power surges and spikes. If you have a stable environment, however, they can last a while.

[paulbates]

I can echo comments above. I put my first inline lincs in in 2006, they're still there. I had an intermatic whole house power conditioner already, and I believe that helped. I did lose a plm plugged in near a furnace within a month of installing it, due to, I believe, powerline noise. I put an XPNR filter on the furnace and that seemed to solve it.

 

Reliability is one factor, but there are others: total cost, learning curve, available functionality and, what you like.  Depending how much time you have before your build, you may want to get the ISY, zwave card and a few of each type of swithc and experiment with it in your current house.

 

Paul

[Cfreeland]

Seems the biggest reason for the Insteon device failure is caused by black outs/brown outs and power surges .

 

It's best to add a whole house surge protector at the main panel(s) especially if you're located in an area that has an unstable power grid.

  

I can echo comments above. I put my first inline lincs in in 2006, they're still there. I had an intermatic whole house power conditioner already, and I believe that helped. I did lose a plm plugged in near a furnace within a month of installing it, due to, I believe, powerline noise. I put an XPNR filter on the furnace and that seemed to solve it.

 

Reliability is one factor, but there are others: total cost, learning curve, available functionality and, what you like.  Depending how much time you have before your build, you may want to get the ISY, zwave card and a few of each type of swithc and experiment with it in your current house.

 

Paul

I plan on adding a whole house surge at box and pre-wire for a future generator. Grid is stable, however many trees near power lines that come down at times, plus this is the South so lighting strikes is a problem.

Current house is 50+ years old so wiring stability can not be comparable with new home since it will be a new build, so testing a few problems might not bee a reliable test.

[paulbates]

The suggestion for testing was more about trying out the technologies for the "other" factors.. learning curve, functionality, etc. Nothing major or permanent, just a chance to see what you like and why.

Chances are you will invest a lot in a whole house install and be making a decision you will have to live with for a while.

[blueman2]

Insteon, while overall quite good in quality and getting better all the time, did have a few duds in terms of products.  The KeyPadLincs of the 2010-2011 timeframe have had a significant failure rates based on my own experience (5 of 7 failures) and from what I read in forums in general.  Also, the PLMs produced in this same timeframe seemed to have a high failure rate.  In both cases, it appears to be due to bad quality capacitors. 

 

Outside of those 2 areas, I would rate Insteon quality as superb.  And even with the rather high failure rate I had with KPLs, I would not hesitate buying Insteon again for another home.  But, I would probably invest in a good whole home surge protector.  And I like Teken's approach of keeping a few areas with good old fashioned standard switches for 'just in case' situations.  I guess I watched too much Battlestar Galactica.  

[Teken]

Insteon, while overall quite good in quality and getting better all the time, did have a few duds in terms of products.  The KeyPadLincs of the 2010-2011 timeframe have had a significant failure rates based on my own experience (5 of 7 failures) and from what I read in forums in general.  Also, the PLMs produced in this same timeframe seemed to have a high failure rate.  In both cases, it appears to be due to bad quality capacitors. 

 

Outside of those 2 areas, I would rate Insteon quality as superb.  And even with the rather high failure rate I had with KPLs, I would not hesitate buying Insteon again for another home.  But, I would probably invest in a good whole home surge protector.  And I like Teken's approach of keeping a few areas with good old fashioned standard switches for 'just in case' situations.  I guess I watched too much Battlestar Galactica.  

 

So say we all . . . 

[bpwwer]

I've been using Insteon since the beginning.  Failures have been minimal.  Icon switch micro-switch failures (most covered under SmartHome's warrenty).  One Icon switch failure (not micro-switch), one PLM failure (fixed by replacing caps), and a couple of early lamplinc failures.   I do have two somewhat flakey keypadlincs.

 

I don't have any whole house surge protection, no special filtering, etc.  I don't treat the house any different because it has Insteon devices in it.  I would guess that many devices are over 5 years old and probably a few that are over 10.

[416to305]

Remember too the limitations of Z-Wave switches, unless you're looking at the more expensive GE ones, which are something like 1.5x the cost of an Insteon switch.  Most Z-Wave switches are not instant status, meaning when you turn the switch on or off on the wall, the ISY doesn't know about it until it polls it.  I don't know how often that is on the ISY, but the Vera is every minute or so, plus it is a cycle, so every minute it runs the poll, starting at device 1, then 2, then 3 etc, so it can be around 2 minutes between the time it queries the switch.  Where that can be a big deal is when you want to run programs like having a motion sensor turn on a light.  For my Insteon switches, I have a program that says if I manually turn it off, disable motion for 30 seconds, to let someone have time to leave the room.  With Z-Wave switches that's not possible, because when you turn it off on the switch, as mentioned it's up to 2 minutes before the ISY knows that happened.  Again the more expensive Z-Wave switches to have instant status, but I believe they are in the $80+ range per switch.  I personally prefer the Insteon switches over my Linear Z-Wave ones, as they click much easier, have instant status, have fast on, fast off (same thing, no fast on/off on z-wave), and have a nice LED panel to show brightness level.

[Cfreeland]

The suggestion for testing was more about trying out the technologies for the "other" factors.. learning curve, functionality, etc. Nothing major or permanent, just a chance to see what you like and why.

 

Chances are you will invest a lot in a whole house install and be making a decision you will have to live with for a while.

Your wright and I should of realized that is what you meant and might do that.

 

Remember too the limitations of Z-Wave switches, unless you're looking at the more expensive GE ones, which are something like 1.5x the cost of an Insteon switch. Most Z-Wave switches are not instant status, meaning when you turn the switch on or off on the wall, the ISY doesn't know about it until it polls it. I don't know how often that is on the ISY, but the Vera is every minute or so, plus it is a cycle, so every minute it runs the poll, starting at device 1, then 2, then 3 etc, so it can be around 2 minutes between the time it queries the switch. Where that can be a big deal is when you want to run programs like having a motion sensor turn on a light. For my Insteon switches, I have a program that says if I manually turn it off, disable motion for 30 seconds, to let someone have time to leave the room. With Z-Wave switches that's not possible, because when you turn it off on the switch, as mentioned it's up to 2 minutes before the ISY knows that happened. Again the more expensive Z-Wave switches to have instant status, but I believe they are in the $80+ range per switch. I personally prefer the Insteon switches over my Linear Z-Wave ones, as they click much easier, have instant status, have fast on, fast off (same thing, no fast on/off on z-wave), and have a nice LED panel to show brightness level.

Yes I have bean aware of those zwave limitations and that is why I was considering Insteon, and why if I go with zwave I will likely go Levitonn for 3 and 4 way's. Leviton are expensive for load bearing switches but the companion switches are dirt cheap so the total price is close to what the Insteon's would cost. The Levotans also do the instant reporting. I am also considering doing a split zwave and Insteon, Leviton for the 3 ways and Insteon for the others.

[Techman]

   I plan on adding a whole house surge at box and pre-wire for a future generator. Grid is stable, however many trees near power lines that come down at times, plus this is the South so lighting strikes is a problem.

Current house is 50+ years old so wiring stability can not be comparable with new home since it will be a new build, so testing a few problems might not bee a reliable test.

 

If you're in the planning/building stage be sure to have your electrician install a neutral wire in each switch box as the Insteon dual band devices require both a hot lead and a neutral in addition to a ground.

[EricK]

And use deep electrical boxes.

[ergodic]

You've asked a great question. And the answer depends on what you're expecting.

 

I gutted and remodeled a house in 2007 before we moved in. Everything electrical in and around this house is now Insteon. I have 82 active devices in the ISY console, as I've added on over the years. And for the most part I'm very happy with it all. (The ISY is the only thing that makes this workable BTW.)

 

I just ran a report and for my Insteon/ISY stuff it totals about $7K. Included in that are some spares, occasional replacements over the years, and some fooling-around-with items. By comparison, I could have installed, say, a Crestron system. Of course it would have cost about 10x that, taken up a wall in my garage, required special wiring and I'd need an authorized dealer to do much of anything with it.

 

There have been some reliability bumps. I had a batch of controllers with bad firmware that SH replaced under warranty, though they weren't able to replace all the time I spent installing them, troubleshooting the endless weird problems, pulling them out and putting the new ones in. I've had 3 PLM failures, and I now keep a recapped spare on hand. I've had a few KPLs that inexplicably died. And I've just now been replacing a few old KPLs that have become unstable with poor communication. The new dual-band units work better anyway.

 

My overall impression is that the newer products will turn out to be much better on reliability, just based on what I see internally and with my own testing, but I'll really have to reserve final judgement on that for a few years.

 

I will say that I have a whole-house generator that came on one night during a power failure and after a couple of hours went nuts due to a bad stepper motor. Lights dimming and brightening up all over like a haunted house. 48-65Hz on the scope, and voltage all over the place before I finally just shut it down. Not only did it not cause any controllers to fail, but the entire system continued to work just fine. (I do have the ISY and PLM behind a UPS).

 

The suggestion to invest a few dollars in trying out the various technologies that are of interest to you is very good advice, and you may find through testing that the hybrid approach works best for you. But by and large, and trying to be objective, I believe that the ISY/Insteon solution remains the best overall 'DIY' solution.

 

The larger question is whether Insteon as a proprietary technology will thrive. That's a tough one, and of course it's important for a lot of reasons if you're making a big initial investment. As long as the HA market remains fragmented, they'll do fine. But as things consolidate where Insteon will fit in is harder to predict. I think they're doing some of the things they need to: updating the product line, better design, revamping the developer program, improving quality, signing up big retailers etc.

[apostolakisl]

I have about 70 or so insteon devices.

 

My initial Insteon switches were all defective . . . 100%.  They replaced them under warranty for the "tact switch" problem.  This problem has been solved for a long time now.  I have had zero Insteon switch/KPL failures since then.  This is something like 5 years of use now.

 

My PLM failed for the same reason as everyone else's (cheapo capacitors).  Not covered under warranty.  I replaced the capacitors myself.  Supposedly this is fixed in the latest version.

 

I had several lamp lincs fail for electrical component failure.  They were covered under warranty.

 

I am not aware of any of the current products having inherent problems.

 

I did have a nasty power fluctuation issue a couple months ago and a separate lightening strike nearby that damaged a few things in my house . . . but none of my Insteon stuff suffered.  I lost a fan on my AC unit and some relays on my Elk security panel.

[Cfreeland]

Thanks guys, this makes me feel more comfortable goingahead and using Insteon for my in-wall light switches and dimmers. I am going with the new recently introduced GE ceiling fan zwave switches, I prefere having the fan controle at the wall for manual controle in addition to the automation over the Insteon Fan Link with the controle in the fixture and depending totally on automation. Will the Isy 994i ZW support these new GE Zwave fan switches? I also plan on having 2 zwave thermostats, but have not decided which ones I will go with yet, any suggestions? After I move in I plan on adding zwave locks on up to 3 doors over time. Still debating between the Lineer zwave garage door controller or the Insteon one, any reconditions? Also plan on doing some smart bulbs for lamps, most likely Insteon. My brother in law who is disabled and living in the same house, owns some x10 stuff so we will have a few lamps controled by x10 too. Latter as I learn more I will likely do more like adding security cameras and other things. The house will also have extensive structured wiring for future proofing.