I'm new to insteon and only have a few items going right now. Not much experience with all the different insteon products yet.

Looking to do the lighting in a room and I can't see a simple way how to do it.

 

What I have now is a large room with two ceiling fixtures that I'll call North and South and two plug in lamps which sit on either side of a tv.

The two ceiling fixtures are controlled by a single switch and I can't separate them without ripping out drywall ceilings so not happening.

 

What I want to do is to replace the South ceiling fixture with a fan, but be able to turn off the North light and leave the fan on.  On top of that I would like to be able to dim the plug in lamps together.  A single lamplinc dimmer could be used for both plug in lamps, but how to control from a wall switch? 

I can't be using a phone/tablet here. Has to be wall switch.

I may be able to add a gang to put an extra switchlinc even if it has no load connected to it...I'd have to do some investigating to figure that out.

 

So any advice on how you would solve my lighting dilemma?

At the fan box, add a "fanlinc".  At the north light box, add a "micro module".  Keep the two lamps plugged into a single lamplinc, or plug each into their own lamplinc (does not matter). 

 

Replace single wall switch with 8-button keypad.  Configure four buttons for fan speeds (off, low, medium, high).  One button for the two lamps.  One button for the north light.  This leaves two spare buttons for growth or other creative use.

I guess I need to look into the 8 button keypad to learn more about it.

Could the buttons used for the lights still dim though? As long as the micro module and the lamplincs are dimmers I assume?

The micro module is available in Dimmer and relay On/Off

 http://home-automation.smarthome.com/search?w=insteon%202442-222%20micro%20dimmer%20module

keypad buttons can be used to dim and brighten, yes, so long that the device powering the load is so capable.

Hi Danbutter,

 

If you have two lights in the same room(north and south) that are controlled from the same switch, you probably have romex ran from both lights directly to the gang box. You could either turn it into a 2 gang box and have two switchlincs to control each load, or you can have a 6 or 8 button keypadlinc which will control one light, and have a micro module in the 1gang box that would connect to the 2nd light. You can then create a scene so that a button on the keypadlinc would control the micro module.

 

As oberkc stated, the other buttons could be used to control the lamps, fan, and any other devices you want.

An Off button is not needed for the fan. One button on (lit) for that speed, all buttons off (unlit) for off.

 

Button        Use

A            Ceiling light

B, C, D   Low, Medium, High

D           Lamp 1

E           Lamp 2

F           Lamps 1 & 2

G          Master for ceiling light + lamps

H           spare (or fan off)

Hi Stu,

The Insteon fan keypad buttons come with 4 buttons, including an off button. Each button would be configured as ON only.

 

If you don't have an off button, do you set it up as toggle On/Off for each of the 3 buttons? Lets say the fan is on LOW and the LOW button on the keypad is light and you want to turn it off. Would you hit the LOW button and it would turn off the fan and the LOW LED on the keypad would also turn off?

Yes, with mutually exclusive scenes you can leave the buttons in default toggle mode, and you don't have to have an off button. Some like having the explicit off, but I prefer to use the extra button for something else. I think the details are in the wiki. I learned this a few weeks ago when setting up my first fanlinc.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

It's really easy with scenes. All buttons are in toggle mode. Have the button of interest a controller with an On-Level of 100% and the other two buttons as responders with an On-level of 0%.