INSTEON ALMOST BURNED MY HOUSE DOWN!!! Now ISY Problem

[sloop]

stating that no one needs the lights is NOT fact - you can't seem to grasp that

 

you might be incapable of imagining why someone might - that might be fact

 

nor do you know if he is in a neighborhood or in the middle of 2000 acres

 

how he spends his money is his business - he was not asking permission

 

and you claim others are deflecting?

 

slooplinc

the politically correct troll

 

(who never judged if there was a 'need' - I left that judgment to others)

[larryllix]

Playing tennis is tough. Playing ball at night using a glow-in-the-dark ball can be illuminating.

GlowBall.PNG

I don't think I want to open the "glow in the dark balls" discussion.

[stusviews]

I don't think I want to open the "glow in the dark balls" discussion.

 

Nor would I.

[Guitartexan]

I would if I worked at a nuclear power plant.

 

 

GT

[ISYhbsh01]

The Phillips Hue and GE Link smart bulbs also turn full on after a power outage regardless of their previous state. I remember reading on a forum someone saying that all Zigbee devices behave this way but I am not sure if that's true. I have read people complaining how they woke up in the middle of the night to full brightness of their hue lights because of a half a second power outage. So to be fair it's not just Smarthome who did it this way ten years ago. The bigwigs like Phillips & GE do this today with their latest & greatest line of products. I do totally agree though that this is not an ideal implementation.

[ranman57]

I just ran across this thread while looking for some other info, and the "almost burned my house down" sort of caught my eye for obvious reasons.

 

I don't want to get real involved here, and don't know if any one is still following this anyway, but if the OP is familiar with programming his own AMX system then he can make his Insteon/ISY 994 do all sorts of fun and useful stuff it can't do on its own.  I have a Crestron system running my house, using an ISY controller as the bridge from the Crestron system to the Insteon lighting.  The implementation is actually fairly easy, just setting up a UDP connection to the ISY on pretty much any port you want and sending simple ASCIII serial commands out to the ISY.  If you want true two way communication between the two systems you'll need to install the networking module, which can then talk back to the AMX system and allow you to query the ISY for any status info you want.

 

A full disclaimer here is that I make my living programming Crestron systems, so my version of simple might be different than the OP's, but all the info you need to do it is available on this forum.  My original reason for joining was to dig out that info and then making all the crazy stuff in my house work as a team, and it's all working pretty well at this point.  The alarm system talks to the Crestron system for motion detection throughout the house, then the Crestron system knows what rooms are occupied and can act to turn off empty rooms after a given amount of time.  It also will give you a verbal warning in the room 30 seconds before it turns everything off, so if you happen to have not moved for a while it doesn't leave you in the dark.  When it gives you the warning you just wave your arm around until it tells you the off command has been cancelled.  Yeah, it's way overkill but certainly a lot of fun.  And it freaks people out when the house talks, which is an amusing side benefit.

 

I guess my point here is if you have all this automated gear in the house integration is the key, and you can probably overcome any deficiencies in any one system by programming around it somewhere else.

 

Just my .02...

[MWareman]

 

 

I have a Crestron system running my house, using an ISY controller as the bridge from the Crestron system to the Insteon lighting.

 

A full disclaimer here is that I make my living programming Crestron systems,

 

I didn't think it was possible to even do the first without being the second...

[lilyoyo1]

I saw this thread due to the added comments. No company gets it right the first time nor will any company please everyone. Not everyone wants their devices to revert to whatever condition after a power failure. Companies battle with ever changing desires constantly. Devices do not know what a person is thinking at any given moment. If I have a power outage right now, chances are, I will want my lights to come back on. The device does not know that. Maybe it takes 2 hrs. Before it comes on again and my mood changed. How is a device to know? I'm not going to beat up on the OP as many others have already pointed out the root problem.

 

However, for any system to work properly, you have to take the time to understand it's pros/cons and use available resources to plan accordingly. What you experienced could happen with any system including a non automated system. I am glad that your house did not burn down and no one was hurt, this isn't time for the blame game. It's looking at the root cause, understanding it, and planning for it. My iron and my fiance's hair stuff gets plugged into appliance modules. Those are there as a safety net for the one time someone may forget to turn off or unplug their item. That way should we leave them on, the system will turn them off. With that said, we both understand the dangers and take the extra step to ensure that we unplug them properly when not in use.

 

Since you have an automated system, taking the time to program for different scenarios is paramount; especially if you travel often. You state you have frequent losses so this would not have been the first time you noticed this behavior. At that point something should have been done to remedy the situation especially since you have the ISY.

 

To combat lights being left on, I do two thing:

 

1) I use motion sensors everywhere to make sure lights are off if a room is unoccupied.

 

2) I run programs that will automatically turn off lights in the middle of the night if their status shows on for more than 40 minutes. This way, if I am out of town and something happens I am covered.

 

I'm not sure of any manufacturer that has user upgradeable firmware for any of their switches. Due to how they are normally purchased (large qty) all it takes is someone screwing up an update and they are out of 20 switches.