With Insteon switches, the ISY not only can interrogate whether a switch is ON or OFF (status), but it can interrogate whether the switch was <I>operated</I> ON or OFF (control). This has been handy in extending switch actions for operating other devices (such as turning on or off other lights with a second push of the switch). My current crop of GE zwave switches don't seem to have this feature, compelling me to replace with insteon and use the zwave switch somewhere else.

Is this an insteon-only feature, a feature not yet available with the current ISY firmware, or am I simply buying the wrong zwave switches?

 

 

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With Insteon switches, the ISY not only can interrogate whether a switch is ON or OFF (status), but it can interrogate whether the switch was <I>operated</I> ON or OFF (control). This has been handy in extending switch actions for operating other devices (such as turning on or off other lights with a second push of the switch). My current crop of GE zwave switches don't seem to have this feature, compelling me to replace with insteon and use the zwave switch somewhere else.

Is this an insteon-only feature, a feature not yet available with the current ISY firmware, or am I simply buying the wrong zwave switches?

 

 

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The instant status is a proprietary feature of Lutron or whoever. Some brands like Insteon and Leviton have paid royalties to use said feature.

 

Your only recourse like you said is to use Insteon or pony up and pay much more for a Instant status capable device. On a tangent this patent is running out this year 2016.

Ah, so it's part of the "instant status" feature. So unless I see that term in the product documentation, can I assume that device does not have that feature, or could it possibly be called something else?

Leviton has "scene capable" devices. Is this the same thing?

 

https://www.aartech.ca/related/DZS15-1LZ%20instructions.PDF

 

Thanks for your patience.

 

 

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Edited January 13, 20169 yr by Nestor

I know that the ISY can detect when a device was manually triggered (control), but I did not realize that this was able to be queried after the fact. I also did not know that such a capability was due to smarthome paying royalties.  

 

So, if a device was initially turned on manually but later adjusted as part of a scene action, a query would yield the most recent action, which would be a scene response?

Status for Z-Wave devices is a Lutron patent. The patent does not apply to other protocols such as Insteon, X10, USB, ZigBee, etc. It's sometimes called 2-way communication.

 

 

On a tangent this patent is running out this year 2016.

Best news I've seen for weeks! (After the UDI announcement of the Alexa connected home beta of course!). Hopefully, many less expensive instant-status devices will become available later this year...