All my Insteon lights and devices came on! What should I do?

[paulbates]

You have experienced a vexing technical issue known as an Insteon "ALL ON".  Its actually a legacy Insteon feature that has been removed from later model devices. For reasons that are not 100% clear, ALL ON commands are mistakenly sent, or interpreted by older devices as being sent, and everything connected responds to it.. even though there was no intent for that to happen.

 

Unfortunately the feature is pervasive in earlier model Insteon products, for example the iolinc. Those that have their garage door openers or sprinkler systems connected to older iolincs have been unpleasantly surprised when an ALL ON occurs.. This is the subject of a very long thread here. As of July, 2016, there are 280 posts in it, and while an important resource, some actionable outcomes from it are documented here.

 

What can you do? 

 

One of the outcomes of the very long ALL ON thread is creation of some best practice approaches that avoid scenarios that could create ALL ONs. This short wiki post provides best practices on how to handle wireless devices that have related ISY programs to greatly reduce the likely hood of the ALL ON. 

 

Also, SmartenIT Products: Insteon compatible devices from SmartenIT/SimpleHomeNet, are immune to the ALL ON and do not respond to it or send All On commands. Historically these products have EZ in front of their name: EZRain, EZFLora, EZIO, etc. They can be used in place of the iolincs.

 

If this does not address your ALL ON, its suggested that you spend more time looking at the ALL ON Thread posted above and post to it. 

 

The flip side is that there have also been concerns from long time Insteon users that make use of the ALL ON. They have difficulties when the newer devices that no longer respond to the ALL ON. There is a solution for this: Create a scene, and add all devices to it, turn the scene on instead of issuing an ALL ON.