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Insteon 2474 DWH 2-wire dimmers keep going stupid


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Posted

I have four 2474 DWH 2-wire RF only dimmers installed in parts of the house that have no chance of running a neutral to the box.

 

They control 60 W incandescent bulbs and I have lots of dual-band devices located close to each one.  I also have a couple of whole house surge suppressors installed in the house.  (This has helped a lot in preventing my 150 Insteon modules from failing, but hasn't helped with my 2474 issues.)

 

Most of the time they work fine.  But every few weeks or months, one of them will go stupid and stop working properly.  It seems that these failures may occur sometimes after power failures, but I have had failures even when I haven't noticed any outages. (But there could have been short glitches.)  The types of failures I have are quite varied. 

 

- They will only light up a load to 60% or so.  The isy shows the local level to be 100%.  I try resetting the local level using the isy and it accepts the command but the dimmer still only goes part way ON.

 

- They stop controlling other lights in their scene, but still respond to remote commands.

 

- They stop communicating entirely.  (Query, and restore don't work either.)

 

Turning power OFF and back ON doesn't help, but doing a full power on reset will bring the module back to life.  (Sometimes it takes several reset attempts to make it work again.)

 

Three of the units show V6.0 1226 on their labels. (isy reports them as Rev V.41).  One is V6.20 0914 (isy: V.42).  Both types fail.  (BTW: it looks like Insteon changed the format of their date codes from yyww to wwyy somewhere between the time I bought these things in 2012 and 2014.)

 

The fact that this is happening to ALL of my 2-wire dimmer modules makes me wonder if the module design has a flaw.  If I had to guess, I'd say that the internal power supplies are marginal and occasionally cause the devices to poop themselves during power up.

 

It's getting pretty timesome having to do HW resets and device restores all of the time.  Not to mention that this process is beyond other members of the household.

 

I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed this pattern of random failures?  Do newer H/W revs suffer from the same problem?

 

Frank

 

 

 

Posted

There's no doubt that you switches are not functioning correctly. I haven't heard or read about any known abnormality with the 2-wire switch. I would not expect power cycling to have any effect on the device. A reset will.

 

But, why do you have two whole house surge protectors? How are they wired?

 

You can avoid using 2-wire dimmers by installing a dual-band dimmer in the switch box and a Micro Module in the ceiling box and rewiring (changing connections) the switch loop so that black is line and wire is neutral. Currently, white is line and black is load.

Posted

I have four 2474 DWH 2-wire RF only dimmers installed in parts of the house that have no chance of running a neutral to the box.

 

They control 60 W incandescent bulbs and I have lots of dual-band devices located close to each one.  I also have a couple of whole house surge suppressors installed in the house.  (This has helped a lot in preventing my 150 Insteon modules from failing, but hasn't helped with my 2474 issues.)

 

Most of the time they work fine.  But every few weeks or months, one of them will go stupid and stop working properly.  It seems that these failures may occur sometimes after power failures, but I have had failures even when I haven't noticed any outages. (But there could have been short glitches.)  The types of failures I have are quite varied. 

 

- They will only light up a load to 60% or so.  The isy shows the local level to be 100%.  I try resetting the local level using the isy and it accepts the command but the dimmer still only goes part way ON.

 

- They stop controlling other lights in their scene, but still respond to remote commands.

 

- They stop communicating entirely.  (Query, and restore don't work either.)

 

Turning power OFF and back ON doesn't help, but doing a full power on reset will bring the module back to life.  (Sometimes it takes several reset attempts to make it work again.)

 

Three of the units show V6.0 1226 on their labels. (isy reports them as Rev V.41).  One is V6.20 0914 (isy: V.42).  Both types fail.  (BTW: it looks like Insteon changed the format of their date codes from yyww to wwyy somewhere between the time I bought these things in 2012 and 2014.)

 

The fact that this is happening to ALL of my 2-wire dimmer modules makes me wonder if the module design has a flaw.  If I had to guess, I'd say that the internal power supplies are marginal and occasionally cause the devices to poop themselves during power up.

 

It's getting pretty timesome having to do HW resets and device restores all of the time.  Not to mention that this process is beyond other members of the household.

 

I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed this pattern of random failures?  Do newer H/W revs suffer from the same problem?

 

Frank

 

 

I've experienced the same problem, after a power fail a couple of them lost the RF module. I just replaced them, the replacements are Rev 6.5, firmware v.42 with a date code of 3416.

 

Not sure if the latest release will correct the failure problem but time will tell. My failed switches were firmware v.41.

  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

Sorry for the delayed answer to your replies.  Thanks to all who responded.  I will try to answer all the questions that were raised.

 

I have two whole house surge suppressors because I have a number of sub-panels in the house.  One of these sub-panels is a long way from the main panel and is exposed to a LOT of outdoor wiring.  I get a fair number of close by lightning strikes and I noticed that, even with one Leviton whole house suppressor, I still had some modules connected to the sub-panel go out after a storm.  (These are regular Insteon modules, not the two-wire RF dimmers.)  If I was lucky, I could air gap or reset them but usually they were terminally fried.  Each whole house protector is wired directly to the panel through two dedicated 20A breakers.  I kept the leads as short as possible.  I haven't had any modules blow out anywhere in the house since I installed the second (Eaton CHSPT2ULTRA) suppressor in the sub-panel.  By the way, my original suppressor (Leviton 51110-PTC) doesn't protect as many different modes as the Eaton.  That may be the difference.     I could have probably junked the Leviton and installed the Eaton on my main panel, but it was actually easier to add the second suppressor to the sub-panel and I figured it couldn't hurt.  There is an interesting page on SPDs below.

 

https://www.stevejenkins.com/blog/2014/10/whats-the-best-whole-house-surge-protection/

 

In a couple of places, I'm forced to use 2-wire devices because the device controls a string of pot lights in a finished basement.  Unless I rip out every light in the string, I would have no idea which pot light contains the main feed that would need the in-line module.  It gets worse.  This particular string is fed by old knob and tube wiring so I'm reluctant to mess with it.  Guess I will wait until it's time to reno the basement.

 

 

In answer to Teken, the modules DO NOT recover after a 10 second air-gap.  It takes a full reset to bring them back.  Then I have to restore the device to make them work again.

 

 

I will probably add a 2-wire module to my next Insteon order and hope that the new HW rev is better than my older ones. 

 

Posted

I have two whole house surge suppressors because I have a number of sub-panels in the house.  One of these sub-panels is a long way from the main panel and is exposed to a LOT of outdoor wiring.  I get a fair number of close by lightning strikes and I noticed that, even with one Leviton whole house suppressor, I still had some modules connected to the sub-panel go out after a storm.  (These are regular Insteon modules, not the two-wire RF dimmers.)  

 

Some things to consider and reflect upon in no specific order of importance or relevance: 

 

- Earth Ground: The homes electrical system should be properly grounded to Earth. Where the ground resistance is below 50 ohms. There should always be a single point of ground reference and never allow multi-grounding as this causes ground loops.

 

- Shielding: As highlighted in red anytime you have in ground and exposed wiring it should be properly shielded and grounded. Failure to do so will allow induced voltage to be seen on the line. When you have electrical wiring dispersed in multiple points it will act like an antenna and EMI / RFI is easily induced into the wiring.

 

- Sag / Lull: More electronics in the world are damaged from voltage sags vs voltage rise conditions. Meaning the average person is directly impacted by voltage sags then voltage rise conditions. When voltage sags, current rises, when current rises it will draw down more amperes. The end result is more current is passing through components and thus burns out PCB traces, components, and IC's.

 

No surge Type 1,2,3, SPD will protect a home from a voltage sag, none . . .

 

- AVR: With respect to sag voltages (brown out condition) the only thing that will help alleviate said condition is using AVR devices which are commonly called line conditioners, which is technically incorrectly named. The only job of the AVR is to ensure the line voltage feeding X always remains in the safe operating range of the end device(s). The electronics industry in North America has no real standard as to what is considered acceptable.

 

By this I mean what over / under voltage condition is thought to be OK.

 

OK, is defined by the maker of said appliance, electronics, etc. Their idea of OK may not align with your idea of OK or the environmental's seen in your real world home, business, etc. Most, *Reasonable Persons* have defined an electrical device should be able to operate from 100 ~ 130 VAC.

 

The key phrase is operate, not run normally, efficiently, etc.

 

This is why anytime you can find a device that states it has a wide operating voltage range from 90~240 VAC. These devices should be considered first in the purchase decision as they are purpose built to operate and sustain both voltage sags and voltage rises which typically won't ever be seen on a regular basis.

 

When these short but sudden voltage transients are present nothing will happen because they are designed to operate with out issue. 

 

Voltage Rise: As stated up above if the line voltage exceeds 130 VAC and remains at (and) sustains 130~150 VAC the survive-ability of said appliance comes down to the engineers who made the product. Most common electronics have no issue with very brief voltage rise conditions from pico, micro, to seconds. But no common 120 VAC *electronic* appliance is capable of sustaining 130~150 VAC for long duration without component damage.

 

Inband / Outband: More micro surges are seen from with in the home and caused by normal appliances then any lightning event, period. Anything with a motor, compressor, pump, think sump pump, furnace, AC, Fridge, Freezer, Well, etc.

 

No Type 1, 2 SPD will protect the home from inband surges . . .

 

Regardless of all the above a tiered SPD approach is highly recommended in any home. Keeping in mind everything starts with a properly Earth grounded system which results in low resistance to ground.

 

A number 6 AWG is the most common ground conductor from 50~400 amp service. This is wrong on all counts because one only needs to think about it for a split second. Why is the wire diameter larger from 14-2 vs 12-2 Romex? Why is 10 AWG wire larger for the HWT?

 

Because its carrying larger current / amperes . . .

 

Why would someone believe a 6 AWG multi-wound copper is fine for a 400 amp service?!?!

 

As you may have stumbled upon in your research the NEC / CEC is not concerned about surges / sags vs human safety.

 

Thus its important to realize just because you have a ground rod in the Earth it doesn't mean its doing anything for you! Environmental soil type, humidity, moisture, and ground penetration all play a huge factor as to how grounded your electrical system is.

 

I can state with a high level of confidence 99.9999999999999999% of the people reading this post have never measured the resistance of the ground plane in their home. 

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