So the display on my insteon thermostat seemed to have died.  Completely dead.  No sign of life.   No lights.  No numbers.

 

However, I just went to look at it and it was back to normal.

 

Has anyone else seen this "phenomenon"?  Is this thing about to die?

 

Thanks.

I don't have one.

You may want to with the power off temporarily. Open the unit and then close it again. On the chance the pins on the boards headers where dirty. Where they connect to socket connected to the terminals on the back of the case.

Maybe verify the terminals are tight holding the wires to the heating system.

At least on the heat pump model, there is a reset switch on the inside.  The button is only accessible with the unit opened such that you can see the circuit board.

Yeah - I did this twice.  The second time has been a charm (so far). 

 

The thermostat itself always seemed to be responsive to the ISY, so the issue appears to only affect the display.

 

I went ahead and ordered a replacement thermostat.

It does sound more like a display issue. Not 100% dead.

I don't know why any designer would use these old Molex style pins for a PCB edge connector, anymore.

 

People using the old SS-50 bus (SouthWest Technical Products)  based computer motherboards, know what I am talking about. After about a year of use it was very common to have to unplug and replug these connectors every few weeks to wipe the contact metals clean again. This was with 1-2 MHz CPU signals. I hate to think about GHz speeds using this junk.

 

Then came the contact cleaner spray and silicone, anti-oxide spray coatings and then eventually polishing the oxide away, and garbage. Gold plating was tried with much better luck but became too expensive.

 

I see the ISY Zwave assesory PCB uses these connectors as well as the GPIO bus on RPIs.