My grave yard of insteon devices!

[keribi]

My box of insteon devices that have died or started acting flaky.  Need to look into trying to repair them. I am sure some of you out there have a insteon grave yard too!

[mwester]

Yep.  Along with a baggie of replacement fuses and capacitors, and some test cables.

I'm tired of fixing the blasted things.  So... the contents of that box are now on the shelf reserved for next month's Electronic Recycling collection.  As I experience Insteon failures, my new strategy is to find a similar Insteon device that's little-used elsewhere to use as the replacement.  And the little-used location goes back to an ordinary switch/outlet/whatever, or it becomes Z-Wave (GE now -- we'll see how those hold up).

[keribi]

I know!  Its too bad the radio used in insteon is not open source , then we could have third party devices.  Not going to happen though.

[Brian H]

The 2566D LampLinc and 2456S3 ApplianceLinc had a reputation for the 30 volt Zener diode to get warm enough to blacken the PCB under it and some users had them get hot enough to unsolder themselves and fall off.  I replaced some of the NOVER 470uF/35V ones in a few of mine. I have seen some reporting capacitors in other modules going bad. The famous SwitchLinc Tact Switch problems in the earlier ones was an issue. So bad for awhile they gave us a seven year warranty on the SwitchLinc if they ad a Tact Switch issue.

[keribi]

I have found there is no rhyme or reason when these insteon devices fail.   I have some devices maybe 10+ years old  and still going strong.  Then others that fail in 3 to 5 years.  And there is several different ways they fail.  Some go dark, some lose comm, some tactile switch failure. I had one where the load flashed on and off every second!  Very strange.

[giomania]

How do they act flaky?


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[LFMc]

I'm curious. You guys that have had all the insteon failures, are you running any type of whole house surge protection?  I have been running dozens of insteon devices for 7+ years and have only had one PLM and one thermostat to fail and I have one flaky outdoor on/off module that I have to reboot once a month. 

I put in a whole house protector many years ago to hopefully protect my investment. A cheap investment for $100. Maybe it helps? 

[mwester]

Yep - both of the primary panels have hard-wired surge protectors on them, and there's even a surge protector on the sub-panel in the shed.  All network and comms lines leaving the buildings have surge protectors as well.  And the ISY and PLM are on a dedicated, isolated 20A circuit directly wired to the main panel.  All computers along with the media center equipment are on UPS systems.  The laser printer is as well (although not primarily to keep it running in a power outage but rather because laser printers are known to put surges and spikes on the power lines).  Oh yeah -- the biggest electric motor in the place has a hard-wired X-10 filter (the 20A equivalent of the filterlinc).

I'm not sure what else I could filter or protect that would make the PLM feel any more snug and cozy.

 

It ain't my power line that's doing this, folks.  We've been over this so many times now... the only reason to continue to think that the blame lies with the implementer rather than the designer is the need to live in denial.  C'mon folks, even good companies make a few crappy products, and even good companies can go through a period where they've made some crappy manufacturing decisions... accepting the fact that SmartHome has struggled with quality on some of their products over the past years is not an unreasonable thing!  (Conversely, believing that SmartHome has never had any quality issues and instead believing that the evidence posted here and on the smarthome forums is all the fault of the installers and owners, well, that IS an unreasonable thing!)

[larryllix]

Filters and spike absorbere placed in the wrong places can also create problems for some devices.

Eg. A whole home spike absorber used with a very inductive fan motor and a fanLinc in between could burn out the electronics in short order due to the high voltage spike. The motor spike turning off the motor, will try to find it's way to the spike absorber (filter) back through the fanLinc. That while house "filter" may have just caused the problem by being poorly placed.

[LFMc]

18 hours ago, mwester said:

It ain't my power line that's doing this, folks.  We've been over this so many times now... the only reason to continue to think that the blame lies with the implementer rather than the designer is the need to live in denial.  C'mon folks, even good companies make a few crappy products, and even good companies can go through a period where they've made some crappy manufacturing decisions... accepting the fact that SmartHome has struggled with quality on some of their products over the past years is not an unreasonable thing!  (Conversely, believing that SmartHome has never had any quality issues and instead believing that the evidence posted here and on the smarthome forums is all the fault of the installers and owners, well, that IS an unreasonable thing!)

Never been to Egypt, so I don't think I live in de Nile. (-;  

Seriously, I was asking not to challenge you or to teach you something, but so I could learn something. I.E. if whole house protection is working and was worth the money.  I agree that there are batches of bad products and even products that are never that reliable (i.e. PLMs).  When someone posts a picture of a box full of bad Insteon parts, it made me wonder why I haven't suffered the same fate. 

@larryllix Thanks for heads up on possible issues with filters/surge protectors. Never used the FanLinc and probably never will.  But I did put my PLM on a good surge protector (even though most on this forum say don't do it) from the beginning so I figured it would just relay via wireless. So good so far only loosing one PLM in 7 years. But I also get the occasional "cannot communicate" message on my Admin console. 

[lilyoyo1]

There are those with issues and those without. Sometimes it's the environment and sometimes it's not. Insteon quality wasn't there years ago but I'd say they've made great strides over the years. 

Zwave devices also fail. There are houses with zwave that has nothing but issues and as insteon homes with issues. Finding the best system for your environment matters. Using devices properly matters also

I've been blessed with my automation system. I've only had a couple of failures between my zwave and insteon devices though 1 insteon device was probably my fault.  Between insteon and zwave, I have around 150+ devices though not all of my insteon outlets have been added to my isy

[lilyoyo1]

2 minutes ago, LFMc said:

Never been to Egypt, so I don't think I live in de Nile. (-;  

Seriously, I was asking not to challenge you or to teach you something, but so I could learn something. I.E. if whole house protection is working and was worth the money.  I agree that there are batches of bad products and even products that are never that reliable (i.e. PLMs).  When someone posts a picture of a box full of bad Insteon parts, it made me wonder why I haven't suffered the same fate. 

@larryllix Thanks for heads up on possible issues with filters/surge protectors. Never used the FanLinc and probably never will.  But I did put my PLM on a good surge protector (even though most on this forum say don't do it) from the beginning so I figured it would just relay via wireless. So good so far only loosing one PLM in 7 years. But I also get the occasional "cannot communicate" message on my Admin console. 

I use whole house surge protectors and recommend having them. While they don't guarantee nothing will go wrong, it's an added layer of protection. We'll spend 2k on a TV and protect that but have 5k in devices with none. Doesn't make sense to me.