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Is anyone here afraid of Insteon disapearing?


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Posted

This is nice to see.  If it actually works as well as they claim it works, then it should make things as simple as anything that is "hubless".  I really don't see what the heck difference it makes if your phone talks to a hub that talks to a device, or if your phone works directly with the device.  I guess you have to buy a hub.  It depends on costs as well.  If a hub costs $80 but the switches are $10 cheaper than the competition, then an 8 switch system is break even.  

The other thing about a hub is that it lets your run coordinated schedules.  You obviously can't run any schedules on your phone, it has to be on a permanently connected device.  Either some sort of "mesh" computing where all your individual devices synchronize their internally programmed schedules, or you have a hub that keeps the schedule and all your "dumb" devices just sit there and do what they are told when they are told.  The latter seems less apt to have trouble.  

The UI is key, that is for sure.  A beautiful, slick, easy to customize, easy to understand UI (that actually works) is all that stands between Insteon as a "HA geek" product vs as a "everybody" product.  The actually capabilities of the Insteon protocol lack nothing as far as I can tell, except for the occasional noise issue (which at least in my home was cured by dual band).  

Posted

Alot of the wifi based stuff is cloud based so they can run schedules from there or you can set things up via Google or Amazon for timers. 

I agree with everything you say. All of us here understands the benefits to hub based systems. However the general public is uninformed and ignorant when it comes to the subject. Media coverage doesn't help either as they hype up IOT devices and talk down on hub based systems. 

The app is slick and I think it could win them some new fans if everything works out right

Posted
3 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

Alot of the wifi based stuff is cloud based so they can run schedules from there or you can set things up via Google or Amazon for timers. 

I agree with everything you say. All of us here understands the benefits to hub based systems. However the general public is uninformed and ignorant when it comes to the subject. Media coverage doesn't help either as they hype up IOT devices and talk down on hub based systems. 

The app is slick and I think it could win them some new fans if everything works out right

Hopefully!  If Insteon gets to be a big player then prices might come down more and we might get a lot more product choices. 

I just don't get the aversion to a hub, if the software is good, the hub is invisible.  It is just an extension of the device itself hidden in some closet never needing to be seen or touched.  The software would make the two seem as one. 

Hopefully people who do cloud based realize that if the company goes bankrupt then you are hosed.  Or if your internet or wifi go down, your house stops working.  That is the great thing about Insteon, it works all by itself, cloud is totally optional.  I certainly hope it stays that way with the new hub software.  

Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, apostolakisl said:

Hopefully!  If Insteon gets to be a big player then prices might come down more and we might get a lot more product choices. 

I just don't get the aversion to a hub, if the software is good, the hub is invisible.  It is just an extension of the device itself hidden in some closet never needing to be seen or touched.  The software would make the two seem as one. 

Hopefully people who do cloud based realize that if the company goes bankrupt then you are hosed.  Or if your internet or wifi go down, your house stops working.  That is the great thing about Insteon, it works all by itself, cloud is totally optional.  I certainly hope it stays that way with the new hub software.  

Sure. I have 25 Smart WiFi bulbs now,. If they were still MiLight I would have:
an ISY994
a RPi, for PolyGlot
7x  MiLight Hubs with USB PSUs, for 28 units max,
a Philips Hue hub,
and still require a router or two.

I would need a new home to increase my receptacle count. :) 

I am not  just a remote control freak, so I may have done it if necessary, but Remote Control people would just walk away. They can buy WiFi receptacles, RGBWW bulbs, in several brands now,  Alexa units, and Google Home voice controls in Walmart for about half the price per unit and not even buy a Hub. Even the Philips wall switch with full colour control was in Walmart for under $30 CAD, about $21 USD, in Walmart. ...and most of these devices are being advertised on TV at least once per hour and most channels.

Insteon cannot be found in a single store walk-in in Canada, now. HA has become a niche market that is dwindling.

https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/philips-hue-wireless-dimmer-switch/6000197973354

Edited by larryllix
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, larryllix said:

Sure. I have 25 Smart WiFi bulbs now,. If they were still MiLight I would have:
an ISY994
a RPi, for PolyGlot
7x  MiLight Hubs with USB PSUs, for 28 units max,
a Philips Hue hub,
and still require a router or two.

I would need a new home to increase my receptacle count. :) 

I am not  just a remote control freak, so I may have done it if necessary, but Remote Control people would just walk away. They can buy WiFi receptacles, RGBWW bulbs, in several brands now,  Alexa units, and Google Home voice controls in Walmart for about half the price per unit and not even buy a Hub. Even the Philips wall switch with full colour control was in Walmart for under $30 CAD, about $21 USD, in Walmart. ...and most of these devices are being advertised on TV at least once per hour and most channels.

Insteon cannot be found in a single store walk-in in Canada, now. HA has become a niche market that is dwindling.

https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/philips-hue-wireless-dimmer-switch/6000197973354

For the life of me, why would you buy a wifi light bulb?  Talk about way expensive and way inconvenient.  With a switch, you still control the switch all regular like, with bulbs, the switch doesn't work normal at all.  Furthermore, you may need 4 or 6 or 10 or who knows how many fancy *** bulbs where one fancy *** switch could do the same . . . and give you the full gamut of possible bulbs (or just keep your current bulbs).  And then when the stupid bulb burns out, now you have to redo your setup and any automation you had assigned to that old bulb(s).  Maybe they have a "replace with" command . . . I don't know, but I don't think so.

Assuming this new software is actually nice, the average person would need nothing more than Insteon products.  Now people like you and me who want to have their lawnmower integrated, well we will have more "dongles" to deal with.  But even at that, with the ISY is going, the new Polisy is likely to streamline that whole thing into a seamless package.  Now you can build your network starting off all super-easy like with the hub and if you want to get more fancy, you switch over to polisy, but don't have to do much in the conversion.

Edited by apostolakisl
Posted
49 minutes ago, apostolakisl said:

For the life of me, why would you buy a wifi light bulb?  Talk about way expensive and way inconvenient.  With a switch, you still control the switch all regular like, with bulbs, the switch doesn't work normal at all.  Furthermore, you may need 4 or 6 or 10 or who knows how many fancy *** bulbs where one fancy *** switch could do the same . . . and give you the full gamut of possible bulbs (or just keep your current bulbs).  And then when the stupid bulb burns out, now you have to redo your setup and any automation you had assigned to that old bulb(s).  Maybe they have a "replace with" command . . . I don't know, but I don't think so.

Assuming this new software is actually nice, the average person would need nothing more than Insteon products.  Now people like you and me who want to have their lawnmower integrated, well we will have more "dongles" to deal with.  But even at that, with the ISY is going, the new Polisy is likely to streamline that whole thing into a seamless package.  Now you can build your network starting off all super-easy like with the hub and if you want to get more fancy, you switch over to polisy, but don't have to do much in the conversion.

Read my post. I bought WiFi lightbulbs because I have 25 of that brand plus another ten WiFi based RGBWW strips and I don't want the ten different hubs to use them. Other brands could do the job with less hubs but I don't have $2000 for just those Hue or LIFX bulbs, and then I have to buy hubs and find a place to keep them all.

Insteon does not have RGBWW lighting devices or support and the masses does not want Insteon that isn't supported by anybody else. Insteon is old man technology.

Posted
2 minutes ago, larryllix said:

Read my post. I bought WiFi lightbulbs because I have 25 of that brand plus another ten WiFi based RGBWW strips and I don't want the ten different hubs to use them. Other brands could do the job with less hubs but I don't have $2000 for just those Hue or LIFX bulbs, and then I have to buy hubs and find a place to keep them all.

Insteon does not have RGBWW lighting devices or support and the masses does not want Insteon that isn't supported by anybody else. Insteon is old man technology.

why do people want their living room lights green, or red?  Sounds like 1974 stoner party.  Now that is old man.

Posted
1 hour ago, apostolakisl said:

why do people want their living room lights green, or red?  Sounds like 1974 stoner party.  Now that is old man.

The coloured lights would  look really cool beside your green phosphor monitor. :) 

  • Like 1
Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, apostolakisl said:

why do people want their living room lights green, or red?  Sounds like 1974 stoner party.  Now that is old man.

Color Changing lights arent always about changing colors. You can also use it to "tune" your light to your surroundings or accent something specific. You can also use them for alerts such as turning red in the event of an emergency

Edited by lilyoyo1
  • Like 1
Posted
1 hour ago, lilyoyo1 said:

Color Changing lights arent always about changing colors. You can also use it to "tune" your light to your surroundings or accent something specific. You can also use them for alerts such as turning red in the event of an emergency

Both of your points are exactly how I'm using LIFX bulbs; for tuning lights in an art studio and sending security notifications.  My house is full of wood, and colored lights just don't look that good.

Posted (edited)

My deck lights alternate Green and Red bulbs for Christmas time, and the same bulbs become violet and orange for the next few weeks, multi-coloured for Easter.  Surprisingly enough we sometimes decorate our room with multicoloured lights for watching movies at night. It is very soothing. Even good televisions change their white tones late a night to avoid disrupting circadian rhythm sleep cycles.

We have strip lights over our bedhead that are set up to do any of the seven major colours. Deep red lighting doesn't interfere with falling asleep and they shut themselves off later.

One lamp flashes red while a garage door is open. Different colours indicate which door is open. Two lights on each side of the TV flash green a midnight if we are home, as a reminder to go to bed.

None of this is Insteon. It is for old people that want all the program hassles, writing code and doing fancy things. That means we have to be able to read and write.

Edited by larryllix
Posted
6 hours ago, apostolakisl said:

why do people want their living room lights green, or red?  Sounds like 1974 stoner party.  Now that is old man.

I like the Hue feature that turns your motion activated lights on to different colors depending on the time of day. I can walk through my house between 11PM and 8AM and see where I'm going without getting getting blinded by a bright white light or stumbling about in excessively dimmed down light.

Also colors for Holidays are fun.

Also a single lamp or bulb used as an alert indicator is lame. If there is a red alert then everything should turn red... have you never watched Star Trek?

  • Haha 1
Posted (edited)

So far, no Klingon attacks so that feature hasn't paid off.

Perhaps outdoor lights that you can do holiday tricks with, but I just don't see the indoor lights being anything more than a party trick.  When my fire alarm goes off, all the lights turn on full brightness, no tricky red lights or anything to make a stressful situation more stressful.  We already have a loud audible signal letting you know to get out. 

Wandering around the house at night with red lights isn't the greatest idea.  CRI of a mono-chromatic color is horrifically bad and depending on which color light and what color your floor/object on the floor is, it could become almost invisible.  The safest color light is a shade of white with a high CRI.  You will see much better at a dim high CRI than a bright bad CRI.   A simple example would be a green matchbox car on green carpet with a red light.  It would all look black.  

If you like it and use it and it serves you well, then I can't argue . . .it is, at least in part, an aesthetic.  I just know that in my house, if I installed such lights, I would be like, "look honey, the lights change color by pushing this button, cool eh".  And my wife would be like "oh, that's nice", and then that would be the last time the lights weren't white.   

Edited by apostolakisl
  • Like 2
Posted
1 minute ago, larryllix said:

Yeah. I didn't get much action either, until I installed certain colours. :):)

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Was that because you could make that green growth you have disappear?  Oh, I kill myself.  

Posted (edited)

Haha! Strangely enough a neighbour was over a year back and I was showing off....

Alexa..turn on movie lights...etc.

I was getting the eye rolls, and usual. But a month later  he had his kitchen cabinet tops full of the cheap iR controlled coloured lights. As a comparison, he is one of these younger control freaks, just barely into his 70s.

Sent using Tapatalk
 

Edited by larryllix
Posted
27 minutes ago, apostolakisl said:

So far, no Klingon attacks so that feature hasn't paid off.

Perhaps outdoor lights that you can do holiday tricks with, but I just don't see the indoor lights being anything more than a party trick.  When my fire alarm goes off, all the lights turn on full brightness, no tricky red lights or anything to make a stressful situation more stressful.  We already have a loud audible signal letting you know to get out. 

Wandering around the house at night with red lights isn't the greatest idea.  CRI of a mono-chromatic color is horrifically bad and depending on which color light and what color your floor/object on the floor is, it could become almost invisible.  The safest color light is a shade of white with a high CRI.  You will see much better at a dim high CRI than a bright bad CRI.   A simple example would be a green matchbox car on green carpet with a red light.  It would all look black.  

If you like it and use it and it serves you well, then I can't argue . . .it is, at least in part, an aesthetic.  I just know that in my house, if I installed such lights, I would be like, "look honey, the lights change color by pushing this button, cool eh".  And my wife would be like "oh, that's nice", and then that would be the last time the lights weren't white.   

Emergency doesn't necessarily mean fire or something major like that. Generally those things are covered with other alarm types. It could be anything that is of utmost importance to a person. For example, my lamps will turn red should I have a leak. I dont always check text messages so my lamps suddenly changing to red lets me know that something is going on. At that point, I can check my phone to see whats happening and where.

Posted
12 minutes ago, larryllix said:

Haha! Strangely enough a neighbour was over a year back and I was showing off....

Alexa..turn on movie lights...etc.

I was getting the eye rolls, and usual. But a month later and a month later he has his kitchen cabinet tops full of the cheap iR controlled coloured lights. As a comparison, he is one of these younger control freaks, just barely into his 70s.

Sent using Tapatalk
 

I have seen colored accents lights that look good, but that is because it isn't the functional light.  It is meant to light up a wall or patch of ceiling, as if it were artwork.  When the light you use to actually see what you are doing is mono-chromatic, it is poor.

Posted
1 minute ago, lilyoyo1 said:

Emergency doesn't necessarily mean fire or something major like that. Generally those things are covered with other alarm types. It could be anything that is of utmost importance to a person. For example, my lamps will turn red should I have a leak. I dont always check text messages so my lamps suddenly changing to red lets me know that something is going on. At that point, I can check my phone to see whats happening and where.

OK, but there are 100 ways to do that.  In my house, when a leak detector goes off it is an actual security event.  Central station gets a call, audible alerts go off, and the water valve shuts off.

If I had red lights, I could do it when someone pulls into my drive (now that I have blue iris figured out for that), but instead I have my Insteon switches do a little chirp-chirp-chirp.  Just out of curiosity, do any other brands have chirping switches?  I really like the chirps, I use them for lots of things, and they don't alter your working conditions by changing the lighting.  I use the chirps to warn you when a light is about to time out, I use it to get my kids out of the house at the right time in the morning, cars pulling in the drive, and a few other things.

Posted

I use a beeping BuzzLinc to indicate a lot of things.
However I have implemented a 5 level notification system in an attempt to portray seriousness of each level.

A level 1 gives a 1-2 second beeper only for lowbatts and low significance things.

A level 2 gives a 20 second beeper for more important alerts followed by SMS and/or email with details.

A level 5 is for unauthorised entry and incorporates flashingbif every light, doorbell constantly dinging, AV turning on a extreme volume in cycles, and notifications.


I use coloured light flashes for other items but should probably incorporate those into my alert system for a more homogeneous system. Most decent smart bulbs provide self flashing modes that most bridging software ignores but it doesn't burden down ISY doing the flashing.

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Posted
Just now, apostolakisl said:

OK, but there are 100 ways to do that.  In my house, when a leak detector goes off it is an actual security event.  Central station gets a call, audible alerts go off, and the water valve shuts off.

If I had red lights, I could do it when someone pulls into my drive (now that I have blue iris figured out for that), but instead I have my Insteon switches do a little chirp-chirp-chirp.  Just out of curiosity, do any other brands have chirping switches?  I really like the chirps, I use them for lots of things, and they don't alter your working conditions by changing the lighting.  I use the chirps to warn you when a light is about to time out, I use it to get my kids out of the house at the right time in the morning, cars pulling in the drive, and a few other things.

Yes, there are 100 ways to do something and this is the one I liked most. At the end of the day, there are hundreds of reasons to do something. If I'm home, I don't need a bunch of stuff happening....especially for something that is most likely a minor problem. 

I used to make my devices beep....Until one day the toilet overflowed during a party and no one heard it. You're also putting alot of communication out there which can bog down your system. Depending on sequence and length of time, this can stop a light from turning on in a different area or other alerts not going through. This can affect other users who may or may not need to be worried about something that's going on. 

There are simply so many things that can be done with the bulbs. I would never use them for main lighting but having color changing bulbs provide so many benefits.

Posted

Back to the actual point of this thread.

It occurred to me, a while ago I got ubiquiti stuff and decided to a bunch of ssid's, vlans and what not.  I needed to change a bunch of devices ssid/password.  That was a pain.  Now imagine if I had 50 or 100 more devices.  Just for example, if I changed my living room cans to wifi bulbs, that would be 6 devices for just one "light".   Most people don't do what I did, but most people do change isp's, get a new ap, and don't have a clue that they can just put out the same ssid/password and thus would end up changing all the devices.  Or if you needed to keep your kids off the network, again, I would know how to control that from my router, but most people would again be changing passwords.  Or maybe your neighbor starts stealing your wifi?  

Posted
5 minutes ago, apostolakisl said:

Back to the actual point of this thread.

It occurred to me, a while ago I got ubiquiti stuff and decided to a bunch of ssid's, vlans and what not.  I needed to change a bunch of devices ssid/password.  That was a pain.  Now imagine if I had 50 or 100 more devices.  Just for example, if I changed my living room cans to wifi bulbs, that would be 6 devices for just one "light".   Most people don't do what I did, but most people do change isp's, get a new ap, and don't have a clue that they can just put out the same ssid/password and thus would end up changing all the devices.  Or if you needed to keep your kids off the network, again, I would know how to control that from my router, but most people would again be changing passwords.  Or maybe your neighbor starts stealing your wifi?  

You're still talking about an uninformed and ignorant public. A person that knows what they are doing and chooses this path probably feels this is the best path to take for their setup. 

Posted
1 minute ago, lilyoyo1 said:

You're still talking about an uninformed and ignorant public. A person that knows what they are doing and chooses this path probably feels this is the best path to take for their setup. 

But the earlier argument is that people are ignorant and that is why they wouldn't want Insteon.

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