The remodel has landed

[ergodic]

I've finally finished the remodel of the home we bought, and we just moved in this week. The remodel made the house fully Insteon / ISY all the way through. I wanted to pass along a few general thoughts I've garnered along the way. (This is a 20-year-old, 2-story 2000 sq. ft. custom home in Orange County California.)

 

I want to say first I'm very pleased overall. So this post should in no way be construed as a rant or tirade. The system is very close to 100% reliable. I'm especially happy with the ISY: in my opinion the key that makes whole-house Insteon even viable. Until I discovered the ISY I was seriously weighing other options - cost was not a big factor and the whole space was open for consideration. But I knew Insteon from my previous abode and I elected to go that direction. Again, I'm happy I did. I would recommend it to anyone.

 

Which is not to say I haven't seen a few drawbacks. I've made note of several, but I want to briefly share three.

 

Number one of course is line noise: the arch-enemy of the Insteon-fueled home. The PLLs in the Insteon controllers do not seem to be nearly as impervious to amplitude noise as one would think they should. Even basic fluorescent lighting with electronic ballasts seems to flummox Insteon and can take down half a house. Which is exactly what happened during my garage remodel. I won't even discuss CFLs, UPSen, power chargers, AFI breakers and the like. Anyway, no news in any of this.

 

But my larger point has to do with the collision of Insteon with the future. The very near future. A future of high-efficiency fluorescent, CFL, CCFL and especially LED lighting with noisy, signal-sucking, electronic switching all over the house. County code here already mandates high-efficiency lighting in kitchens and bathrooms. We despise fluorescent light in any of its current forms and so I finessed that problem away. (Why do they think you would want fluorescents in your kitchen but not, say, in your bedroom?) But this is becoming an increasingly serious concern. I had to install Elco cans in my ceilings - these are one of the few good 4" halogen solutions available with magnetic transformers.

 

And the limited current assortment of Insteon load-filtering solutions is not reassuring in this regard either. The FilterLinc works well but is only available as 5A and 10A plug-in variety, and so are very hard to adapt to a wired-in plan or to isolate a high-current uncontrolled circuit. Most third-party wired-in filters are designed for X10 and do not, as my parts box will attest, always work especially well with Insteon. Filtering and isolation was my number one problem.

 

I do not have a ready answer though that can't stop me from musing. The shadow control wiring needed by proprierary systems would clearly be a mistake. Possibly a higher-end KPL or OutletLinc with built-in load-side filtering. Better I think would be a third mesh line signaling that is both faster and more noise-immune (like that used by HomePNA 2.0.) Or maybe an 802-based wireless mesh directly in the controllers. I know there are many technical arguments for and against all of these and others and I'm hardly qualified to proffer anything as the best answer. What I do know from this experience is that the issue needs a better one.

 

Second on my list is diagnostics. As everyone knows, boards here and elsewhere froth with those I'm-tearing-my-hair-out laments of Insteon applications working and then mysteriously not working, with very few clues as to why. I dealt with it ad nauseum at my prior residence and I can fully empathize. Here I was able to minimize those problems because I was in the walls and panels and could do what I believe I needed to avoid trouble. So I only had a few meltdowns (and those few do remain memorable.) But I'm sure I did a lot of unnecessary things that cost me just to avoid the possibility of The Madness. And the next time my wife plugs in a charger and forgets to tell me I could be right back into it, and I find that state of affairs most unfortunate.

 

There is a desperate, desperate need for better, publicly-available Insteon diagnostic tools. The few out there are X10-based and do not offer much for Insteon. I envision (read: "fantasize") something with two plugs that can connect to either or both legs of power and plug into a laptop with software that can sniff and analyze the Insteon line signaling, display troublshooting, and might even make recommendations. Think Wireshark for Insteon. This also is one area where I think the ISY could easily offer more: even something as basic as device command reliability or a tool that would do repeated device queries and display a running tally of failure percentages. Almost any daylight here would be welcome, because right now there is nothing but tortured guessing in the dark along with lots of sweat and tears.

 

Lastly I want to mention the matter of security. I don't worry much about sombody hacking my powerline, but with RF-based APs now essential to Insteon it would be a straightforward matter to sniff the signals from nearby and commit mischief or worse, open my garage door. (Remember those early non-rolling garage door openers?). Right now there isn't enough Insteon for anyone probably to bother, but the signaling is open and things can change with popularity (remember the early Internet?)

 

Finally I'll just make note that, considered against the proprietary solutions like Lutron etc. or even UPB, the $70 KPL should be seen as a very good deal. At least that's how I see it. I'll speak here only for myself, but I would be happy to pay a bit more for a higher-end Insteon controller that offered more functionality to address some of the above issues. Say a two-gang KPL with diagnostic readout, uploadable firmware, filtering, 802.11 wireless with security, , maybe dual loads, etc. A controller in the $150-$200 price range with some of these types of features would still be a very good deal IMHO.

[SteveL]

Ergodic,

 

Great post. I would love to talk to you about what is available, what we are working on and things we need to do better. As a former installer for many years I hear you loud and clear. If I can be of any help in the future please let me know.

 

Steve L

Smartlabs / Smarthome