What Insteon did right......

[lilyoyo1]

58 minutes ago, carealtor said:

I have an Insteon Dimmer in my bathroom.  It comes on when I turn off the TV in family room (if between certain evening times).  It also only comes on to a very low dim level if turned on during the night.

I do the same thing in my bathrooms except they're controlled by a motion sensor. The brightness and ramp rates change depending on the time. At night, its just enough to see to use the bathroom and early morning, its a slower ramp rate on so your eyes can adjust

[TrojanHorse]

I took the simple route and just put pressure sensors on the toilet handle. When the toilet is flushed the system recognizes who it is by their unique pressure profile and triggers a TTS announcement that scolds them by name to shut off the bathroom light as they leave.

Funny. Also funny that probably some are frantically researching how to do this! Hope you can answer all the follow up questions : - )


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[palayman]

13 hours ago, upstatemike said:

I took the simple route and just put pressure sensors on the toilet handle. When the toilet is flushed the system recognizes who it is by their unique pressure profile and triggers a TTS announcement that scolds them by name to shut off the bathroom light as they leave.

Interesting.  Maybe putting the pressure sensors in the tiles in front of the toilet to get mass information before and after as well as duration.  This might have some interesting automation potential. 

[larryllix]

22 minutes ago, palayman said:

Interesting.  Maybe putting the pressure sensors in the tiles in front of the toilet to get mass information before and after as well as duration.  This might have some interesting automation potential. 

Have you found a motor to unwind measured amounts of toilet paper though? You will have to compensate for the changes in roll diameter and know when a roll change has been effected. ISY should be able to handle a chart of roll diameters by brand in integer variables to keep the issued paper constant.

Would it appropriate for heavier people to get more length of paper issued to them?

Now we need somebody to write a NS for PG3.

Edited April 28, 2022 by larryllix

[upstatemike]

31 minutes ago, larryllix said:

Have you found a motor to unwind measured amounts of toilet paper though? You will have to compensate for the changes in roll diameter and know when a roll change has been effected. ISY should be able to handle a chart of roll diameters by brand in integer variables to keep the issued paper constant.

Would it appropriate for heavier people to get more length of paper issued to them?

Now we need somebody to write a NS for PG3.

Again just took the easy route and modified a solonoid to act as a friction brake against the roll. Roll movement starts a one second delay and then the solonoid engages and stops the roll so you only get about 3 sheets before it tears off. A ten second delay before the roll is released prevents rapid consecutive grabs.

[MrBill]

19 hours ago, AD8BC said:

I've been called weird for putting dimmer switches in the bathrooms... I didn't put in Insteon in the bathrooms, but I came close...

You're not as weird as you think.

The only classic dumb switches in my house are 2 garbage disposals and the attic light, All other switches are Insteon and if it's a light that can be dimmed, its a dimmer.. .and as @carealtor points out it's important to dim bathroom lights in the night...

[Bumbershoot]

1 hour ago, MrBill said:

it's important to dim bathroom lights in the night...

I might have taken this a little too far, but I put a color LiFX bulb in the water closet, and I dim it very low and change the color to red - like a darkroom - so as not to hose our night vision when we come out.  This keeps us from stumbling around in the bedroom.  This has a high WAF, surprisingly.

[upstatemike]

2 hours ago, MrBill said:

You're not as weird as you think.

The only classic dumb switches in my house are 2 garbage disposals and the attic light, All other switches are Insteon and if it's a light that can be dimmed, its a dimmer.. .and as @carealtor points out it's important to dim bathroom lights in the night...

I would put a smart switch on the attic light so you can shut it off remotely if it somehow got left on. I would also poll it a couple of times a day to check if it was left on and have some sort of alert to tell you if it was. I definitely would NOT put any kind of remote control on a garbage disposal but if it uses a plug under the sink instead of being hard wired I would put a smart plug-in module that monitors power use on it... not to track power use but to have a trigger you can use when the disposer is on (maybe flash the lights over the sink for effect while it is running).

[larryllix]

2 hours ago, Bumbershoot said:

I might have taken this a little too far, but I put a color LiFX bulb in the water closet, and I dim it very low and change the color to red - like a darkroom - so as not to hose our night vision when we come out.  This keeps us from stumbling around in the bedroom.  This has a high WAF, surprisingly.

What fun is that. Stumbling around in a dark bedroom can have benefits. I have three kids that were "Accidents".
However I have red lights in my bedroom but they come on with a long delay, so the excuse remains valid.

[MrBill]

2 hours ago, upstatemike said:

I would put a smart switch on the attic light so you can shut it off remotely if it somehow got left on.

It never gets left on, except one recent night..lol

It's a hatch attic from the garage, and the switch is a pilot light switch in the garage.  It can go years without ever needing to go up there.   I've been adding some IP cams lately tho, and I did in fact leave it on overnight once recently.... but that's pretty rare.  The switch is also away from where anyone would just turn it on expecting garage lights... besides that no one needs the garage light switch anyway... it's automated.

 

Edited April 28, 2022 by MrBill

[xlurkr]

1 hour ago, larryllix said:

I have three kids that were "Accidents".

One is an accident.  Two is a habit.  Three is an obsession.

-Tom

[brians]

The later Insteon dual-band switches seems more reliable... and in the past year I have changed out most of mine to those and my Insteon is now 100% reliable. I have about 40 Insteon devices and currently 12 are PLC only... I have about 8 RF models  as spares that I can switch out as required.

I had Insteon since it first came out, and went through lots of pain and grief... their microswitch recall. The PLC only models are very poor at communication by themselves... I remember using phase couplers and always had reliability issues.

What I don't understand is why no other Z-Wave switch manufacturer copies the paddle design off an Insteon switchlinc... did Insteon have some patent/copyright on that design?

 

 

[lilyoyo1]

52 minutes ago, brians said:

The later Insteon dual-band switches seems more reliable... and in the past year I have changed out most of mine to those and my Insteon is now 100% reliable. I have about 40 Insteon devices and currently 12 are PLC only... I have about 8 RF models  as spares that I can switch out as required.

I had Insteon since it first came out, and went through lots of pain and grief... their microswitch recall. The PLC only models are very poor at communication by themselves... I remember using phase couplers and always had reliability issues.

What I don't understand is why no other Z-Wave switch manufacturer copies the paddle design off an Insteon switchlinc... did Insteon have some patent/copyright on that design?

 

 

It's possible....Apple did win a billion dollar case against Samsung for having a rectangular phone with rounded corners (later overturned)

Edited April 29, 2022 by lilyoyo1

[AD8BC]

1 hour ago, brians said:

...

What I don't understand is why no other Z-Wave switch manufacturer copies the paddle design off an Insteon switchlinc... did Insteon have some patent/copyright on that design?

 

 

I don't understand why Z-wave doesn't have a comparable keypad.  My nine keypads are the main IO of my system.

[Techman]

23 minutes ago, AD8BC said:

I don't understand why Z-wave doesn't have a comparable keypad.  My nine keypads are the main IO of my system.

Here's the site for the Z-wave Alliance, they list everything Z-wave

Catalog of Certified Z-Wave Products for U.S. / Canada / Mexico (z-wavealliance.org)

[lilyoyo1]

40 minutes ago, AD8BC said:

I don't understand why Z-wave doesn't have a comparable keypad.  My nine keypads are the main IO of my system.

Zwave doesn't really have a classification for keypads (that I'm aware of) which means it'll be on the mfg. to design around that limitation.

Since it's a race to the bottom in regards to pricing, most probably do not attempt since that means it'll cost them to make it happen for a device that will be limited to a few devices that support it (along with the support calls that'll follow). 

Keep in mind, most of these devices are geared towards small (less than 10) installations vs whole home automation. While we might be a passionate community that's being left out of in their minds, we are a small minority vs the greater community

[oskrypuch]

Well, it may be, with Insteon out of the game that the market for these types of devices in Z-Wave (or other) format may increase enough to threshold some development.

* Orest

[upstatemike]

58 minutes ago, lilyoyo1 said:

Zwave doesn't really have a classification for keypads (that I'm aware of) which means it'll be on the mfg. to design around that limitation.

Since it's a race to the bottom in regards to pricing, most probably do not attempt since that means it'll cost them to make it happen for a device that will be limited to a few devices that support it (along with the support calls that'll follow). 

Keep in mind, most of these devices are geared towards small (less than 10) installations vs whole home automation. While we might be a passionate community that's being left out of in their minds, we are a small minority vs the greater community

A good example is how when contacting Zooz support they always refer to how they address your particular issue on the Smartthings platform. They have very limited knowledge around UDI Isy994 or Homeseer or similiar platforms and probably see no urgency to change that.

[jmbraben]

I've had Insteon since 2006 (2005?) and still have a few PLC "ICON" nodes around...but I've also had to replace almost every PLC only node due to power supply issues....the dual-band seems more reliable...or maybe I haven't had them as long. I used to think "Keypads are needed everywhere", but I've found Alexa/Assistant integration for triggering scenes works more intuitively (vs tiny fonts on buttons)...assuming your ISP doesn't fail you.

That said, the multi-device scenes at the network/device level are going to be hard to replace. I guess if the switches themselves have a fast connection to the hub/controller, "maybe", but TBD.

Edited April 30, 2022 by jmbraben

[upstatemike]

Where I have basic lighting functionality that depends on a controller I so far haven't had any problems but I am mindful that a controller coordinates many different integrations (or nodes) any one of which could go rogue and crash the controller and disable my abilikty to control those lights... even if the integration that went bad has nothing to do with lighting. The fact that Insteon kept device link info including how the device should respond to a given broadcast from another device, made it pretty much immune to this concern.