Another Insteon dimmer bites the dust?

[raymondjiii]

This one maxes out the lights at about 20% brightness with a lot of flickering - from what I see and not what is programmatically seen by the console.

On/Off work, dim up and down work.  Double tap top only brings it to the 20% range. Tried hard reset, no change.

With the heat wave we did have a one minute power outage, which is pretty frequent where I live even without a heatwave.

The UPS says the house voltage is at 110 rather than the normal 117 but I can't believe that's the issue here.

 

Anyone seen this symptom before and maybe it can be salvaged? This is the older non dual band Insteon dimmer.

My Insteon junk box is starting to build up.

 

Thanks you,

Ray

[apostolakisl]

Those old dimmers I had failures.  The newer dual band ones I have never had a failure that I can recall.  I decommissioned my entire single band setup years ago and replaced it with all dual band.  I was able to fix a number of those older ones by replacing the capacitors.  But I don't recall ever having one behave like you are describing.  To open the switches, however, you have to drill out the rivet on the heat sink.  When re-assembling, you need to have a rivet set.

[raymondjiii]

Well, I'll give it shot in the coming days. I do have a drill press and a rivet set so hopefully I can get it opened. The flicker made me think capacitor. That plus the ever ending devices (all mfg's) of cheap, failing electrolytic capacitors.

 

That's good to hear that the dual band have not failed you yet. I still have probably another 7 non-dual-band dimmers.

Thanks

[apostolakisl]

7 minutes ago, raymondjiii said:

Well, I'll give it shot in the coming days. I do have a drill press and a rivet set so hopefully I can get it opened. The flicker made me think capacitor. That plus the ever ending devices (all mfg's) of cheap, failing electrolytic capacitors.

 

That's good to hear that the dual band have not failed you yet. I still have probably another 7 non-dual-band dimmers.

Thanks

I would say that maybe I had 10 of those dimmers fail and maybe had 6 or 7 come back to normal operation by replacing the caps. 

[raymondjiii]

Checking other devices just now...I have another dimmer that goes to 20%; I don't know if that's a dual-band or not. Then I have a set of 4 dimmers for two light fixtures that are flickering slightly and a microwave that no longer heats anything. I guess this house got hit with something.

Time to check the newly remodeled bathroom with 5 Insteon switches (one of which died a few weeks ago.)

[apostolakisl]

13 hours ago, raymondjiii said:

Checking other devices just now...I have another dimmer that goes to 20%; I don't know if that's a dual-band or not. Then I have a set of 4 dimmers for two light fixtures that are flickering slightly and a microwave that no longer heats anything. I guess this house got hit with something.

Time to check the newly remodeled bathroom with 5 Insteon switches (one of which died a few weeks ago.)

Sorry to hear.  Might consider a whole house surge suppressor.  I put one on each panel.  I can't say if they work since it is hard to know what didn't happen that would have happened.  Knock on wood, in 12 years, I have not had anything that I could blame on a surge.  

Easy to tell if the device is dual band.  Just go to your ISY admin console main page and click on your root folder in the left tree and it will tell you what each device is and the firmware.

The 20% thing sound like the triac is faulty, but I don't know.  My failed devices (caps) wouldn't boot up or took a really long time to boot up.  Also they would buzz and be erratic.  Can't ever recall a device that would only ramp up part way.

[raymondjiii]

Yeah, I just picked up one of the Leviton models. I wanted the top Siemens model but it sounded like the Levitons were more PLC friendly. I used to have them on each of the 3 panels at my old house (500A service). That house was a 100% PCS brand...but this one is 100% Insteon, still 3 panels but 200A service.

Edited July 26, 2022 by raymondjiii

[apostolakisl]

5 hours ago, raymondjiii said:

Yeah, I just picked up one of the Leviton models. I wanted the top Siemens model but it sounded like the Leviton's were more PLC friendly. I used to have them on each panel at my old house. That house was a 100% PCS brand...but this one is 100% Insteon.

I have the Leviton units as well.  I did have a lightening strike fry my well pump, but I suspect that surge did not go through the electric panel but rather directly through the Earth to the pump.  Nothing else on that circuit was damaged and the pump is 3 phase.  There is a single phase to 3 phase variable frequency drive controller that converts the single phase to 3 phase.  So the pump motor doesn't see line voltage at all.