Insteon general questions.

[ingeborgdot]

I have been out of the game for a little while now since insteon took a nose dive. My whole house is insteon. I have an isy994i/IR Pro (1110) with UD994 v5.3.4 firmware. I have rarely had any issues with my system and do like it.

When insteon was in chaos, I kind of pushed everything aside for the time being and hoped I didn't have any problems with any of my products. I was lucky, and nothing did happen, but the guy that I had put in over 30 switches and wall lamp modules has had over half of his products fail in the last 2 years. Well, he had an electrician install about 2 Lutron caseta switches, so he now has about 10 insteon switches left, with about 20 of the Lutron ones.

He is needing 2 more insteon switches replaced, plus 2 more regular switches taken out and replaced with either an insteon or Lutron switch. He is also needing some lamp modules too.

He is very leery of the insteon stuff since he has had such a high failure rate. How can I convince him other wise? I would like to use insteon since I am more familiar with it. Any advice. 

The issue that I see with his insteon stuff is that it no longer seems to work with alexa anymore. Is there something I'm missing? He has the insteon hub and no isy994. Is there something that I don't know about with the hub since all the insteon fiasco happened. The guy I am referring to is a quadriplegic and the more automation the better, as long as it works. I try to help him out as much as I can as he is a a good friend.

Any advice or pointing in the right direction would be great. Thanks so much.

[MrBill]

2 minutes ago, ingeborgdot said:

The issue that I see with his insteon stuff is that it no longer seems to work with alexa anymore. Is there something I'm missing? He has the insteon hub and no isy994.

You might want to contact Insteon support, or post in the Insteon forum, most people here in the UD forum don't know anything about Insteon Hubs (I have a limited amount of knowledge because my son uses one).

[ingeborgdot]

Great suggestion. Great minds come up with great ideas. You see, I didn't think of that suggestion. Thanks again MrBill. You are always thinking. What would I do without you.

Is the new isy upgrade, not sure what it is called, a good move.

Would you say moving to an isy format compared to a hub is a better move for him?

 

[MrBill]

I personally haven't moved my 994 over to eisy yet, but that day is coming. I started once in January and put the brakes on due to a known issue, following that there was some updates instability which seems to be more or less resolved at this point.

I also use Home Assistant (HA) with ISY/IoX. Home Assistant has a fairly robust interface with Alexa (that I'm not using, but my son is at his house, he has no ISY but uses the Insteon Hub directly with HA--that interface (between HA and the Insteon Hub) was greatly improved a year ago when Insteon (the company) went on hiatus for awhile.  I'd say overall the insteon experience with HA is still improved with ISY as opposed to hub, but hub to HA got much better a year ago.  Overall the HA integration with Alexa runs circles around ISY/IoX to Alexa.

[ingeborgdot]

I am not really familiar with HA. When you say HA integration with Alexa, are you referring to when using the hub? That is above my pay grade.

[MrBill]

no, Home Assistant has it's own integration to Alexa.

• I don't remember how Hub -> Alexa works... so no comment.
• ISY/IoX to Alexa -> requires bridging entries in the portal (my.isy.io)
• HA -> Alexa just created Alexa devices for any entity that can be turned on or dimmed. This can be cumbersome at first because some enties may be named in a confusing manner.  But if Alexa control of all is required it works the best of these 3 options, once naming issues have been addressed.

Option 3 is the most robust and when used with ISY/IoX integration for HA all devices just exist in Alexa, no portal entries needed.

 

[ingeborgdot]

So, are you saying that no hub, no isy and using the HA with Alexa is much better and more dependable?

[MrBill]

no,

there are (at least) 3 ways to get Insteon over Alexa:

1. Hub
2. ISY/IoX via the UD portal
3. HA (when using the HA integration for EITHER Hub or ISY/IoX -- that is HA is a middleman)

[ingeborgdot]

Ok. I get exhausted looking at all this new stuff coming out. If I keep the hub for the system, where do I install the HA for integration? Do I need to get a whole other PC or something? Can I use a synology nas and use the HA in the synocommunity?

A lot of stuff to look at for sure. Thanks.

[larryllix]

With such a sudden failure of so many electrical devices I think somebody needs to inspect his electrical system for noise problems, and/or high voltage, etc.. You may be playing the same tune shortly again, no matter what system you install.

[ingeborgdot]

No, it is not his electrical system. It was the insteon devices. They all sucked. I have had almost all of mine replaced also. The new ones are now holding their own. You do know there were a lot of bad insteon switches that were made don't you?

These switches didn't just fail overnight or all at once. One would fail here and there, and if I actually look at it, probably more than a 2 year period. We would replace them with standard switches since we could not get insteon anymore. He then realized he wanted switches he could control, and got the Lutron. Not one problem with the Lutron has happened.

All of his Lutron switches have been running fine for the last 2 years since he had them replaced.

[MrBill]

42 minutes ago, ingeborgdot said:

where do I install the HA for integration?

You need some type of computer... HA has many options. 

 

[Geddy]

2 hours ago, ingeborgdot said:

The issue that I see with his insteon stuff is that it no longer seems to work with alexa anymore. Is there something I'm missing? He has the insteon hub and no isy994. Is there something that I don't know about with the hub since all the insteon fiasco happened.

@ingeborgdot back to this statement - yes, the new Insteon requires a subscription to allow the hub to work with internet access. Info here - https://shop.insteon.com/products/hub-account-access

Just like UDI now has the eisy (current replacement of ISY994) you can get the UDI/ISY Portal to connect the IoX (formerly just ISY) system to Alex, Google Home, and other benefits. 

 

[ingeborgdot]

Okay, that makes sense as to why it was not working. I'll get that setup I guess. It should work with the older hub right?

Thanks for the help.

[Geddy]

2 hours ago, ingeborgdot said:

It should work with the older hub right?

I would assume so, but don't know. Never used the hub. Those are questions to ask Insteon Support. Either through their contact us site or their forums.

 

[DennisC]

4 hours ago, ingeborgdot said:

No, it is not his electrical system. It was the insteon devices. They all sucked. I have had almost all of mine replaced also. The new ones are now holding their own. You do know there were a lot of bad insteon switches that were made don't you?

These switches didn't just fail overnight or all at once. One would fail here and there, and if I actually look at it, probably more than a 2 year period.

Maybe you need to re-think this. That is an extremely high failure rate that we have not seen reported here. 

4 hours ago, larryllix said:

With such a sudden failure of so many electrical devices I think somebody needs to inspect his electrical system for noise problems, and/or high voltage, etc.. You may be playing the same tune shortly again, no matter what system you install.

The more likely correct answer to this problem. 

[ingeborgdot]

I had the same batch of switches and almost all of mine have had to be replaced. You need to look at years past posts on the failure rate of the insteon switches.

I just got off the phone with a great guy from insteon and we were talking about the bad insteon switches that had been out there.  He admitted it, which shows great customer service. That has since been remedied and the new ones now are way BETTER than the ones manufactured during the batch that I had gotten.  He was explaining how so, and I was pretty impressed by how they are now manufactured. 

It is not my house or his house that has electrical problems, it was the switches and that were the issue. All the switches that are insteon that are unaffected are the switches that are newer within the last 5-6 years or so or even newer. The ones that had issues were ones that were 8 years or more older.

Problem solved, and insteon switches are going back in to replace anything that needs to be replaced.

[Geddy]

15 minutes ago, ingeborgdot said:

The ones that had issues were ones that were 8 years or more older.

Yeah, it was a known issue similar to the issue that old PLMs had. At least I say "known" as many have reported in the old Insteon forums and lots of reports here of very old switches having issues. I think they were old single band types and maybe some early release of the dual band. Either way, it's also known that the issue was resolved many years before the old Insteon closed and the new Insteon seems to be able to get quality builds, but longevity has not yet been tested as many devices are brand new and just coming back into stock. But the hope really is that it's better. Only time will tell. 

Glad you got to talk with somebody from Insteon. They're really open and helpful from what others have mentioned. Nice to see that was the case for you as well. 

There was a service that would repair switches just like PLMs are repaired, but since the time of failed switches seemed to be several years ago and many could replace defective switches with newer ones that lasted longer I haven't seen mention of repairs for switches recently. PLMs are still a big thing to repair, at least to get current ones working again until there's better stock for new PLMs. 

 

[larryllix]

1 hour ago, ingeborgdot said:

I had the same batch of switches and almost all of mine have had to be replaced. You need to look at years past posts on the failure rate of the insteon switches.

I just got off the phone with a great guy from insteon and we were talking about the bad insteon switches that had been out there.  He admitted it, which shows great customer service. That has since been remedied and the new ones now are way BETTER than the ones manufactured during the batch that I had gotten.  He was explaining how so, and I was pretty impressed by how they are now manufactured. 

It is not my house or his house that has electrical problems, it was the switches and that were the issue. All the switches that are insteon that are unaffected are the switches that are newer within the last 5-6 years or so or even newer. The ones that had issues were ones that were 8 years or more older.

Problem solved, and insteon switches are going back in to replace anything that needs to be replaced.

You mean all my devices I purchased back in 2013 are going to be a problem some day?

Your first post it sounded like you said your system never gave you any problems and now you say they did. That sounded like a contradiction but we must have misunderstood those comments.

The only Insteon device problem I have had in 10 years were devices that were sent out of the factory with defects.

However I have one LampLinc, removed, stored in a box that the plastic case split five different ways. Never checked the manu. date though. I have had a synchroLinc that went dead. Likely a poor electrical design that couldn't handle the motor load.
I still have about 50 more devices that I removed when I moved last year, working until I stored them in a box. About half were purchased before 2015 and had no RF protocol.

Edited April 4, 2023 by larryllix

[ingeborgdot]

Yeah, I guess the way I worded it does sound like I didn't have any problems. I don't have any problems now, nor have I had any for a long time, but I have had to replace nearly all of my switches. Just unlucky I guess. The ones I have now have been working flawlessly for year.

[ryarber]

Isn’t it possible also to connect HA directly to an Insteon PLM (without a hub) from say a Raspberry Pi or old PC?

[MrBill]

15 hours ago, ryarber said:

Isn’t it possible also to connect HA directly to an Insteon PLM (without a hub) from say a Raspberry Pi or old PC?

yes.  If so you use the Insteon Integration, instead of the Universal Devices Integration.

Currently I think the Insteon integration is more robust, there were running neck and neck after the Insteon Integration got upgraded last summer, but shbatm just updated the UD integration and I think it's better again.  (I use UD and my house, my adult son uses the Insteon integration at his house, so I have experience with both)