Remote ir control of ISY (or Insteon)

[mitch236]

I have the ISY 99i IR which is mounted in my structured wiring cabinet at the back of my theater and I have the theater's URC remote system hooked into the IR receiver and it works like a dream. So the other night I was thinking how great it would be to be able to run Scenes from my bedroom URC remote. The problem is, the bedroom is too far from the ISY to make an IR run and besides, I think it would be tricky to have two IR blasters stuck to the IR receiver of the ISY. Is there another way to have an IR blaster run an Insteon Scene? Is there a stand alone IR receiver that I can either plug into a wall receptor or maybe an IR receiver that sends an RF command that one of the Insteon RF devices would receive?

 

Maybe UD could make a stand alone IR receiver that communicates with the ISY through networking (which would be the most stable). That way, I could use all my house remotes as Scene controllers!!

[oberkc]

Smarthome makes a plug-in IR reciever. I use an X-10 one. Both convert IR to powerline signals and could be used to trigger programs. If you choose the insteon one, I assume you could even incorporate it into scenes.

[mitch236]

I actually own the X-10 ir receiver (I used it when I was using x-10 in my theater). How would I get it to send commands to Insteon? I assumed it would only send x-10.

[oberkc]

I use a URC remote, RF-20. It has a built-in library of X-10 commands, house code A, number 1-10, on, off, dim, bright, etc... I think it highly likely that your URC has such a library. If not, you may be limited to the insteon version of the IR reciever.

 

Assuming you have the built-in library, use the remote to send an X-10 code into your system. Use an ISY program to trigger the actions you desire, triggered by the X-10 code.

[oberkc]

One additional thought...even if your remote does not have built-in X-10 codes, perhaps your URC is a learning remote and you have an old x-10 ir transmitter of some type? Program codes through the learning process.

[mitch236]

Would I need to buy the x-10 module for ISY?

[Sub-Routine]

Not at all. X10 is available using programs. The module allows you to add X10/A10 devices to the tree and use them by name in programs.

 

Rand

 

Would I need to buy the x-10 module for ISY?

[mitch236]

But I wouldn't be able to run Scenes in my ISY's programming. I wanted to be able to turn off many of the house lights when I'm in bed from my remote control. I guess I could install a KPL but it would be really slick to use remotes!

 

Maybe you guys (UD) could make a device that is a little black box (much like the ISY) with an ir receiver on it and a LAN output that would communicate with the ISY over the network. It would have to be addressable by the ISY for security.

 

Maybe???

[oberkc]

But I wouldn't be able to run Scenes in my ISY's programming.

 

Not true, as I understand your question. While it is true that you cannot incorporate X-10 addresses into scenes, you can set up a program to turn scenes on and off, etc. A typical program may look something like:

 

if

x-10 A6 is turned on

 

then

set scene "bedroom" on

 

You could create a scene to include all your lights, then a program

 

if

x-10 a6 is turned off

 

then

turn scene "all lights" off

[mitch236]

Wow! That sounds too good to be true!

 

I'll have to give it a try!

 

And I don't need to buy the x-10 module (not that I don't want to financially support UD) makes it even better!

[oberkc]

No you don't have to buy the module. I did, however, and like the ability to stay organized. You can give names to X-10 codes, and they show up in your 'my lighting' tree. I no longer need to keep track of these on a spreadsheet.