I have a SWL (older version) that wasn’t responding properly. It wouldn’t come on with a scene but would if you told it to separately. I tried airgapping it and factory resetting. Then restoring device in the GUI. Now tonight it’s not really responding and sometimes it ramps up to 100% on its own with no prompt

Is this salvageable or a remove and replace situation?

Just popping in to bump the post to see if anyone has an idea before I just start replacing devices.

If you're saying the device responds to direct on/off commands but doesn't respond as a member of a scene as a responder, the first thing I would check is if the links were created for the scene. You can manually test this by linking the Switchlinc to be controlled by another device like a Switchlinc with no load or a Keypadlinc and assigning it to a button that is not the first button on an 8 button Keypadlinc or one of the four buttons on a 6 button Keypadlinc.

Things seem to have gotten worse. When I turn on the SWL with the app it ramps up and down, it doesn’t respond to voice commands and will only turn on by controlling the paddle of the SWL itself.

How old is it? Possible it's end of life

Edited Sunday at 01:06 PM2 days by paulbates

You have tried the power down and back up reset?

Factory reset and restore?

1 hour ago, Brian H said:

You have tried the power down and back up reset?

Factory reset and restore?

I have. That’s when the issue seemed to have gotten worse

2 hours ago, paulbates said:

How old is it? Possible it's end of life

That’s what I’ve been thinking. I’ll replace it today and see if that doesn’t help.

3 hours ago, andrew77 said:

I have. That’s when the issue seemed to have gotten worse

That’s what I’ve been thinking. I’ll replace it today and see if that doesn’t help.

A few years ago I had the same problem, so I disassembled it to have a look at the internals. There was leakage and corrosion around some of the capacitors, simply a mess.

I just replaced it.

I'm trying to replace what I believe is a faulty SWL with a brand new one.

But I can get into Start Linking because this keeps popping up

If for whatever reason your ISY is stuck in this state, you will just have to power cycle it, even though it says don't do that. There are legit reasons for this message, but they shouldn't persist. So if hours go by and this still happens, you will need a power cycle.

On 11/30/2025 at 11:01 AM, mmb said:

A few years ago I had the same problem, so I disassembled it to have a look at the internals. There was leakage and corrosion around some of the capacitors, simply a mess.

I just replaced it.

I was going to say the same thing about the caps. For fun I replaced capacitors on some old 2476D's I had and sure enough, they came back to life. For the most part though, it doesn't make a lot of sense repairing them.

Just in case it is a link table issue, it would be easy enough to factory reset it, delete the device from ISY, then add the device back to ISY and re-create all the scenes and stuff. Before you delete it from ISY, take some screen shots of the scenes and stuff so you can quickly put it back as it was. I have had mis-behaving switches in the past where this fixed them.

EDIT: Just to be clear, ISY can have bad/wrong links tables and simply factoring resetting the device and restoring it will just put the same bad links on it. If you delete it and start from scratch, this won't be a problem. I have had this happen a handful of times over the years.

Edited 20 hours ago20 hr by apostolakisl

I've replaced the SWL and it seems to be working. I'll post back in a few days to confirm the issue is solved.

Thank you all for the help as always.

One thing I’ve noticed is the light doesn’t change when I tell Alexa to change the scene

(Ex “turn on Livingroom 30% changes all other lights except the newly replaced swl)

What have I forgotten to do?

Edited 16 hours ago16 hr by andrew77

You might have to go to Alexa and say "Discover devices".

If that doesn't do it, you might have to remove the device and any related scenes from Alexa, re-add them, and say "Discover devices"

Edited 16 hours ago16 hr by paulbates

15 minutes ago, andrew77 said:

One thing I’ve noticed is the light doesn’t change when I tell Alexa to change the scene

(Ex “turn on Livingroom 30% changes all other lights except the newly replaced swl)

What have I forgotten to do?

I'm going to assume that you have a scene and that in the portal you set the scene to be controlled by Alexa (not individual devices).

Since Alexa still is controlling the scene, it sounds to me like the new switch isn't in the scene. If you did a "replace with", then it should be in the same scenes as before. If you deleted the old device and added the new switch, then perhaps you never put it into the scene.

45 minutes ago, apostolakisl said:

I'm going to assume that you have a scene and that in the portal you set the scene to be controlled by Alexa (not individual devices).

Since Alexa still is controlling the scene, it sounds to me like the new switch isn't in the scene. If you did a "replace with", then it should be in the same scenes as before. If you deleted the old device and added the new switch, then perhaps you never put it into the scene.

I used the GUI to ‘replace’ and it’s in the scenes in the gui as it should.

46 minutes ago, paulbates said:

You might have to go to Alexa and say "Discover devices".

If that doesn't do it, you might have to remove the device and any related scenes from Alexa, re-add them, and say "Discover devices"

I’ll try that.

If Alexa is controlling the scene, then Alexa won't know if you swapped out a device in the scene. Alexa doesn't see the individual devices in a scene. Alexa triggers ISY to issue a "scene on" and from there it is all Insteon configuration as to what responds to the scene.

What happens if you trigger the scene from the ISY admin console? If that works, then I can't understand how Alexa isn't unless Alexa isn't triggering a scene but rather a device.

When you open the ISY portal and go to Amazon echo:

Is the "ISY category" for whatever it is listed as a "scene" or "device"?