Any lighting controls that work especially well w/ Elk M1?

[MikeB]

I'm considering the purchase of the Elk M1, but would like more info on how well it works with Insteon.

Specifically -

- does it work with the PLM, or does it require a serial PLC
- can it control groups saved to the PLM/PLC
- how does it maintain the status of each light? does it periodically poll, or some other more instantaneous method?
- how reliable is it?

I can't find much on Elk's website, but maybe I'm not looking in the right area.

 

[mtwalsh367]

I'm considering the purchase of the Elk M1, but would like more info on how well it works with Insteon.

Specifically -

- does it work with the PLM, or does it require a serial PLC
- can it control groups saved to the PLM/PLC
- how does it maintain the status of each light? does it periodically poll, or some other more instantaneous method?
- how reliable is it?

I can't find much on Elk's website, but maybe I'm not looking in the right area.

I have shifted much of my Insteon lighting control over to HomeSeer but still do several things from my M1G with Insteon. My main reason for shifting over to HomeSeer was more event/rule flexibility as well as a litte stronger Insteon support. I'll answer what Ican of your questions. 1) Im not awere of the M1 working with the PLM. I have always used the serial PLC. 2) Groups work great with the M1 and the PLC. You need some of link managment software to configure the goups in the PLC i.e. Powerhome. Powerhome also allows you direclty load the Insteon devices/addreses into the M1 so you don't have to manually add them one by one. 3) Unless this functionality has been added the M1 won't know the status of lighting changes for group commands. It should be able to recognize changes from individual lighting commands or manually hitting a switch. It can do polling and I used to have polling turned on to make sure the status was accurate. I think if you use this feature it polls a device about one every 10 seconds so if you have 12 devices it may take several minutes before the status of every device is updated. 4) If your Insteon communications are good I found group commands to be very reliable. Also if your communications is good individual lighting commands should be reliable. You may run into issues if you execute muliple lighting commands from within a rule, expecially if you have any noise on your line because the M1 fires each lighting command sequentially without about a 1 second delay (I think its about 1 second) and if a prior command has not completed it may be lost.

Overall I found the groups to work the best with the M1 because I have some noise on my line and occassionally individual lighting commands fired sequentially would sometimes fail. This issue had been improved in a prior M1 firmware release where they increased the delay between issueing sequential lighting commands.

Hope this helps. Note that I am using M1 firmware that is probably 8+ months ols so any more recent improvemets are not reflected in my comments.

Overall i am very happy with my M1 and really like the integration between it and HomeSeer.

Matt

 

[MikeB]

I'm considering the purchase of the Elk M1, but would like more info on how well it works with Insteon.

Specifically -

- does it work with the PLM, or does it require a serial PLC
- can it control groups saved to the PLM/PLC
- how does it maintain the status of each light? does it periodically poll, or some other more instantaneous method?
- how reliable is it?

I can't find much on Elk's website, but maybe I'm not looking in the right area.

I have shifted much of my Insteon lighting control over to HomeSeer but still do several things from my M1G with Insteon. My main reason for shifting over to HomeSeer was more event/rule flexibility as well as a litte stronger Insteon support. I'll answer what Ican of your questions. 1) Im not awere of the M1 working with the PLM. I have always used the serial PLC. 2) Groups work great with the M1 and the PLC. You need some of link managment software to configure the goups in the PLC i.e. Powerhome. Powerhome also allows you direclty load the Insteon devices/addreses into the M1 so you don't have to manually add them one by one. 3) Unless this functionality has been added the M1 won't know the status of lighting changes for group commands. It should be able to recognize changes from individual lighting commands or manually hitting a switch. It can do polling and I used to have polling turned on to make sure the status was accurate. I think if you use this feature it polls a device about one every 10 seconds so if you have 12 devices it may take several minutes before the status of every device is updated. 4) If your Insteon communications are good I found group commands to be very reliable. Also if your communications is good individual lighting commands should be reliable. You may run into issues if you execute muliple lighting commands from within a rule, expecially if you have any noise on your line because the M1 fires each lighting command sequentially without about a 1 second delay (I think its about 1 second) and if a prior command has not completed it may be lost.

Overall I found the groups to work the best with the M1 because I have some noise on my line and occassionally individual lighting commands fired sequentially would sometimes fail. This issue had been improved in a prior M1 firmware release where they increased the delay between issueing sequential lighting commands.

Hope this helps. Note that I am using M1 firmware that is probably 8+ months ols so any more recent improvemets are not reflected in my comments.

Overall i am very happy with my M1 and really like the integration between it and HomeSeer.

Matt

Thanks for the info Matt.

 

[murphy]

The X10-light-controll is working at my place since nearly 2 decades. Now -since a year- the X10-hardware is controlled by the ELK-system via a TW523 interface. So far there were no troubles, unless I had to replace some X10-switches during the past years. I had no serious troubles until now, but I'll go away from X10 during the next time.

I'll change to UPB (when it comes to long distances, maybe 500 ft) and/or direct switching via output (relais) cards. Sure this will improve reliability, even it I have no serious complain about X10 until now. As far as I remember, during the last nearly 20 years there failed maybe eight X10-interfaces from around 22 modules. As I said: during nearly 20 years of service. I hope (= I can't say it for sure!), other solutions are more reliable.

 

[johnnynine]

Zensys, Zwave, has gone through some hardware advancements in their processors, adding new capabilities and features. The Vizia line and others are using the new processors in their switches.

The interface will consist of a M1XSP serial expander loaded with the Vizia interface software. It is connected to a Leviton RZCOP, RS-232 to Zwave Serial Interface Module. Through the RZCOP, the M1 can talk to other manufacturers Zwave modules also.

As many of you are already know, I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the Vizia RF / Elk M1 interface.

Spanky is there any ETA on this? I just want to make sure I have a Leviton RZCOP in hands when the firmware is released. Also I read that the RZCOP is still not officially released yet, is this correct?

Johnny

 

[AutomatedOutlet]

Also I read that the RZCOP is still not officially released yet, is this correct?

True, not out yet....

 

[HighTest]

Any new news on the RZCOP?

 

[shenandoah75]

ASIHome.com appears to have it in stock... though i didn't go all the way through checkout to verify. I'm still holding off till spanky approves me and my multi-thousand dollar vizia-rf install for beta testing B)

 

[linuxha]

I have the RZCOP working under Misterhouse. It's a very dumb device but it may be that I'm a very dumb user. I only have one ZWave interface so far and I'm mixing it with the primary Intermatic remote and an Intermatic lamp module.