Giving Up On Insteon
- Thread starter upstatemike
- Start date
upstatemike
Senior Member
No. It is still in Beta (which is why I use PowerHome for production stuff). It shouldn't be too much longer though.WayneW said:
If it wasn't for Power-Home I would have removed all of the Insteon stuff long ago. The link management capabilities alone are a reason to buy it if you have over 10 switches and keypads (especially keypads).
I am just starting to explore the programming and it has a lot more power than most other home automation products.
I am just starting to explore the programming and it has a lot more power than most other home automation products.
It has to be a communication problem from the Powerlinc to the switch I agree. And that is an Insteon problem I have been complaining about for months. Missed commands are a real PIA when you use the lights for when you walk into a room. In the laundry room and excersise room I use motion detectors since our hands are often full when we walk in there. When it works is a great conveinence but when it doesn't its a major PIA considering the money invested.
Now I have the same exact setup on my front door as the garage door. And the switches are on the same electrical circuit, and the switches are about 8 feet apart. The front door works perfectly every time but the garage is less than half of the time. To me it seems that the garage switch is defective??????
I am tired of the intermitant problems. Smarthomes answer used to be "buy more switches and make your mesh better" but they havent said that recently. Now they say that I may have noise problems (ok maybe I do since I have a lot of CFL's) or I have to move my RF links (but one of the RF links is on the other side of the wall from the garage switch) so to me that doesnt make sense. They used to claim that the switches were immune from the noise that used to cause problems with X-10 but I dont see them making that claim anymore.
EDIT........
I just had to go in the garage and I opened the door and once again the light did not go on. I left the door open and turned the light on manually. when I was done I turned the light off manually (with the door still open) and the light came right back on. STRANGE!!!!!!!!!
Ditto. After two heavily linked keypadlincV2 1.0's failed, our entire setup would have been ripped out and burned in a bonfire in the back yard if it wasn't for power-home.Paul_PDX said:
Ken: Yes, I think Insteon is the best on-the-wire protocol of the lot. I've just lost confidence in Smarthome's ability (or desire) to fix the outstanding problems. They just don't seem to get it. They're hurting their early adopters - the very people that they need to take the most care of. Launching a new system doesn't end with the items appearing on a web catalog. It ends after you've got sufficient critical mass of 'happy customers' so that when people do background checking they find good information before the bad. Right now there are 49,300 matches for the google search (no quotes): Insteon problems, but there are 978 matches for: Insteon success. Totally unscientific I know, but a couple of easy variations of those searches turned up searches with horror stories about appliancelincv2's and switchlinkv2's failing.
I sometimes wonder if they're deliberately avoiding releasing bug fixes in case people see the new revision on the stickers and want to RMA all their older devices. After all, they didn't fix the serious bugs in the firmware of the old switchlincV1's.
The irony is that the switchlincV2's appear to be flashable via the header that is under the rocker switch. They could do low-cost (paid-for) firmware upgrades.
What is really sad is that since the network has reasonable bandwidth, it should have been possible to send updates over the wire. Well, except for the dog-slow PLCv2 and the broken extended message system.
Ken: I don't think the single-manufacturer thing is by design. I think Smarthome just overestimated other company's desire to compete against the "home team" of the designer and patent holder. I'm sure Smarthome would dearly love a rich multi-manufacturer ecosystem of products and software. They seem to be being forced into releasing devices that they'd hoped that others would make and don't seem to have the manpower to get them out on time or in a reliable fashion.
The software situation is Smarthome's own fault. They should have written basic but functional software while the rest of the system was being designed. But then, they'd have discovered how horrible their programming interface is before it was too late. (I'm not talking about the windows-only SDM, but rather the direct interface. SDM is no use at all for embedded systems or non-windows systems.)
On the other hand, if they made a standalone ethernet based controller that included an SDM-like programming interface to talk to then that would be really something! It wouldn't have to be crippled by the slow PLCv2 interface and should be able to operate at full speed. Except I'm sure they'd find a way to underpower it or something. Sigh.
I'll refrain from commenting further on what I think of their developer support, particularly the documentation and forum that you have to pay to join. (Hint: I can't think of sentences that don't quickly degenerate into 4-letter words).
I think Smarthome were quite unprepared for the work required to create a healthy ecosystem of Insteon products and get Insteon off the ground in its own right. X10 was a complete and had a complete ecosystem of software and hardware to work with. Once the patents X10 patents expired, you *could* get away with building a compatible product and sticking it in a catalog. I think Smarthome's plan to create the Insteon ecosystem didn't consist of much more than hand-waving and wishful thinking. They certainly don't seem to have allocated enough resources to the designers and developers. If they were the only X10 alternative in town then they might have got away with it. But they're not.
What really annoys me is the switchlincv2-relay 2.2 regression back to 2.1. I've been waiting for the firmware bug fix in the 2.2 units to ship for something like 6 months now.
<rant mode off>
johnnynine
Active Member
Sorry, I do have v2.2 SwitchLincs.Herdfan said:
johnnynine
Active Member
What is the dimmer flicker issue? I have v2.2 dimmers and I don't have a flicker issue that I am aware of.jeffx said:
upstatemike
Senior Member
I have never had it either but I have heard about it. Insteon traffic noise leaks into the Triac circuitry on some switches and causes the load to flicker.
I am currently having the flicker/flutter problem with all switchlincs controlling loads > 240 Watts. The larger the load, the more significant the flicker. For any light that is on and dimmed (& controls > 240 watts), the light goes to full bright, then back to dimmed 3 or 4 times in rapid succession before returning to its dimmed setting every time there is any Insteon traffic in the house (every time someone touchs a switchlinc). The more Insteon devices you have and the more links you create the more traffic you have, therefore the more flickering you have.
