HA noob questions/project

[Craer]

I'm new to HA and the forums. I've been lurking and reading for about a week trying to soak up as much knowledge as possible, but figured it was about time i register and post. Little info about my project and goals.

I have about an 1800sqft house. With about 20 light switches/dimmers. I'm looking for something that allows me to start out small and grow. I'd like to start with the lights first but immediately move on to distributed audio and video. I have 2 rooms with a media center setup and 1 tv in the bedroom that just has an apple tv hooked up to it. I'm really interested in just doing everything myself as it looks like a damn fun hobby to get in to. I'm not opposed to running cables, programming and the like. But I do have some requirements.

Some requirements that I have:
must be able to control everything with an iPad. other controls are fine too, but for sure want the iPad control.
Must be reliable (not X10).
Not delear installed. Want to do everything myself.
Budget friendly.

With that said, after the research I've done, it looks like insteon is the way to go. But I really would like all of your opinions, because I've seen plenty of the "insteon sucks, go with xyz" posts. Thanks ahead of time for your replies.

 

[Swancoat]

Well, I'm probably in a similar situation to you. I really wanted to do it myself also. Partially for cost, but I also don't want to be reliant on someone else every time a problem comes up. Insteon is cheap, which I liked and I actually do like the look of the keypadlincs etc... I started off slowly, with a couple of devices just to make sure that it was going to 'work' (still kind of decent inital investment for me, since I needed phase bridges, and I popped for a USB PLM too).

Once I moved into my new house, I moved into Insteon in a bigger way, installing switches/devices a batch at a time. I'm probably at around 40+ switches, 2 thermostats, some garage door openers/sensors, and a couple of triggerlincs. My experience is pretty positive so far. (Keep in mind, I'm only about 5 months in...)

Reliability: The stuff that is linked device to device is rock solid. It is awesome to pop in a keypadlinc, and just straight up map a button to another room's light for convenience. If there's any lag in that situation, it's pretty much imperceptable to me.

Some of my more complicated stuff is still really reliable, but not as lightning fast. I'm a Mac guy, so I'm running the whole show on Indigo. Some of the scenes (like some of the ones for my Media Room, which only affect a total of 6 switches) kind of take too long. It varies and it's weird, but once I figure out program an Insteon scene in Indigo that includes defined 'off' switches, everything will be fine. (Actually, Indigo can't do this yet, but they assure me it's on the list).

My least reliable components are the thermostats. They miss commands a lot (my standard practice in Indigo is to send my scheduled temperature changes to the thermostats twice, 1 minute apart). Also, sometimes the thermostat adapters seem to simply quit responding. Like they're dead. I take them off the t-stat, reset the adapter, and re-link in Indigo and everything's good again. Annoying though.

Again, I've had only 5 months with my bigger setup (some components even less than that), and no outright failures yet. (The thermostat adapters are annoying, but they aren't 'broken' and can be reset). I've got a dimmer that gets pretty warm to the touch, but I'm not even sure that's abnormal. I had one switch where the LEDs didn't work on first install, but I did an airgap reset, and it fixed it right up.

Annoyances: Thermostats as discussed above. The little LEDs are pretty bright (cool at first, but after about 40 switches it's a bit overwhelming, but they ARE dimmable, so that's cool).

With Indigo, everything is controllable by iPhone, iPad, and you can even set up your own custom pages. It's pretty sweet.

As far as Audio/Video distribution goes... Indigo is not the answer. Need a whole different tech for that.

 

[pete_c]

Welcome to the forum!

Lots of friendly folks here.

Personally I started with X10 in the late 1970's and was utilizing it until I moved to current home around 2003 or so.

Here I went to the Insteon combo X10 switches. Most recently migrating to UPB and playing with Z-Wave.

I utilize an HAI Omnistat2 thermostat connected to the HAI OPII panel via a serial link. I used the HAI Omnistat RC80 for many years before migrating to the current thermostat. I actually purchased it around the time it was first introduced but didn't install it until last year some time.

A recent installation of a 1000watt UPB switch for the Chandelier (in a 3 way with two other virtual switches) is the last endeavor. I dim down the chandelier to about 20% and noticed I hear a bit of a hum and the switch also gets a tad warm. The old Insteon 1000 watt switch did the same though.

I've been testing wired network HA devices recently whereas historically and currently have a number of serial/USB devices directly connected to the HA server. Yesterday I accidently disconnected the power to one small Gb switch and found out how dependant I was on the HA network connected devices. It caused a bit of an issue.

 

[Craer]

Thanks for the replys.

Swancoat -

It sounds like your system is a lot like what i want to do. Any chance you can send or post a list of devices that you have installed? Im not a mac guy (other than iphone/ipad) so it doesnt not sound like Indego would be a good choice for me. I have been looking at CQC which looks to be pretty stable and completly customizable. Any other control systems i should take a look at?

 

[fwd03]

I have been using X10 for more than 10 years and they are pretty reliable for me for in a city of 30 million population. I think the noise filter and X10 bridge device installed at our power main helped a lot. A lot of people say UPB more reliable, so I want to play with that to see what improvement from UPB over X10.

 

[intozwave]

I used the Z-Wave Technology to do my home automation. Like the fact that there are over 160 manufacturers working with the technology. That it was easy to do the retro-fit of my place(live in a 3000 sq ft concrete block/stucco with no neutral in the box) That it is a wireless technology utilizling a mesh network - the more devices you have the better the mesh. The selection of devices that are currently available(including door locks) with more devices coming out all the time. B)