Helping new home owner w/ large Insteon installation

[apostolakisl]

I would suggest you look at the ISY forum and wiki. When you have an ISY, you can prettty much throw out the Insteon owners manual because you are never going to do it the "manual" way. The ISY is a great tool with great people behind it. If you ask, Michel will probably log onto your system remotely and get on the phone with you and help you out.

I have a 6000sf + house with three subpanels and about 60 Insteon devices. I had lots of problems with bad switches but since getting them all RMA'd out to higher v4's and v5's (really like the 5's), they are working great. Reliability is around 99%. I only have 2 filters in my home and 4 repeaters.

I have never had an Insteon switch flat out die. I have had two lamplincs die which they RMA'd at the age of about 5 years (another recall issue)

And as Pete mentioned, if the owners of the house think that they just don't want it, I would suggest pulling it and putting in regular switches. People on this forum or ebay would buy much of what you have. The ISY is also going to have a UPB firmware available soon as well (currently in beta).

 

[tmbrown97]

Honestly I'd suggest searching the word "insteon" on this forum - every time someone asks about the different technologies there are responses out comparing the differences and explaining them.

If you're concerned about the network reliability of them - well, that's what they're advertising as their strong point. They use a combination of powerline and radio frequency to overcome those issues; and they have provisions for adding repeaters and other things to fix signal issues that may come up; There are other users who are much more qualified than I to speak on this though.

Of course, this is a silly point - (i don't know how long they've been in the house) but when I bought my current home (was bank owned; 5yr old house) I noticed a few switches/outlets dead... In the breaker box, everything looked fine - but we found a few things that just didn't turn on... eventually I just flipped all the breakers off/on and tripped/reset the AFI and GFI's and also found all the GFCI controls inside the house and reset them... in the end I got everything working.

 

[SoCalMike]

I sometimes wonder if we tech-heads forget to KISS (keep it simple). Perhaps the easiest first step would be to call Smarthome's free tech support (800-762-7846) and have them walk you through a simple diagnostic process to troubleshoot the switch problems.

Lou's suggestion to "take the switch plate off" before calling might also be helpful so you can see the version number when discussing it with tech support. Tech support usually can tell how old the switch is by the version number and then determine if it might be covered under warranty.

By the way, the only time my Insteon switches seem to go completely dead is when the neutral wire comes loose. OK - I know what you guys must be thinking, but I swear it must be gremlins because I always check my connections.

Good Luck Barry,
Mike

 

[apostolakisl]

One quick suggestion for the dead swtiches. Pull the reset tab on the switch (you either need very good fingernails or a tiny screwdriver). It is a little clear piece of plastic just below the paddle that pulls straight out. Once fully pulled out it locks into posisiton and needs a gentle push to reactivate. You should leave it out for 10 seconds to get a full hard reset.

Please note, this little switch has three positions, neutral which is the position it is in 99.999999% of the time, pulled out, and pushed in. Pulled out is a hard power disconnect and it will reboot the switch. It is the same as turning off the breaker. Pushed in is for a factory reset and only works if it is pushed in immediately after having been pulled out for 10 seconds or so.

If the switch comes back to life but still doesn't work right, try a factory reset. After you pull the tab out for 10 seconds or so, push it back in and hold it all the way in for about 5 seconds. This will erase all of the programming, but since you have an ISY all you need to do is right click on the switch and hit "restore device".

These switches are kind of like little pcs. Occasionally they need to be "rebooted" or even "reformated" (fortunately waaaaaaay waaaaaay less often than a windows pc). Out of my 60 switches, I have probably had to do factory resets 4 or 5 times total and this was always after changing around some programming.

 

[lhfarm]

Thanks for all the great suggestions. My comfort level is way up and I think after looking at a lot of the documentation, we can get the house in order. I'll report back with progress reports.

Barry

 

[apostolakisl]

Barry,

Maybe you should yank this system from your friends house and put it in yours! Sounds like your the one who deserves it.

 

[BLH]

The older Insteon SwitchLinc Relay versions. Do not have the Air Gap switch and are reset differently.