Insteon and Elk M1G - Reliability Issues

[Digger]

There are minor things like we have mentioned but overall they are as good or better than expected.

I think at first I was to critical since I dropped about $500 intially and then another $120 or so and I expected way to much for the pricepoint. If I spent $100 a switch I might get something better but its way to much for my budget. Besides they did a good job with the appearance of the switch and they are the quitest I have found.

I hope to save some electric to get some payback for the investment over time. I will probably top out at about 20 or so switches.

 

[Digger]

OK another call to tech support today and I got someone who really seemed to know their stuff.

The reliability problems may be because I have almost 100% CFL's in the house which generate a lot of noise. That along with a couple of shop lights with ballasts etc. and a lot of electronics (computers, tv's, stereos etc. etc.)

He suggested I try experimenting with all of the lights etc. off in the house and use regular bulbs in the light circuits that are intermitant. Not a bad idea!

Anyway long story short he may be right. I tried his idea and insteon didnt miss a beat. So......... now I have to decide if I want to get rid of the CFL's (or some of them at least).

I always knew I had a noisey house..... I just thought is was the kids.

 

[BraveSirRobbin]

OK another call to tech support today and I got someone who really seemed to know their stuff.

The reliability problems may be because I have almost 100% CFL's in the house which generate a lot of noise.  That along with a couple of shop lights with ballasts etc. and a lot of electronics (computers, tv's, stereos etc. etc.)

He suggested I try experimenting with all of the lights etc. off in the house and use regular bulbs in the light circuits that are intermitant.  Not a bad idea!

Anyway long story short he may be right.  I tried his idea and insteon didnt miss a beat.  So......... now I have to decide if I want to get rid of the CFL's (or some of them at least). 

I always knew I had a noisey house..... I just thought is was the kids.

Interesting.

I was worried about using CFL's in my home due to their increased noise with my (outdated) X-10 system. I even replied to a couple of threads here in the past with my concerns over CFL's, but other forum members said they were never a problem with them.

I was hoping that Insteon was immune to this kind of noise on the AC system. Isn't this UPB's claim to fame by the way??

I do know fluorescent lighting is a killer with noise and have an in line filter with my kitchen under cabinet lighting.

One tool I use a LOT is my Elk X-10 signal strength meter that I got off of Martin. It would show if I have a high noise baseline and any signal sucks plugged into my AC grid.

That along with a few plugin filters, helped me create a fairly reliable X-10 system in my home. Now, before I plug ANYTHING new into the home, I check to see if it is a noise generator or signal suck with this meter.

The long winded reason I am stating this is does Insteon have anything like this meter to analyze its signal for your home's AC grid? I can see where there is a need for something like this, especially after reading your post!

I am a little disheartened by this post because does this mean we are going to have to be carefull with our Insteon systems with signal sucks/noise generators like we were with our X-10 systems!

 

[BLH]

CFL Noise in my tests. Found some brands where worse then others. I could not use any Durabright [TCP is manufacturer] ones with out trouble. My Greenlight's and GE's seem to be better. Except in a Socket Rocket [questionable as technically it has a triac but didn't dim]; where the GEs seemed to make my Insteon Modules activity LED flash all the time and killed that modules reception. Both X10 or Insteon messages. A Greenlight was fine in the same Socket Rocket.

 

[Guy Lavoie]

Like BSR, I also need to drag out the Elk ESM1 every once in a while whenever a doubt as to signal strength or noise comes up. It has been said before but with sufficient testing and compensating (eg: filters), X10 can be made to be quite reliable, especially for non critical applications such as lighting. Now it seems that Insteon and UPB are also subject to signal problems in certain homes, so there aren't the miracle cure that they are meant to be. Given that, they still are faster and most likely more reliable then X10.

 

[Digger]

The tech support did say that if I were ta add more switches that the reliability should improve (which if correct proves the other tech support people right). If they knew all along about the noise being a potential problem they should have said so. Just to tell me to buy more switches with no explanation was begining to annoy me. At least this guy was helpful and I forgot his name already.............

 

[Digger]

Found this string on another board........

AccessHA
02-21-2006, 01:36 PM
From my understanding, each INSTEON device acts as a signal repeater and by adding additional devices it should improve the overall signal. However, in my experience, INSTEON seems to be just as susceptible to line noise as X10. I now have about 6 INSTEON devices that my 2414U just won’t communicate with. I also have filters installed on all UPS’s/PC’s throughout the house and I'm running in pure INSTEON mode.

Installing filters on every piece of electronics equipment in the house becomes expensive not to mention unsightly.

Is anyone else experiencing similar line noise issues?
pavlov70
02-21-2006, 03:13 PM
I had the occasional problem with missed commands that I attributed to line noise. Seems like the biggest culprit though was faulty switches which would create broadcast storms, for lack of a better term. I have about 30 devices all Insteon-only and would describe my Insteon setup as pretty stable now that I've replaced the defective switches. I also found that using Powerhome or some other software link-mgmt helps in identifying dead links and also has made things a bit smoother.

Even then, I never had a problem where they flat-out wouldn't communicate with others. Have you verified that the Signalincs are indeed on both phases
and communicating properly?
BLH
02-21-2006, 05:41 PM
I had a socket rocket with a CFL that made enough noise to slow things down noticably. Though in my case still in X10 mode. No Translators or RF reemotes for Insteon. One ApplianceLinc V2 actually had a randomly flashing led anytime it was on.
jhimmel
02-21-2006, 07:51 PM
I has a noisy circuit of LV Halogen under-counter "puck lights" that made my Insteon all but unusable. I suspect that there may have been something wrong with that string, or the transformer, because a similar string elsewhere did not cause the same problem. I found the culprit using my powerline signal analyzer, and replaced the lighting with line-voltage equivalents. All has been well ever since.

Jim H.
kclark
02-22-2006, 01:35 AM
jhimmel

What do you use as your powerline signal analyzer?
fitzpatri8
02-22-2006, 09:56 AM
I found one problem wherein devices on the same circuit but downstream of my media stuff (TV, VCR, DVD, amp) missed a signal a few times, but I solved it by moving a SignaLinc to the same outlet as the TV. It's been 100% reliable ever since.

What software are you using with the 2414U? Can a ControLinc get a signal through? Any chance the software isn't setting the repeat broadcast # high enough to allow the repeaters to work?
jhimmel
02-22-2006, 01:56 PM
jhimmel

What do you use as your powerline signal analyzer?

One of these -

http://www.smarthome.com/4814.html

although I didn't pay quite that much at the time of purchase.

Jim H.
PeterW
02-24-2006, 02:52 AM
Yes, Insteon has the same noise and signal sucker vulnerabilities as X10. The big difference is that each device is a repeater. The catch with that is that you have to have enough strategically positioned devices (relative to your electrical wiring) to make the repeating work. Or you can use brute force.

Here, the master bedroom is served by two different (long!) runs to the breaker box. We had lots of noisy devices near the breaker box as well, just to make it tougher.

When I started out, that was the test area. What I saw was that signals would travel well between devices on one side of the room, and between devices on the other side, but at the time, they wouldn't cross. I just moved my signalinc-RF's onto each side of the room to "solve" it at the time. My computer (elsewhere in the house) couldn't reach any of them reliably. I put another signalinc-RF up there for a while to fix that.

Now though, I have many more devices, including some very close to the breaker box - the garage lights in fact. That solved it for me. I have enough devices now that the signalinc-RF's dont appear to be needed at all. I also have a wired-in UPB "universal" phase coupler that bridges UPB, X10 and Insteon across the phases at the breaker box anyway.

We have one single device in the house that will take out a good portion of the insteon network - our Fisher & Paykel clothes washing machine. I had it on a 10 amp filter from X10 days and confirmed that it is one of the few filters that is still critically needed. (It has a power supply for an electronic synchronous motor and generates a huge amount of electrical noise)

Summary of my experience:
* More devices do make a difference. The brute force approach works well if you can afford it.
* A bridge close to the breaker box is a good thing.
* Signalinc-RF's can be used to fill signal voids nicely.
* Unless you have a clean house electrical system, positioning of devices to get best signal propagation makes a big difference. A circuit map doesn't hurt.

BTW: Signalinc-RF's are not paired. You can just plug them in and they all automatically talk to any others that are in range. The optional 'set' button lets you know which devices are in range.

These days, our Insteon network is significantly outperforming our UPB devices from a reliability perspective.
KenM
02-24-2006, 03:21 PM
From my experience...

I have one outlet where X10 will not work.

I have another where X10 will sometimes work.

So far INSTEON works 100% in those two locations.

I have 7 wall switches with INSTEON V2 dimmers. That covers most of my house.

I have 3 of the RF modules and 5 of the plug in relay/dimmer modules in my house.

I, personally, think that INSTEON is the way to go. In my 'noisy X10' house, INSTEON works very well. So far I have not documented a 'missed command'.

And I DO document that type of stuff.

Ken
KenM
02-26-2006, 02:17 PM
Hi,

I am going to modify may last comment a little.

Last night and today I did pick up some apparent powerline 'funnies', exactly twice.

My '2C' PLC picked up a INSTEON message from a device that did not exist.

The software I was using thought it was a valid message and tried to poll the mystery device for its 'on level'. That failed of course. My guess is that my PLC may have glitched, as the message had the correct PLC ID. This also happened in the middle of some pretty serious, valid PLC activity. I was torture-testing some new software mods at the time.

Other than that... when I ask something to turn on, it turns on, which is way better than the (press and pray) X10 stuff I had been using.



Ken

I hope it was ok to copy and paste to here....

 

[mtwalsh367]

Just a quick update. I did speak with Joe in Tech Support at Smarthome about the multiple command reliability issue with the powerlinc controller. He said that in a prior conversation with Elk they thought the issue was reslolved by using groups instead of multiple light commands. He also said that he did not have sufficient good detailed accounts of isses to take back to his technical team to give them something to work with. I pointed him to this thread and hopefully that will give them something to work with.

I think that groups are good for some situations but certainly not everything. If I have to define a group for every combination of lights that I want turned off/on I will certainly go insane Seems to me that Smarthome should be able to improve their powerlinc controller so it can reliably que up incoming light commands and then it can send them down the line at its own pace to keep things nice and reliable. With the reliability capabilities within Insteon you shouldn't have to avoid multiple light commands and you shouldn't have to repeat everything.

My Overall opinion at this time is that Insteon is great and has been 100% reliable outside of the powerlinc controller issues I am now experiencing. (I'm in a new house without much line noise which explains whey I haven't run into some of the singal problems others have seen).

I love the Elk system and I hope they keep their momentum with cranking out new features.

Happy automating,
Matt

 

[Digger]

I think that everyone who owns an ELK Panel loves it. It is extremely versatile and rock solid.

I beleive that in the future ELK will add Groups for Insteon. That will help but as several people pointed out the Insteon System should be able to handle multiple commands (one after another). The built in .5 second delay that the ELK has in sending the commands sounds adequete.

The noise issue has nothing to do with the ELK Panel. That is something that Insteon needs to consider addressing in my opinion. I agree that the more switches that are added should minimize the lost commands but how many will it take depends on the many variables of the house they are installed in. It would have helped if Insteon was a littlle more forthcoming about that.

In the end it should work great. It will just take some time (and a lot of money) to get there.

 

[Digger]

Per Smarthomes advice I replaced some of my CFL's with regular incandescents. I also gambled and bought some new CFL's at HD and replaced existing CFL's with newer ones.

I also moved some of the breakers on my breaker box so the lighting circuits are away from breakers with appliances etc.

I dont know which of the above or if it was all of the above helped but I seem to not have many lost commands at the moment. I am not saying its 100% but its a heck of a lot better.

 

[Mike]

That's great to hear. Nice to get issues like that resolved.

 

[mtwalsh367]

This past week I got around to adding a 2 second delay between my sequential lighting commands from my Elk M1G to confirm what several others suggested and that a longer delay would resolve the reliability issue. This took some jumping through hoops since the M1 doesn't have a "delay command" at this time so I triggered each light from a phantom output which I turned on for xx seconds...

So after setting up 3 different sets of lights with the delay added between lighting commands everything has been working flawlessly after pretty thorough testing all weekend. (A set of lights is what I refer to as multiple lights that I turn on/off within a rule i.e. outside and entry lights at sunset, various lights when I come home, most lights when I go to bed, etc.) I have 3 Insteon switched lights in one rule, 10 lights in another rule (both Insteon and X10), and 1 insteon Group along with several individual insteon lights in another rule.

I kept the delay at 2 seconds between light commands for now and I may try taking this down to 1 second later this week.

Ideally it would be great to have a global variable that could be set for an "Insteon Delay" and additionally having a delay command to be used within a rule could be useful for this and other things as well. Also, adding support for additional Insteon Groups would help to reduce the number of sequential lighting commands.

All in due time
Thanks again for all the help.

Matt

 

[Digger]

Since I minimized the noise I have noticed a significant increase in the reliability. The only time I really turn on multiple lights is when I have an alarm condition. The only time I turn off multiple lights is when I arm away. I havent done that to much the past few days so I dont know how that is working.

The new problem I have is that I can no longer enroll any new Insteon devices into my M1. I cant figure out why that is not working as the commands work for the Insteon devices already enrolled.

I guess I will have to dig into this another day.

 

[jhimmel]

Matt, this has nothing to do with Elk or M1, but I had to add one second delays between strings of Insteon commands in Homeseer before it became reliable. It is possible that .5 sec delays would have done it - never tried. However, I don't need 2 second delays.

While we are using different systems, it seems that we are running into the same limitation of the powerlinc controller and/or SDM.

Jim H.