Insteon and HAL 2000

[kurelgyer]

Something is horribly off in this industry. It seems companies that should be co-dependent do not communicate. It's ridiculous.

I've been a Smarthome and Automated Living (Hal 2000, purchased from Smarthome) customer for over 10 years. I started with X-10 and Hal Deluxe, and graduated to Insteon and Hal 2000. Growing my investment along the way. Point is, I've been at it for awhile.

But the more I invest, the less things work together...

For years now, we've been waiting for full Insteon support in Hal 2000. I'll readily state that Hal's speed of development is so painstakingly slow, I'm surprised they are still in business. "It's on our list" has been the answer to everything for years (WGL 800, Insteon, external phone modem support, voice rec based L&H who went out of business over 7 years ago, etc.).

I was just doing what used to be a daily review of AL and Smarthome forums. I now only do this once a quarter, because nothing of consequence has advanced in years. I've had a house full of Insteon gear since it debuted. I've been waiting for Hal to fully support it for 5 years - "Its coming soon"... Some knowledgeable Halions have stated that Smarthome won't work with Hal?!?! From one of many similar forum posts at AL regarding Insteon Support:

"I know. It is REALLY close and they are working on it every day. The delays are purely to do with a lack of support from Smarthome and SimpleHomeNet development team. Please understand, and I can not make this any more clear... THE DELAY HAS NOTING TO DO WITH AUTOMATED LIVING! They are working flat out on this update".

This has been the answer for over a year and a half.

I, as a customer who has invested a lot of money in these companies, think this is just unacceptable. I would like it publicly posted, just what is going on behind the scenes. Obviously not going to happen. This silliness has killed my interest. What I used to proudly show off 8 years ago is now a broken, uncoordinated mess.

There are too many issues from both companies to detail in this post. It's not my intent to take sides. I just want my system to work. I just want my system to work. I just want my system to work.

I noticed several years ago that Smarthome stopped selling AL products. Why? Hard feelings over something? Not speaking?

I want Insteon. I want Hal2000. I want them to WORK together. Anybody listening? Maybe Dada could drop Shriver a friendly call for the sake of the customers? Perusing the CT forums here may hold the answer... I may have taken the wrong road many years ago. 'Seer, Z-Wave and UPB seem to be holding steady - and advancing.

Please don't point out that Hal can turn an Insteon light on. I'm talking about full support.

The fun is gone. I am slowly reverting back to a dumb, but less stressful house, until this gets sorted out.

 

[BLH]

Things have changed at Smarthome/Smartlabs.
Even for us members of the Developers Group.
I bought into the group when it was early in the Insteon days and it was being sold for developers and hardware folks just interested in knowing more.
Now the support for us. Who are more like hobbyists is gone. No answers from either Smarthome or Smartlabs.
Though we can pay for support.
http://www.smarthome.com/dev-support.html

It is almost like they don't want to share anything related to Insteon.

 

[Digger]

That is one of the problems of Insteon. SH is trying to keep it all to themselves. They do not let other mfgs make their products for the most part. One reason is other mfgs have more experience in quality and could also make it cheaper putting SH out of the picture.

Look at UPB. PCS owns the protocol and lets other mfg make teh products as well. All other mfg make a cheaper (yet decent quality) version. PCS though can stay in business since they know how to make a quality product where SH can not if their lives depended on it.

I still think that their lack of support and to continue to take money for the developers program and also sell products with known defects is bad business.


Check out the Better Business Bureau "F" rating of Smarthome.com Smarthome Rated F


Here is an excerpt


Company Rating F
Our opinion of what this rating means:
We strongly question the company’s reliability for reasons such as that they have failed to respond to complaints, their advertising is grossly misleading, they are not in compliance with the law’s licensing or registration requirements, their complaints contain especially serious allegations, or the company’s industry is known for its fraudulent business practices.

 

[Teken]

Digger,

Wow I was not aware they had such a bad rating . . .

 

[electron]

I am surprised HAL is still alive and kicking as well. As for INSTEON, I would take a look at the ISY-99 controllers, which are easy to interface, and will significantly improve your INSTEON setup.

 

[jhdale]

I've heard that support on the developers' forums has dried up... but I have to wonder what kind of support they are waiting on. 95% of the info is available without the SDK. Most of the rest you could find out in a couple hours if you have HL2 and a second PLM to put into monitor mode. With a few holes like the IRLinc which HL2 doesn't support properly anyway. Unless the holdup is getting approval for their product, it sounds like an excuse to me. Not to say that Smarthome couldn't make it easier for them (they probably could), but they should be able to finish everything without that help.

 

[electron]

Have the HAL guys post their question here, we have plenty of INSTEON devs on this board.

 

[tfitzpatri8]

Digger, Wow I was not aware they had such a bad rating . . .

To get a better picture, you have to go to the BBB site. If you go to the LA branch of the better business bureau site, and search for smarthome.com (Dan, can you post a direct link to the company profile page?) you can pull up the complete history.

Looks like that rating is based on 2 issues over the last 36 months that the BBB didn't hear back on yet, IMHO not exactly a pattern of behavior for a nationally recognized company that's been in business for 18 years.

Without knowing the background on those two, it's tough to judge the merits. After all, who do you go to if you disagree with the BBB?

 

[Digger]

Here are your stats Tom from the same link I provided. It is more than 2 unanswered claims its also 2 they refused to make any sort of adjustment to among other issues.

I agree for 10 more after people were so frustrated that they had to contact the BBB Smarthome did the right thing and agreed to the the terms of the contract (BBB point may be why did the people have to goso far to get SH to follow the contract (probably means warranty).

5 others also got a full refund after having to go to the BBB since SH would not do it without the BB forcing them to.


No. of Cmpl Type of Response
5 Making a full refund, as the consumer requested
1 Making a partial refund
10 Agreeing to perform according to their contract
0 Refusing to make an adjustment
2 Refuse to adjust, relying on terms of agreement
2 Unanswered
0 Unassigned
20 Total

Not really the greatest track record for a supposedly Customer Service friendly company but I admit there may be worse.

 

[electron]

Let's keep this thread on topic please. The main issue here seems to be that there might be a communications issue between SmartHome and Developers. The one thing that confuses me is that other people have successfully implemented INSTEON support in their apps/hardware, so obviously they are talking to some people out there. If they really aren't responding, then have the dev guys post in this thread, and I'll bug my SH contact about getting a response.

 

[Digger]

I apologize but my point was that you pay to join the developers group (and still can) yet they no longer offer any support there. They should at the very LEAST stop allowing members to join for a fee. If it was free then nobody can argue. When you join you agree to a contract and while I dont have a copy handy it does not seem that Smarthome lives up to their end anymore.

 

[kurelgyer]

Thanks Dan. My ultimate intent isn't to start a bash thread against either company. I, personally, have experienced good service from both companies when I've requested it.

 

[CodeMonkey2k5]

Hey folks, I was the one quoted in the first post of this thread. I am also directly testing the new version of HAL. I completely stand behind my statement.
You can get lots of info from Smarthome as someone mentioned. But most of it is wrong. It seems that Smarthome likes to make rules, then break them. The result is that every time you get one device to work, you break another. Insert Simple Home Net devices in to the mix and it gets even worse. As it stands right now I would say AL is at %98 with insteon support. And we are working daily to get to 100%. But thats not the whole story. This is not going to be just an insteon update. There are tons of addition improvments that are HUGE! I am not allowed to go in to details but I think that everyone will be very impressed.

I also saw that someone suggested looking at the ISY-99. I do not have the link but I found it funny that one of the problems that we are working on now is also in their forum. In fact they posted a reward for anyone who could figure out a solution.

I understand the frustration as it has been a very long time. I know that if I wasnt in the position that I am, I would be right there with you feeling like I was rowing a sinking boat. But as it is I see what is going on behind the sceens and things are looking really good. It kills me that I can not say more. But for now that is going to have to be enough.

CM

 

[damage]

w800 support is symbolic of how slow moving AL is. that's got to be just a few hours of work, yet it never gets done. compare what the dev team @ AL has done in the past year to what John Hughes has done w/ elve http://codecoretechnologies.com

 

[JimMcGowanInlet]

Per the board Rules: I am NOT an employee of AL but I do work closely with AL and have heavy interface with the Insteon project at AL.....

As CodeMonkey2k5 said Insteon is 98% complete. There is one more bug to work out of the beta and then Insteon is done and will be part of the next offical release.

As for the W800, all I can say is, its X10, is anyone developing X10 inferfaces anymore? Is anyone buying X10 interfaces? I looked at the spec and it says its an X10 serial device so if its X10 compliant it should act just like a CM11a. If the W800 doesn't work as a CM11a then, as long as the W800's protocol follows the X10 standard, if anyone can lend me one to test with I'll get it working.

Here is what I can do, If anyone has an enhancment/need, goto the AL Web board and and post their request in the General Questions and Discussions forum. Forget asking for Hardware like new modems, thats not in my ability. But some things I can make happen if you ask. I'll review the posts and post back if I can make it happen.

For you folks offering Insteon support, I do have some questions if you know the answers. We have already implemented a solution for many of these but if you have a solution it may be better/faster then what we have done.

1. There are no docs for the PLC protocol. Smartlabs does not support the PLC with developers, will not answer questions on the PLC. The ActiveX control (SDM3) they want developers to use is bug ridden, crashes constantly, is discontinued and unsupported. Has anyone reverse engineered and documented the PLC serial protocol?

2. Several devices return their engine revision as i2 but do not respond to all the i2 commands. Is there a list of the non complient i2 devices and the commands they do not support? SmartLabs does not have a doc of their non compliant i2 devices.

3. Several devices have non compliant base memory addresses, Since there is no SDK call to discover the base memory size, is there a doc detailing which of the 3 different base addresses each Insteon device has. Most have 0F. We found and tested a few with 3F but there are some 1F devices out there, undocumented and untested. I am aware of the 1,2,3 peek poke method to ID the devices memory size but it takes 4+ seconds just to send that sequence. A list would be VERY helpfull. If no one has a list then the model number of any device with a 1F memory size would be helpful for testing.

4. The SDK docs do not define what the Data1, Data2 & Data3 fields of an Event 0x57 are. There is a paragraph about what the bytes usually contain but many of the devices are NON COMPLIANT and the values returned are not defined in any manual.

5. What is a true recommended inter-command delay. Smartlabs says allow 1 second between commands which is ridiculous. We have pushed it as fast as 400ms before the PLM locked up. What are you folks using for a inter-command delay?

6. Since the protocol does not have a packet length field or a EOT character, We had to tabulate every commands length manually. Anyone have a better solution?

7. After introducing RF repeaters into a beta environment we found that the PLM does not filter duplicate (repeated) packets. The PLM simply echoes everything it receives and relies on the developer to filter dups. BUT the protocol does not have a packet ID field so even with a different HOP count is difficult if not impossible to properly filter dupes since many legitimate packets can be identical to the previous packet. What method do you recommend to drop true duplicate packets and not just duplicate responses.

8. When a the PLM receives a 0x57 link event from a keypad link the event does not contain the button number linked. How do you identify what button the user linked?

9. If you turn on a Keypadlinc load to 5% the Event 0x50 returned from the keypadlinc is IDENTICAL to the 0x50 event for pressing button #5. In fact any Dim level below 9% sends the identical 0x50 event to a button press 1-8. SmartLabs answer is don’t do that. Anyone have a better answer?

10. When a Simplehomenet relay changes state the 0x50 event contains a bit mask of all the relays current states. There is no information defining which relay changed state so unless you already know the previous state of all relays you’re out of luck. This is not true of the Sensor portion of the simplehomenet devices. The sensors 0x50 events contain the unique sensor number. Has anyone identified a way to program the simplehomenet devices send the relay that changed state vs sending a bit mask?