Insteon Motion Sensors Enhanced

[Quixote_1]

Today the manual was updated for the Insteon motion sensors to reflect a change that the developers have made in the product. They will now be capable of sending a unique (group) signal to indicate that the battery is low as well as signals for dawn and dusk events after 3.5 minutes of light or dark, respectively.
I'm pretty happy about their effort to incorporate these ideas that were brought forth by their forum community, and I hope that they continue with this style of management in the future. They definitely have my support once these are released.
Just thought you guys would like to hear about the changes.

 

[kwilcox]

Very nice. First device ever to come along that might be a replacement candidate for my Hawkeye/W800RF32 sensor network. I'd be interested to see if a slew (20 or more) of these devices will degrade Insteon network performance or not. I'm also interested in response time (sensor trigger to lights on) as well as sensitivity.

 

[upstatemike]

Very nice. First device ever to come along that might be a replacement candidate for my Hawkeye/W800RF32 sensor network. I'd be interested to see if a slew (20 or more) of these devices will degrade Insteon network performance or not. I'm also interested in response time (sensor trigger to lights on) as well as sensitivity.

I would not expect any degradation unless you had a bunch firing at exactly the same time to cause a major collision situation. Much less likely with Insteon than with X-10. Response should be the same as the response on the Insteon RF controller which is fast enough that I can't detect any delay. (And I am very sensitive to latency of any sort) I expect this will be noticably faster than an Elk motion sensor triggering a light through a link through an ISY, but we won't know for sure till we can actually try one out.

 

[kwilcox]

My switches are all UPB and I would deploy Insteon for the sensors only fttb. I bridge with HCA. Currently I'm experiencing a .5-1 second delay but this is with HCA receiving sensor information directly OTA. Most of the delay is therefore UPB related. I'm really looking for more reliable/sensitive sensors than the Hawkeyes and I'm hoping that Insteon network performance won't have any more latency than my current OTA solution. Probably worth a test at least especially since I'm thinking of adding additional Insteon devices anyway and I'm already using a 2414U for X10 traffic.

Of course there's a few good articles on improving Hawkeye sensitivity too...

 

[upstatemike]

My switches are all UPB and I would deploy Insteon for the sensors only fttb. I bridge with HCA. Currently I'm experiencing a .5-1 second delay but this is with HCA receiving sensor information directly OTA. Most of the delay is therefore UPB related. I'm really looking for more reliable/sensitive sensors than the Hawkeyes and I'm hoping that Insteon network performance won't have any more latency than my current OTA solution. Probably worth a test at least especially since I'm thinking of adding additional Insteon devices anyway and I'm already using a 2414U for X10 traffic.

Of course there's a few good articles on improving Hawkeye sensitivity too...

If you mean you plan to go Insteon RF -> Insteon PLC -> HCA -> UPB then I would expect you will have a latency issue. Unless there is a way for HCA to receive Insteon RF directly I don't see where this sensor is going to help you.

 

[kwilcox]

Yeah, that's the worry for sure.