Insteon Sprinkler Control Available

[Paul_PDX]

Simplehomenet has started turning on their website for info and orders for their 8/7 zone Insteon sprinkler controller. So far you can order the EzRain but not any of the other devices mentioned on the site. I've ordered one to see how it works with power-home as a supplement for my current 24 zone system.

It can be programmed under the control of a home automation system or it can have simple timer programs downloaded to it to run four different programs autonomously. Documentation looks pretty good (even for Insteon programming) and there is a standalone program for setting it up.

Their website is at:
www.simplehomenet.com

It is nice to see the first Insteon third party hardware device.

 

[mustangcoupe]

WOW, I cant wait until they are fully up and running, Id like to see pricing and what else they have hidden away

 

[alarmguy]

Simplehomenet.com has pricing on their web page in the e-store section. And it looks like the sprinkler controller is shipping $119

 

[mustangcoupe]

I coundnt see hoe to get into their cart when I posted that... then I realized I was just in their product listing..... Some intresting stuff there cant wait untill others jump into the insteon game and we get more products

 

[az1324]

So you have to have a PLC to program it or you can hook it up directly to a PC?

No specs on what kind of current each channel supports. If you connect the two 24 AC ports together would it function like a contact closure?

 

[Paul_PDX]

You can purchase from e-store menu and the checkout links -- the buy button on the Products menu page seems not to be hooked up. When I talked to them they said more of the pages should be live by this week (the forum is there today and wasn;t yet on friday).

 

[Madcodger]

This sounds great, WHEN SH gets a stable Insteon platform / SDM / hardware developed. I have a 42 zone sprinkler system (running off 3 Rainbird controllers). Given the fact that I just obtained yet another phantom link in my Insteon system last night, and that I've had to replace about 17 of 62 devices, I don't think I'm ready to trust anything more to that technology until SH gets some kinks worked out.

 

[SmartLabsMike]

Here is the link from Smarthome.
http://www.smarthome.com/31270.HTML

 

[Smarty]

Ditto Madcodger....DITTO!!!!!!!

 

[Digger]

I have had 3 out of 8 installed switches die. I have 9 more I never installed because I am waiting to see if SH can get the bugs out. I have other stuff I never installed (appliance lincs, a USB controller I could never get to communicate etc).

The last switch died a few weeks ago when I could not shut the switch off locally or remotely. I tried a total reset, shutting off power, everything I could think of at the time and it just would not shut off. I even left it 3 days running and tried about 10 times a day to shut if off and it would not work. I replaced it and the new switch is fine. One of these days I will have to call SH and send a ton of stuff back. Its a pain in the butt to have to rip things out and replace them when they die all of a sudden so I dont want to install anymore new switches.

Soooooooooooo what would happen with a sprinkler getting stuck on? (FLOOD)

When the kinks are out of the hardware and firmware this could be great. But I have been waiting 9 months now (others longer) and I dont see the light at the end of the tunnel yet. I also dont hear anything encouraging from SH saying that they are actually fixing the problems(well I guess thats unfair they did do total recalls of some products this year). I think this is a case of more hurry less speed. The product may have not been ready yet and it was released to the consuumer as beta testers.

Concept gets an "A". Implementation gets a "D"

 

[Madcodger]

Concept gets an "A". Implementation gets a "D"

This may be hijacking a thread (sorry) but the message is very important...

SmartLabsMike - Please take the quote referenced here back to your teams.
While it's really hard for a team of developers and marketers to hear, it's the best summary of Insteon I've seen to date. Also, it comes from people who really, really WANT SH and Insteon to be successful.

There is so much promise to this technology that I truly believe it could take over the market if the kinks were worked out. But if these quality issues remain, people are just going to get fed up.

Please ask your management to hire some quality experts and listen to them, SOON. I should not be replacing yet another switch because the rocker has failed after only 4 - 6 months of residential service. That's just poor, poor QC and/or design and/or manufacturing, and it's really hurting SH and Insteon.

You folks are better than this!

BTW, if I knew someone else in your org to send this to, I'd be happy to do so. Surely your CEO needs to know that he has an audience of potentially loyal, enthusiastic customers, willing to pay a reasonable amount for quality.

 

[crisx]

Here is the link from Smarthome.
http://www.smarthome.com/31270.HTML

Has anybody received one of these yet? Any reviews?

Cris

 

[Digger]

This may be hijacking a thread (sorry) but the message is very important...

MacDouger did you get an email from Smarthome asking you to refrain from negative comments or was it just me?

 

[Paul_PDX]

Here is the link from Smarthome.
http://www.smarthome.com/31270.HTML

Has anybody received one of these yet? Any reviews?

Cris

I received my EzRain V1 from Simplehomenet last week - Using their provided (by download) software a PLC and a SDM it seems easy to set up up to four programs containing up to eight zones per program. You can also set up default on times for manual control of the zone. These run times are all stored in the EzRain. Zone 8 can also be set up as a master pump zone but I didn't try that (or figure out how yet).

Additionally using your PLC and the SDM the software allows you to store program times in the PLC to fire off either programs or individual zone. Programmed times can also include the days of the week to be fired off. These times are stored in the PLC and do not require a PC to be running for the schedule to run.

The only negative I saw with their software is that it does not seem tp retry on failed communications -- I originally had both my PLC and the EzRain plugged into a power strip that seemed to suck the life out of the Insteon signal. Any missed communications their setup program seemed to die. Once I hooked it up in my real enviroment that problem seemed to be gone.

I also briefly tried using power-home to fire off individual zones and that seemed to work fine but I had not figured out all of the power-home commands to read back status from it. It would appear that combinations of power-home and the stored timers would work (since it just uses TimerCoreApp12.slb).

I am hoping next weekend to set it up to run a few of my spreinkler zones to see how well it actually functions for a week (watch it decide to rain). I also have a new version of power-home to deploy so once I see how it is going I will post some more.

 

[crisx]

Thanks,

I look forward to the 'field test' results.