Should I use Insteon?

[Jay M]

I know I'm still in the Honeymoon stage, but so far everything is working well.

I have a 1400 sq foot house with 4 Access points. Everything seems to communicate very well. The ISY99 is easy to program and appears to be reliable.

Right now I think I have:
15 dimmers
1 relay
2 keypads
2 lamplincs
1 appliancelinc
1 RF remote
1 ISY99 IR.

The only issue I have is that one of the two keypads 7 buttons doesn't show up in the ISY. According to ISY If I install their Beta software it will show up. I'll be able to test that tonight. (I didn't understand Universal devices Explanation, but they do have a solution)

I was able to use my old Pronto to train my MX-500 IR remote some ir codes. That works very well also.

I am having my back yard landscaped. I will be adding 2 inline dimmers for flood lights and patio lights and 2 inline relays for the fountain and the low voltage lights.

I don't plan to use any X-10, but I do have a 20 year old Stanly tabletop controller that has served my well for that long. I may try to use it. It has one very nice feature- the ALL LIGHTS ON button is illuminated with a very soft red light. That makes it easy to find in the dark without lighting up the whole room.

I may try tabletop keypadlinc to see if I can get it dim enough to be on the nightstand.

~Jay

 

[cliffs]

I have about 10 Insteon switches I use in the X10 mode. They all had to have the microswitches
replaced(which I did) and they have worked fine ever since. I don't think I would ever buy
any more Insteon products for 2 reasons, poor warranty service and the Insteon part
really is not dependable. They have some sort of firmware problem that drops the linking
randomly and they are very difficult to program so they work. The X10 part works fine.
I hope the Icon switches never fail as no one makes a quiet relay switch.

As I read the boards the Zwave and UPB have the same problems, thats why I stayed with the X10
ones.

I bought a device called XTB-IIR X10 transmit booster(Google XTB-IIR and you will get the website).
Since I installed this device I have not had any problems with the X10 devices. I have 30+ devices
being controlled.

A hint as to products that cause real problems with X10. Cheap computer switching power supplies
and cheap UPS's. The reason they are cheap is the manufacurers leave out the filtering. All the good
quality ones will not interfere with X10 signals.

Cliff s

 

[MikeB]

The only issue I have is that one of the two keypads 7 buttons doesn't show up in the ISY. According to ISY If I install their Beta software it will show up. I'll be able to test that tonight. (I didn't understand Universal devices Explanation, but they do have a solution)

The latest 'production' ISY firmware is definitely lacking some key features and support for the latest devices. Definitely update to the latest beta firmware.

 

[Jay M]

A week has passed and so far I am VERY happy with Insteon. I'm less happy with the ISY. The ISY does offer a very elegant and powerful programming solution, but it's just too buggy and sluggish to enjoy using. Last night I couldn't even log into it to modify a program. But the programs still do work. My fear is that I will need to do a hard reset, and I may have made some changes that were not backed up.

~Jay

 

[MikeB]

A week has passed and so far I am VERY happy with Insteon. I'm less happy with the ISY. The ISY does offer a very elegant and powerful programming solution, but it's just too buggy and sluggish to enjoy using. Last night I couldn't even log into it to modify a program. But the programs still do work. My fear is that I will need to do a hard reset, and I may have made some changes that were not backed up.

~Jay

Hey Jay -

I saw your post on UDI's forum as well, so I'll reply both here and there. I think once you've been around the ISY for a while you'll have a different opinion of it. Please keep in mind that the latest ISY firmware is beta, so it is bound to have a few bugs. However, I do personally think it's actually very stable for what it is.

That being said, I think one of the ISY Administrative Console's soft spots is that it runs as a Java browser applet. Most of the Administrative Console problems I've seen are Java related. If you haven't, please try closing all your browsers, clearing your Java cache (through your Windows Control Panel), and then trying again. I have a feeling that will clear up your issue.

If that doesn't work, you might want to try rebooting your ISY. If it's an ISY-99, simply unplug your PLM for 30 seconds or so then plug it back in. I doubt you'd have to factory reset anything.

Also, please make sure you're running the latest Java from www.java.com.

Good luck, and please let me know how you make out.

 

[sloop]

A week has passed and so far I am VERY happy with Insteon. I'm less happy with the ISY. The ISY does offer a very elegant and powerful programming solution, but it's just too buggy and sluggish to enjoy using. Last night I couldn't even log into it to modify a program. But the programs still do work. My fear is that I will need to do a hard reset, and I may have made some changes that were not backed up.

~Jay

what are the 'bugs'?

 

[Jay M]

I guess it depends on how you define the word "bug". To be fair I won't use the word bug. I'll tell you what's wrong.

To interact with the ISY you need to use a web browser. When I go to log on sometimes it will take a few tries to get in. Sometimes it will time boot me off while I'm working on it.

But as far as I can tell the programs all run as they should.

~Jay

 

[echostats]

I guess it depends on how you define the word "bug". To be fair I won't use the word bug. I'll tell you what's wrong.

To interact with the ISY you need to use a web browser. When I go to log on sometimes it will take a few tries to get in. Sometimes it will time boot me off while I'm working on it.

But as far as I can tell the programs all run as they should.

~Jay

Everything still working well? I am in the "research" stages of my first install. I have not yet decided whether I want to go with Insteon or look around a little more.

 

[Jay M]

It 's been a few months so I thought I'd give an update on how life with Insteon and the ISY has been.

In a word--Outstanding!

It's only been a few months, so I won't comment on build quality, but nothing has failed yet.

I am not an automation professional, or even a hobbiest, I really just want the benefits the HA offers at a price I can justify. Learning the in and outs of Insteon and the ISY took a bit of time, but for the most part I don't think about it. I just push buttons and things happen.

Most of the lights are controlled by Insteon, I'll give you a list:

-Most fixed lights
-front and back yard low voltage
-fountain in back yard

Some things that I do are:

An all lights off button for bedtime- the way it works is, there is a keypad on the wall just outside my bedroom. I push the button and all the lights in the house (except for the bedroom), the fountain, and the low voltage in the back yard turn off as the hallway light outside the bedroom door turns on.

The hallway light which spills into the bedroom is on a two minute timer to give me time to safely get into bed. If I need to use any lights in the bedroom before I actually get into bed, I use "all lights off" on an X10 keypad to turn off the bedroom and hall if it's not already off.

The front yard and back yard low voltage lights are on separate timers. I keep the front on 'til 2am or so, the back goes off earlier.

There is also a timer set to turn the living room lights to what I call "mood" which is basically the look I want most of the time in that room. It may be a bit wasteful, but I don't like the idea of my house being dark when I'm not there.

I have a keypad on the back door that has buttons to control the fountain, low voltage, and other lights in the back yard. I also programmed the wireless controller, but never use it.

The ISY lives in the living room hidden in the entertainment center. I have a Xantach flasher on it's IR sensor (ISY should really have an 1/8" it port), to control the lights with my trusty, and somewhat crusty, old MX-500 remote. I use that to trigger a few different scenes such-as: Mood, movie, Credits (where the lights come on just a bit as the credits are rolling at the end of a movie), desert (puts a dim light over the sofa and turns on a dim light in the kitchen so you can scoop and eat your ice cream).

In the three or four months I've had the system, I only know of one miss-fire. One of the lights didn't turn off when i pressed the "Movie" button.

The price, and options for Insteon were why I went with it. Tomorrow I will order custom etched buttons for the keypads, and next month I will order the new smart home motion sensors for the back yard.

The ISY is a great box, and more importantly they have great people there to help. They graciously and quickly answer all of my amateurish noobie questions here and on their forum. Early on I had a few problem logging into the ISY, but that problem went away. I'll assume it had to do with my old PC. I haven't had to reboot the ISY. I would almost trust it to run my sprinklers! But a simple timer does the job just fine.

~Jay