Anyone use Insteon?

[Aaron Maue]

I know it's not controllable via S3, but I'm considering buying some Insteon hardware for inside my house for the Christmas season.

In years' past, we've used X10 hardware on all our indoor decorations (over a dozen full-size trees, among other things). I have an RF remote that I've used to turn everything off an on. It works sporadically, at best. I've installed the phase bridge and that hasn't helped. I have a fairly large home, so lots of linear feet of wiring to cover with the signal, which I'm sure is much of my problem.

I'm getting ready to abandon X10 and have been reading a bit on Insteon as an alternative technology. I was wondering if anyone here has tried it. If so, what was your experience with it? Was it reliable? Or did it behave erratically? I don't want to plunk down a bunch of money for an X10 replacement only to have the same problems again.

[colonel]

I've used Houselinc for about 3 years and it is about 95% reliable with only power failures causing problems. I run two pet feeders and lamplincs and dimmers. It looses signal around 40' of wire in my house and they sell boosters and noise filters. I also have Smartlinc in another home and it is about the same except I can use iphome or web instead of RDP to a computer. You can get the dual band Houselinc and do insteon and x10 with it.

[zman]

I use it. It is not inexpensive, but once you dial it in, it works great. You will need a filter and boosters for both phases on your panel. I use it for external switches. I have my animation driven from LOR, but there is a significant amount of switched plugs outside that drive static items. I use the timer software to program what time the plugs turn on in the evening and off after the show.

Good company and good with customer service.

[Tim Fischer]

If insteon has a command-line utility, it's somewhat controllable via S3. I no longer use the built-in X-10 functionality that LOR provides as it doesn't work with current X-10 hardware. Instead, I use S3's "windows command" functionality to send command-lines to the X10 software, which works great. In practice, all I need it to do is turn stuff on at the beginning and end of the evening, but it would work OK if you had stuff you needed to turn on (e.g. an inflatable motor) for only a single sequence.

[Richard Hamilton]

I am a big user of Insteon products that I buy from SmartHome.com. I switched form X10 NOT because of any reliability issues, but because of speed and other featuress I wanted. I am also in a big house, yet I was able to get X10 to work well. Insteon is very reliable and fast. I also use the ISY-99 controller. It is very powerful, but the user interface sucks in my opinion.

[Scott T]

I have used the older x-10 product for at least 10 years. The first 3 years in was in a medium size house (1800 sq ft) with aluminum wiring. Ugh. A lot of gremlins, But I was able to work them all out. Then moved to a larger house (3200 sq ft) and installed a bridge repeater in the circuit box and have had few issues with the gremlins.

From time to time I might have an issue and always locate the problem. Normally its a cheap power transformer from a kids toy or a battery charger.

I have outdoor 12 volt landscape lighting and I those plunged in to a x-10 receptacle. I always turn it off before running a major macro because these large power supplies sometime put noise on the line.

Over all I have successful ran 14 x-10 device with very little problems. Like maybe 1 issue a year. You can too if find all the gremlins first.

Good luck

[LORisAwesome]

I also use Insteon.

Somone posted awhile back that he was sending an X-10 command to his ISY-99, which would respond and turn on Insteon devices. Sorry don't remember the thread or the specifics. Maybe he will see this and fill in the blanks.

Anyway, if you can get the X-10 hardware the LOR supports, it might be possible to control Insteon with LOR.

Jerry

[LORisAwesome]

Found the thread concerning X-10 and Insteon.

http://forums.lightorama.com/index.php?/topic/22127-controlling-lights-not-on-lor-controller/page__hl__insteon#entry212159

[Steven]

Found the thread concerning X-10 and Insteon.

http://forums.lighto...eon#entry212159

Yes, that was me. I switched most of my stuff to Insteon over the past few years because X10 was getting unreliable due to all the devices putting noise on the power line.

Since LOR only supports X10, and I was still having trouble getting the signal from the CM11A to the ISY-99i, I bought one of these, and it works great!

The latest Insteon product I purchased is this Insteon LED bulb. I would recommend this product. I have them in 2 rooms, where they are controlled by the ISY-99i (Insteon timer and macro controller) to make the house looked lived-in when we get home after dark. The bulb is as bright as a 60W incandescent, and should last a lot longer than the CFL bulbs I was using before.

[PaulXmas]

I use x10 to turn on and off my blow ups and radio but the hardware that sent the commands stopped working and they no longer make them.

There is a device that connects to your computer and I used that last year for the radio and a light over Santa.

[Aaron Maue]

Thanks for the input, all. Based on the feedback, I'm gonna buy a small batch of Insteon stuff to do some experimenting.

Edited October 11, 2012 by Aaron Maue

[Richard Hamilton]

Hey Aaron, since we have had a lot of private exchanges of emails and equipment this year, feel free to give me a phone call about any of this stuff. I have a lot of experience with X10 and Insteon from both an engineering and end-use perspective.