INSTEON Home Control Thoughts

Here is the current thinking about INSTEON after about a year of use. A significant amount of money has been invested and the investment will continue. The system is not perfect but its not bad.

• They operate very fast
• They are very flexible
• There has been one signal strength problem. A SwitchLinc Relay installed on a bathroom fan does not always hear the Indigo signals. It is on the same circuit as a dehumidifier and it may be losing the signal when the dehumidifier is operating.
• Bridging the 220VAC legs with RF bridges is a good idea. No special 220VAC work is required.
• The INSTEON specification includes radio and power line transmission but very few modules actually have both.
• The EZSrve controller from simplehomenet.com was tried but it was replaced it with Indigo from Perceptive Automation. The EZSrve was pretty good but since it does not have any logging capabilities it was difficult to troubleshoot.
• Only relay modules will be bought in the future because there is no point in getting dimmers for CFLs and there are some theories that even a fully-on triac adds power consumption to the CFL power supply with the slightly distorted AC wave form.
• Disclaimer: This house has an X10 repeater on the 220 in addition to the INSTEON wireless bridge devices. That may impact experiences positive or negative.
• Only Decora style wall devices have been purchased so there is no experience with non Decoras.
• X10 wireless controllers are used to operate INSTEON by translating in the Indigo software. It works very good.
• Configuration can be complex if more than one to one on/off is desired. Each device, either controller or responder has to be configured with the INSTEON address of the other device either controller or responder. This is called a link. If there are lots of controllers with status LEDs, there are a lot of links. Indigo does a good job of handing this.
• It would be nice if the INSTEON modules all included RF in a addition to power line control because there will always be troubles with the power line signals.
• They say CFL lights interfere with the X10 and Insteon signals but that has been a problem here.