INSTEON Water Leak Sensor

[jay (support)]

Yes, Yours is one of the one I have used to manage Z-Wave devices. Do you have one tucked away to deal with Insteon Motion & Leak Sensors? I assume they have some .props stored that could be used to check days without a heartbeat, if nothing else...

Honestly? No. I've found over the years that the Insteon sensors in general are just not reliable enough for my purposes. Z-Wave sensors are much more reliable IMO.

Yes, Yours is one of the one I have used to manage Z-Wave devices. Do you have one tucked away to deal with Insteon Motion & Leak Sensors? I assume they have some .props stored that could be used to check days without a heartbeat, if nothing else...

Honestly? No. I've found over the years that the Insteon sensors in general are just not reliable enough for my purposes. Z-Wave sensors are much more reliable IMO.

Jay do you have a recommendation for a favourite Z-wave water sensor then?

[jay (support)]

I don't currently have any leak sensors. In my former house, I used an I/O Linc with a water sensor attached. It seemed more reliable than the Leak Sensor, but I never had a leak after installing it so honestly I don't know for sure.

Indigo supports the Fortrezz sensors though, which I would expect to be quite reliable (others who use them can chime in). That's what I'm planning on installing in my new house once I can turn my attention to my home again. The Fibaro sensor is also supported.

I believe Aeotec, Everspring, and Zipato also make water sensors. Not sure if they will work with Indigo out of the box, but they might not be too difficult to add. One of the hopes for the new subscription model is that it will allow us to add new device definitions much more quickly. Once someone gets a device sync attempt to us and depending on the complexity of the work, we hope to be able to turn those around much faster.

I don't currently have any leak sensors. In my former house, I used an I/O Linc with a water sensor attached. It seemed more reliable than the Leak Sensor, but I never had a leak after installing it so honestly I don't know for sure.

Indigo supports the Fortrezz sensors though, which I would expect to be quite reliable (others who use them can chime in). That's what I'm planning on installing in my new house once I can turn my attention to my home again. The Fibaro sensor is also supported.

I believe Aeotec, Everspring, and Zipato also make water sensors. Not sure if they will work with Indigo out of the box, but they might not be too difficult to add. One of the hopes for the new subscription model is that it will allow us to add new device definitions much more quickly. Once someone gets a device sync attempt to us and depending on the complexity of the work, we hope to be able to turn those around much faster.

Ok Thanks. I'l look into those

Finally got around to trying a leak sensor and am curious how it's supposed to behave.
When it senses moisture it turns on fine, but after I dry it off it never sends an off.
If within my alert trigger action I turn it off to reset, it will simply turn back on again,
regardless if it's completely dry.

Seems to take a good hour or so to get to a point where if I turn it off it stays off.

Is that normal operation?

Thanks,

Carl

. They have done a pretty good job for me over the past 5 years or so; after a pretty expensive ceiling repair after a drip pan drain in the attic plugged up, I put half a dozen in under the sinks, washing machine, hot water heaters as well as the AC drip pans. I'll admit I never tested the time to dry before reset... I have had 2 of them trip since I put them in; the one under the hot water heater that failed was flooded to the point that the electronics were trashed (the heater was in a pan with a 2" lip, but the drain on the pan was about half an inch above the bottom). The one that tripped under the sink when the RO system's push in connector developed a split in the plastic, I left on the counter and didn't reset for almost a full day before I got the replacement connector in place and put it back down Given Jay's recommendation, , I'll probably phase the Insteons out and replace with Z-waves rather than replace batteries when they die even though I've had pretty good luck with them..

Jay,
I don’t know what I did, but… I have 12 insteon leak sensors that have all stopped issuing a heartbeat. They all can issue a “sensor dry” and a “sensor wet”. To try to fix it, I took one sensor and performed a reset using a new battery. I then successfully did a “define and sync”. It has been over 26 hours and I still see no heartbeat message for that sensor in the indigo log.

I then deleted the leak sensor from indigo and reinstalled it and performed a “define and sync”. Again, after 28 hours there was no heartbeat.

Any help would be appreciated. John

I'm running Indigo 7 and am kind of a noob when it comes to expanding its functionality. But I'm very interested in adding several water leak sensors around the home. Can someone point me in a direction of a simple and most economical way of doing this? I'm open to any brand as long as they are reliable. Thank you.

I am having a similar problem to that of JohnS. I have 22 Insteon leak sensors: five rev 3E, one rev 41, eight rev 43, and seven rev 44. Recently it seems that none of the rev 44 sensors are issuing heartbeats—that is, my Indio triggers for heartbeats do not fire for the rev 44 units, which causes my heartbeat timers to expire, which causes a message to me.

I thought it a strange coincidence that this was happening all w/ rev 44 sensors, so asked Insteon. They surmised that it could be an issue w/ Indigo, as (they said) "Leak Sensor heartbeats were changed in how they are reported a few years ago, and indigo may not be using the correct method."

Jay/Matt: does this seem plausible—that Indigo might not be catching the rev 44 leak sensor heartbeats, because Insteon changed the mechanism unbeknownst to you? Or do you remember a heartbeat change "a few years ago"?

Thanks.
--greg

[jay (support)]

Jay/Matt: does this seem plausible—that Indigo might not be catching the rev 44 leak sensor heartbeats, because Insteon changed the mechanism unbeknownst to you? Or do you remember a heartbeat change "a few years ago"?

That's certainly possible - it used to happen quite frequently: they never actually communicate out when they change how something works, and we find out after the fact. It's happened less so recently primarily because they haven't been messing with the firmware as much. We'll add it to the list of things to investigate for a future release.

Thanks. INsteon support just now followed up w/ the message "We check with our resources and they mentioned that if issue is with all 7, then it ties in to how indigo is looking for the heartbeat. Issue should be addressed with Indigo, since the leak sensors have changed how heartbeats are posted from previous versions. " The grammatical issues w/ the message does not inspire confidence but...it will be interesting to hear whether you find anything.

[matt (support)]

I'm going to contact Smarthome to try to get the details of the firmware changes.

[matt (support)]

Hi Greg,

I talked to Smarthome and although there might have been a tweak in the heartbeat logic in firmware 44, the base technique that Indigo relies on should be unchanged. So I'm not sure why it isn't working.

Recently it seems that none of the rev 44 sensors are issuing heartbeats—that is, my Indio triggers for heartbeats do not fire for the rev 44 units, which causes my heartbeat timers to expire, which causes a message to me.

Was it working for a while with the rev 44 modules you had and then it stopped working, or has it never worked with the rev 44 modules?

Can you wake one of the modules not sending the heartbeat then re-sync it with Indigo and copy/paste the Event Log results into a reply for me? I'm curious if it shows that there is a group 4 link back to the PowerLinc (used for the heartbeat) or not.

Hi Matt.

Thanks for checking w/ Insteon, etc.

While I haven't tracked the rev 44 modules explicitly, I think it's safe to say they were all working (issuing heartbeats) previously, and then all seemed to fail together. In fact I have since increased the heartbeat timer to 78 hours, and they have not expired. I've been searching for a reason why I seem to have intermittent issues w/ heartbeats from Insteon leak sensors (~20) and Insteon open-close sensors (~20), and recently it turned out that all of the rev 44 leak sensors failed (time expired) at the same time, which seemed odd. All are reasonably close to the modem, and have good batteries.

I checked several of the rev 44 leak sensors and they seem to include group 4 links. Here's the log output you requested, for one of them:

PowerLinc Linking - entered discovery linking mode (240 seconds)
PowerLinc Linking - received module button pressed from 3F.C2.23
PowerLinc Linking - sending engine version request to 3F.C2.23
PowerLinc Linking - received engine version 02 from 3F.C2.23
PowerLinc Linking - sending id request for device information to 3F.C2.23
PowerLinc Linking - received id request response from 3F.C2.23
PowerLinc Linking - initializing remote device "BAR, Leak, Sink" (address 3F.C2.23, firmware version 44)
PowerLinc Linking - initialize complete
PowerLinc Linking - syncing remote device "BAR, Leak, Sink" (address 3F.C2.23, firmware version 44)
PowerLinc Linking - syncing all links
PowerLinc Linking - . . . read: INSTEON dev link to controller 44.84.CD, flags A2, group FE, data 03 00 00
PowerLinc Linking - . . . read: INSTEON dev link to responder 44.84.CD, flags E2, group FF, data 03 1F 00
PowerLinc Linking - . . . read: INSTEON dev link to responder 44.84.CD, flags E2, group 01, data 03 1F 00
PowerLinc Linking - . . . read: INSTEON dev link to responder 44.84.CD, flags E2, group 02, data 03 1F 00
PowerLinc Linking - . . . read: INSTEON dev link to responder 44.84.CD, flags E2, group 04, data 03 1F 00
PowerLinc Linking - . . found: PowerLinc responder for group 1
PowerLinc Linking - . . found: PowerLinc responder for group 2
PowerLinc Linking - . . found: PowerLinc responder for group 4
PowerLinc Linking - comparing local and remote links
PowerLinc Linking - compare complete
PowerLinc Linking - sync complete
PowerLinc Linking - device "BAR, Leak, Sink" links updated
PowerLinc Linking - syncing PowerLinc links (address 44.84.CD)
PowerLinc Linking - . . adding: INSTEON plc link to controller 3F.C2.23, flags 03, group 01, data 00 00 FF
PowerLinc Linking - . . adding: (not added -- probably already exists)
PowerLinc Linking - PowerLinc links updated
PowerLinc Linking - sync complete
PowerLinc Linking - exited linking mode

As I said, I've had intermittent heartbeat issues for virtually all of my battery-operated devices. I guess I can increase the timer value to try and weather more misses, but I wish I didn't have to do that. Could be an issue w/ the server—a new Mac Mini that is basically only running Indigo—but nothing I could detect. Perhaps it's server/Indigo load issue—does that seem plausible? I have almost 400 devices, 650 triggers, 200 schedule items, 230 action groups, and seven control pages.

Thanks again.
--greg

Installed 5 Insteon leak detectors a few days ago. Got everything up and running. With detection I get emails for each device as required and a signal is sent to my main water inlet valve to shut off when applicable such as a water heater leak or washing machine leak. I opted for a 12v normally open full bore 3/4" ball valve which is controlled by a plug in appliance module via a 110v/12vdc wall wart.

Everything works fine when tested however for some odd reason I get and email alert from only 1 of the sensors everyday at 4:52 PM. Checked the log in indigo and nothing occurred at 4:52. Any insight on what to look for or what to do to correct this issue? I did upgrade to 7.3 last night hoping it may correct the issue but need to wait until 4:52 tonight to see if it still occurs.

A tidbit of info on the leak sensors. Once it is set off you cannot turn them off in Indigo which is a good idea since it makes you go and check the sensor. Problem is the option to turn it off is available in indigo which does indicate it is off when used however nothing really happens at the sensor and it will continue to warn you. Bottom line is the sensor controls in indigo do not communicate with the sensor however the sensor does communicate with indigo. Only way to reset/turn off the sensor is to press the button on the sensor which by the way does also shows up in indigo correctly as switched to off.

Another thing I found out is you must not place the sensor on conducting material such as a galvanized water pan under the water heater as the contacts connect as if there was water present. My work around was to simply tape on a piece of paper to cover the contacts insulating them yet will easily absorb water and set it off when required.

Battery life of the leak sensor is indicated as being 10 years, not sure if the unit is smart enough to signal low battery or if they should be replaced after 7 years for peace of mind.