Multiple devices together, communication issues

I have some 200 insteon devices throughout my property and until today have never had a communication issue. Are there any known issues with having multiple devices together in one wall box? I noticed with three together I can hear the slight buz of communication but in a remodel I installed four in place of standard switches and while I don't hear anything I get flickering LEDs on all four switches when one is used and sometimes one or another of the four will refuse to switch a light on or off. I know I had this issue with z-wave ( minus the flickering) before I switched to Insteon but I always had issues with z-wave not communicating with one device or another.

Any suggestions or ideas would be helpful.

Thanks

[jay (support)]

I have some 200 insteon devices throughout my property and until today have never had a communication issue. Are there any known issues with having multiple devices together in one wall box? I noticed with three together I can hear the slight buz of communication but in a remodel I installed four in place of standard switches and while I don't hear anything I get flickering LEDs on all four switches when one is used and sometimes one or another of the four will refuse to switch a light on or off. I know I had this issue with z-wave ( minus the flickering) before I switched to Insteon but I always had issues with z-wave not communicating with one device or another.

First off, WOW. I've never heard of anyone successfully using 200 Insteon devices on the same network, that in itself is quite amazing.

I don't know of any issue with that many switches in the same box. I have one 4-gang jbox that has 2 SwitchLincs and 2 KeypadLincs and have no issues with any of those. I have several 3-gang and a bunch of 2-gangs with Insteon and Z-Wave switches and none show those kinds of issues.

First off, WOW. I've never heard of anyone successfully using 200 Insteon devices on the same network, that in itself is quite amazing.

I don't know of any issue with that many switches in the same box. I have one 4-gang jbox that has 2 SwitchLincs and 2 KeypadLincs and have no issues with any of those. I have several 3-gang and a bunch of 2-gangs with Insteon and Z-Wave switches and none show those kinds of issues.

I wonder if it could be a ground issue or a poor connection. The slight buz in the three-way has always annoyed me but always worked perfectly. My four-way is also two swichlincs and two KeypadLincs.

By your comment, are there known issues with a large Insteon network?

I wonder if it could be a ground issue or a poor connection. The slight buz in the three-way has always annoyed me but always worked perfectly. My four-way is also two swichlincs and two KeypadLincs.

When I read your first post about this my immediate reaction was that it sounded like a flaky ground connection. I'd open up the box and check all the connections, to all four switches. In my new (3 years old) house, when I was installing my wall switches (mix of Insteon and z-Wave) I sometimes needed to re-connect the way the neutral wires ran to the original switches. They were typically just bundled together in the box (not connected to the switch).

A similar problem with the ground wires except those were connected to the switches. A mistake I made when installing the first few devices was to connect the ground to the ground pigtail from the old switch. The better way is to remove the old switch ground pigtail entirely and connect the ground wire from the new switch directly to the ground coming out of the wall.

[jay (support)]

By your comment, are there known issues with a large Insteon network?

Insteon (the low-level bits of the protocol) is not great at packet collision detection/recovery, so the more devices you have, particularly devices that broadcast out changes unsolicited (thermostats, motion sensors, etc), the more likely it is that you'll have dropped packets and failures. As the network gets bigger, the problem worsens. We've had multiple reports of issues with larger networks. I believe we had one user that tried using a large number of motion sensors (multiple per room) and they became quite unreliable as he added more. Add in cleanup messages (confirmations that group activations actually worked correctly) and you get a ton of potential collisions.

Now, these are older reports, so I suppose it's possible that newer devices with newer firmware are better at handling collisions. I've just not heard of many (any?) successful large Insteon installations (say, over ~150 devices).

Thanks Jeff. I already pulled the box apart and disconnected one device, a KeypadLinc, and the issue stopped. Today I will rewire the entire box deciding that I only need two devices in that location with the remodel. But I tend to agree with your suggestion and will use that information when I have time to pull apart the buzzing switch box later.

Jay, I read the white paper and did a lot of research on the different automation systems before deciding to switch from z-wave to Insteon as it was a pretty massive and expensive undertaking. I must have done a hundred searches on this forum as well as on the web. I never read any issues regarding degradation of communication with any system, quite the opposite in fact, they all stated more devices make the system better. I know that my current system is infinitely more reliable than my old with instant feedback from the most remote device. Indigo makes control of it all fantastic. My worst problem until this has been so many things happening that indigo's queue gets long and actions are delayed, as I also tie it into my DSC alarm system with some 45 inputs, many that are triggers. (Need a priority queue). Anyway thanks for that information. It will drive me even harder to limit traffic with better control from Indigo, perhaps by confirming a device is off before issuing a command to turn on in a trigger. Any other ways traffic can be made more efficient?

[jay (support)]

Processing of DSC events (and any other plugin/interfaces) shouldn't be effected by processing of Insteon events since those happen in their own thread. Even if the green bar on the home window fills up, that shouldn't (necessarily) cause the processing of actions (or incoming events not coming from Insteon) to slow down.

One good way to optimize is to use direct Insteon links between devices wherever possible (which reduces network traffic). Also, use PowerLinc groups/scenes as well (though that will cause cleanups and perhaps more collisions unless you disable the cleanups). For instance, if you have a trigger which turns on 5 Insteon devices individually, add those 5 to a PowerLinc group then tell the group to turn on. One command then goes to the group to turn on rather than 5 individual ON commands at the same time.

I only have a couple of instances where I turn on more than one device but that is a great idea if I can find a way to utilize it more. I know this was suggested but when you have multiple things happening due to one trigger it would be nice for each to have a condition option.

Thanks for the info.

i'm just catching up with this thread and wanted to provide some data.

first comment for Jay: i'm a long-time (~14 yrs) Indigo user and my current database has about 170 Insteon devices. i looked at the main "Devices" view, sorted by Address which groups all the Insteon stuff together, and counted. about 20-30 of those are battery-powered non-repeaters (motion sensors, water sensors) and probably a bit over half of the remainder are dual-band.

my Insteon experience is generally positive. like the OP, i generally have experienced good but definitely not perfect reliability of Insteon communications. i have come across a few random electrical devices that are known to cause disruptions of power line signals, and i try to keep them on filters to avoid problems. i also tend to be cautious of UPS devices. in the days since dual-band Insteon devices became available and found their way into my system, things seem to have gotten better. or perhaps it is due to gradual adoption of "i2CS engine" - in other words, packet checksums. i suspect there are additional devices that are noisy on the power line, but i simply don't notice them any more because dual-band or i2CS limits the impact.

I have 150 or so insteon devices and the only trouble ever is the keypadlincs - I have 10 or so and they always have communication problems. If I could find an 8 button z-wave switch I'd dump them immediately.


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The only insteon devices I have ever had issues with are keypadlincs. One that slightly buzzes, one that failed completely.