2413U lasted ~4 years, is that a record?

Posted on
Fri Oct 06, 2017 6:41 am
roussell offline
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2413U lasted ~4 years, is that a record?

So two days ago I started having strange comm issues on an otherwise stable Indigo/Insteon installation. I did all the usual resets and reboots and everything went back to normal. Well until noon yesterday. Indigo reported a possible power failure, but there wasn't one. Then I started getting these errors sporadicly:

Code: Select all
2017-10-05 12:23:46.225   Error   unknown command bytes received 00 00 (ignoring)
2017-10-05 12:23:48.305   Error   unknown command bytes received 00 80 (ignoring)
2017-10-05 12:23:48.958   Error   unknown command bytes received 00 00 (ignoring)


The errors got worse as the day went on, and Indigo became unresponsive, with all sorts of strange network timeouts for Fingscan, Weather, and Sonos plugins. Indigo touch clients would not connect, nor would DomoPad. When I got home, my first thought wasn't the PLM, mostly due to the network errors. I checked the OS install, scanning the drive for errors and then running a full virus scan. Both came back clean. Network "things" outside of Indigo on the server behaved normally, Indigo had just taken a s@%t so it seemed. I thought perhaps something had happened to the Indigo Install, or the DB, so I deleted the install, restored from a week-old backup, and did a re-install of Inside on top of that. No change.

Thats when I noticed that the PLM didn't have a LED on. The Hue hub is plugged into the same outlet and it was on so I pulled the PLM and re-plugged, nothing. I disabled the interface in Indigo and then Indigo came back to life, the Sonos plugin, weather plugin, Fingscan, all of it started working. I enabled the PLM interface in Indigo again, and everything went to hell. Anyone ever seen anything like that?

I went online to order a new PLM and Amazon kindly told me that I had last ordered a 2413U on December 24th, 2013 (Merry Christmas to me :| ). I had forgotten about that horrible failure, but then I was pleased to see that I had gotten almost 4 years out of the PLM, which is supposed to be the bad one (PLMs prior to rev 23). I'll write the date on the new one one in case I don't get the next from Amazon. We'll see how long the new one lasts - I actually thought almost 4 years was pretty decent, considering the failure rates I read about on the various forums. How long is everyone else's PLMs holding up?

Terry

Posted on
Fri Oct 06, 2017 6:45 am
roussell offline
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Re: 2413U lasted ~4 years, is that a record?

As a side-note. Since I have an Insteon Hub, I thought I'd "quickly" setup a few of my more critical automation routines in it so I could limp-on until the new PLM arrives. Well, one routines took about 2 hours to setup, removing motion sensors, pressing buttons, something failing and starting over - and it still isn't correct. That thing is horrible - I'd still love to have it work as a secondary PLM, but as a stand-alone controller it's absolute junk. You really forget how good Indigo is at what it does until you don't have it or try to use something else. Thank God I paid for rush shipping on the PLM!

Terry

Posted on
Fri Oct 06, 2017 7:31 am
jalves offline
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Re: 2413U lasted ~4 years, is that a record?

Don't know exactly how long I've had mine but its easily longer than 4 years. I've been in my FL home ~3.5 years and I had Indigo running in my Plymouth MA home for at least a couple of years before that.

Running Indigo 2023.2 on a 24" iMac M1), OS X 14.4
Jeff

Posted on
Fri Oct 06, 2017 7:34 am
roussell offline
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Re: 2413U lasted ~4 years, is that a record?

Nice! The one I just ordered will be my 3rd since somewhere around 2007-2008.

Terry

Posted on
Fri Oct 06, 2017 8:12 am
freshwuzhere offline
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Re: 2413U lasted ~4 years, is that a record?

Amazon must be getting low on these! Mine failed in exactly the same way - no LED about 2 days before yours. I bought 3 as it turns out when you rely on your home automation - a backup unit is a “must have”. Mine lasted about 3.5 years and I’ve just written the date on the new units. 2413’s are the most unreliable part of indigo.


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Posted on
Fri Oct 06, 2017 8:22 am
roussell offline
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Re: 2413U lasted ~4 years, is that a record?

freshwuzhere wrote:
Amazon must be getting low on these! Mine failed in exactly the same way - no LED about 2 days before yours. I bought 3 as it turns out when you rely on your home automation - a backup unit is a “must have”. Mine lasted about 3.5 years and I’ve just written the date on the new units. 2413’s are the most unreliable part of indigo.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


I'm hoping the January, 2017 hardware revision is going to help their reliability. Those that have disassembled them have noted larger capacitors, which seem to be the most failure-prone part. I'll pull my dead one apart this weekend to see if that's what failed here. I need to order a second, as a backup too. I didn't realize how much I had automated through the years until it stoped. I had to turn on the lights, and turn off my white noise MANUALLY this morning! :shock:

Terry

Posted on
Sat Oct 07, 2017 3:12 pm
roussell offline
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Re: 2413U lasted ~4 years, is that a record?

And the timer starts again today; FedEx delivered the new 2413U today and Indigo replaced it without a problem. I can't imagine managing a Insteon home without Indigo!

Terry

Posted on
Wed Oct 11, 2017 1:41 pm
akimball offline
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Re: 2413U lasted ~4 years, is that a record?

Having great success now with the 2448A7.

-Al

Posted on
Wed Oct 11, 2017 2:42 pm
roussell offline
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Re: 2413U lasted ~4 years, is that a record?

akimball wrote:
Having great success now with the 2448A7.


I saw that those are on sale for only $20 USD right now so I thought about picking one up as an emergency backup. I still have a few (10-12) old X10 devices that I use during the holidays though and so I need the 2413U for the X10 compatibility. Maybe I'll get inspired to convert the holiday lights to the Sonoff devices and retire the X10 stuff.

Terry

Posted on
Wed Oct 11, 2017 2:56 pm
akimball offline
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Re: 2413U lasted ~4 years, is that a record?

I was successful converting everything snd fixing it all after the conversion, but replacing a modem is no trivial thing, whether it’s 2413U to another 2413U or to a 2448A7. I feel very safe now from power bumps degrading the 2413U slowly over a 4 year period in my case. I’ve got the old 2413U partially disassembled and I’m not really impressed; I design rugged stuff for military applications...we would never get away with installing poly transorbs or off-the-shelf electrolytics for reasons of electrical shock testing. Our stuff comes with some major 250V linear mode FETs which I don’t see on the 2413U and I don’t understand their isolation scheme without more digging... The unit does not smell fried. It just quits working now, randomly and a lot.

IMG_4871.JPG
IMG_4871.JPG (101.98 KiB) Viewed 3099 times


Re-syncing with the new 2448a7, I had issues with alexa, the kpls, buried battery operated devices and my morning lincs. but it did all come together.

-Al

Posted on
Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:18 am
roussell offline
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Re: 2413U lasted ~4 years, is that a record?

roussell wrote:
akimball wrote:
Having great success now with the 2448A7.


I saw that those are on sale for only $20 USD right now so I thought about picking one up as an emergency backup. I still have a few (10-12) old X10 devices that I use during the holidays though and so I need the 2413U for the X10 compatibility. Maybe I'll get inspired to convert the holiday lights to the Sonoff devices and retire the X10 stuff.

Terry


Well... went back to pick one up and it seems as though they are no longer available. They have been removed form the search and a direct link to the product page just shows it as" Unavailable". I wonder if they're discontinuing it, or simply out of stock. I'm inclined to believe the former, since it was discounted so heavily last week.

Link to product page: https://www.smarthome.com/insteon-2448a7-portable-usb-adapter.html

Terry

Posted on
Tue Oct 17, 2017 10:35 am
akimball offline
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Re: 2413U lasted ~4 years, is that a record?

Yeah probably discontinued...but they should fix the 2413U. I offered to do it for them lol but haven’t heard from them (seriously I didn’t expect a response...I’m designing an emc tolerant dual HDMI interface as we speak for a mission computer...their ac data pickups would be cake compared to this.). The issue with the 2413U is that it is not designed for multiple 500 to 1000VDC strikes inherent in installations with motors switching on and off. MIL tolerant devices are rated for strikes of up to 10uS, or on the dc side 100-V repetative strikes of 50-ms/5-strikes/1-per-second. They need a surge protector such as a Linear Technology LT4356 along with a good sized FET to keep the voltage in tolerable range, and just prior to this they need to have a good transorb to catch anything greater than say 800V. If they want to reduce the size of the FET, they can compromise one of two ways: Have the surge protector shut down the FET gate completely and ride through the pulse with a subsequent restart after say about 0.6ms, or they can build in 50-ms worth of hold up (expensive though) and forgo the restart of the USB modem. This is most easily accomplished on the rectified side of the power supply.

Maybe one of their engineers will see this....hahaha. :)

If you want, I can sell you spare 2448A7 I bought while they were on sale. I honestly think I’ll never need it....no power hookup now.

-Al

Posted on
Thu Oct 26, 2017 7:40 pm
akimball offline
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Re: 2413U lasted ~4 years, is that a record?

Insteon 2448A7 usb modem is back in stock and back on sale for $19.99 at Smarthome.

-Al

Posted on
Thu Oct 26, 2017 9:04 pm
rehafer offline
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Re: 2413U lasted ~4 years, is that a record?

If they ever offer a 2413U-MS, I’m buying it.


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Posted on
Sun Oct 29, 2017 10:20 am
tjm000 offline
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Re: 2413U lasted ~4 years, is that a record?

My 2412u has been running since November 2009.

Tim

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