Insteon Health Test Tool app now available

Yes that's the one. I got rid of both the black plastic box and the aluminum panel. Neither is functional, it's just for mounting in a gang box. The PCB inside is relatively small, something like 1x2".

If you don't want to do the heat shrink, wrapping it in electrical tape would be OK too.

...If possible put them right in the panel (note that this is questionable from a code standpoint)...

For those that live in North America, and whose panel is surface mounted or there is free access to the outside of the panel box, it is easy to connect a box along one side/top/bottom of the panel. You just need a box (4"square w/cover is good) and...

One close nipple

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,

two locknuts

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and

two insulated bushings

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.
Then, after turning off the power, just run two hot leads (one from each power leg) into the box and wire up the bridge.

I finally got around to installing the 2413 and running the iHealth app....might i ask someone to help me decipher the results?


######### Report for: /Users/Karen/Desktop/iHealth_logs/20100617_212724 ##########

Per-device statistics: name success min avg max stdev avg

2nd Floor Hall Lights 1 0.553 2.305 2.500 0.584 **********************************************
2nd Floor Hall Lights 2 2 0.505 2.111 2.500 0.779 ******************************************
2nd Floor Hall Lights 3 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Backyard Patio Lights 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Backyard Patio Lights 2 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Breakfast Table 7 0.453 1.411 2.500 0.818 ****************************
Breakfast Table 2 1 0.453 2.295 2.500 0.614 *********************************************
Charlies Closet 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Dining Room Chandelier 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Dining Room Chandelier 2 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Emma's Room 3 0.508 2.026 2.500 0.791 ****************************************
Family Room Aux Lights 10 0.504 0.965 1.496 0.321 *******************
Family Room Eyeballs 3 1.352 2.245 2.500 0.407 ********************************************
Family Room Lamps 1 0.883 2.338 2.500 0.485 **********************************************
Family Room Main Lights 4 0.503 1.786 2.500 0.883 ***********************************
Family Room Thermostat 2 0.503 2.101 2.500 0.798 ******************************************
Frontdoor Entry Light 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Garage Door Sensor 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Garage Lights 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Guest Room 3 0.455 1.930 2.500 0.876 **************************************
Hall Bath Fan 1 0.881 2.338 2.500 0.486 **********************************************
Hall Bath Light 1 1.777 2.428 2.500 0.217 ************************************************
Island Chandelier 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Karens Closet 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Kitchen Main Lights 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Kitchen Main Lights 2 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Living Room Chandelier 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Living Room Lamp 1 0.181 2.268 2.500 0.696 *********************************************
Master Bath Jacuzzi Light 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Master Bath Main Light 1 0.185 2.268 2.500 0.695 *********************************************
Master Bath Toilet Fan 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Master Bath Toilet Light 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Master Bed Main Light 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Mudroom Main 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Outdoor Backyard Floodlight 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Outdoor Knee Wall Lights 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Outdoor Pedestal Lights 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Pantry Light 1 0.455 2.295 2.500 0.614 *********************************************
Playroom Main 4 0.882 2.056 2.500 0.603 *****************************************
Playroom Main 2 3 0.510 1.977 2.500 0.805 ***************************************
Playroom Main 3 4 0.509 1.908 2.500 0.758 **************************************
Powder Room Fan 2 0.453 2.091 2.500 0.819 *****************************************
Powder Room Light 1 0.552 2.305 2.500 0.584 **********************************************
Rachel's Room 4 0.502 1.778 2.500 0.893 ***********************************
Study Lights 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Study Lights 2 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************
Under Counter Lights 0 2.500 2.500 2.500 0.000 **************************************************


Whole-house statistics:

Success rate: 60 / 470 12.8%
Good, bad, total devices: 1, 46, 47 (good means >=95% reachable)
Average RTT: 2.292



Now i am guessing its not good, but that said, i only really have problems with a few lights...the Playroom lights, 2nd Floor Hall Lights and Breakfast Room lights, and on rarer occasion, the Garage Lights. I have to say, that i went through every light manually and using the iPhone app and had no problems. The iPhone app was much snappier using the 2413 vs my old 2414, and the accuracy was higher (i used to have to hit lights multiple times before they would turn on/off when using the 2414, but with the new 2413 first time was a charm in every case).

Looks very bad, but it might be easy to fix by moving the 2413 to another outlet. Have you tried that?

If your PLM is on a noisy outlet it will affect your whole house like that. If that's not it then you probably have some major sources of noise - fluorescent lights and such.

Insteon includes retransmission features which mask the communication failures. The fact that your system mostly works is only because of this. The point of the tool, of course, is to help you get from mostly working to fully working!

What are the stars vs the dashes vs actual numbers that show up in each iteration? I do use a lot of CFLs in the house for energy saving purposes...the outlet that the PLM is on i can't imagine having a lot of noise, and given my home setup, it would be difficult to change outlets given the PLM doesn't have a pass through outlet like the 2414

What are the stars vs the dashes vs actual numbers that show up in each iteration?

The stars are a bar graph of latency - that's the value in the "avg" column. Shorter is better. Latency means time to complete a command, and is an indicator of how many "hops" the signal has to make before it propagates across the house and back. It also measures retransmissions which is where the signal doesn't make the round trip at all and has to be sent again. You probably have both of those occurring nearly all the time.

I do use a lot of CFLs in the house for energy saving purposes...the outlet that the PLM is on i can't imagine having a lot of noise, and given my home setup, it would be difficult to change outlets given the PLM doesn't have a pass through outlet like the 2414

You need to try it if just for testing purposes. If you have a laptop you can install the tool on that and then take it around the house. If you determine that the outlet IS at fault, then you can go from there. It might be easy to fix by swapping two breakers for example - if you get to that point I can give you some more specific suggestions.

PS when I say it's "noise", I am speaking in a very broad sense. Really what we're talking about is "signal to noise ratio". If you put the PLM on the end of a 200' extension cord for example, you haven't really introduced a lot of noise to the system, but you have decreased the strength of the signal and this is just as bad. So maybe that outlet isn't "noisy" per se but if it's a long distance from the panel that has the same effect. You can also have "signal suckers" - things which don't generate noise but do _absorb_ energy at the particular frequency at which Insteon communicates.

Also I don't know how you're able to determine that it isn't noisy. Do you know how the wire is run in the wall, and all the other outlets that are shared on that circuit? It's usually not what's plugged into that same outlet that you're concerned about, but all the stuff in the walls that you can't see.

Thanks for all the advice. Its just that we built the house a couple years ago, so i can't imagine to many wiring problems, but who knows. When you say take the laptop around the house...does that mean install indigo on the laptop, and plug the PLM into it and test various outlets?

Thanks for all the advice. Its just that we built the house a couple years ago, so i can't imagine to many wiring problems, but who knows. When you say take the laptop around the house...does that mean install indigo on the laptop, and plug the PLM into it and test various outlets?

Right, or you can put just the health tool on there and the device list file that was generated on the Indigo mac. Indigo isn't strictly needed to run it.

BTW the age of the wiring is not a factor. The issue is how it was installed: primarily, how long are the runs and what is connected to them.

Thanks for all the advice. Its just that we built the house a couple years ago, so i can't imagine to many wiring problems, but who knows. When you say take the laptop around the house...does that mean install indigo on the laptop, and plug the PLM into it and test various outlets?

Right, or you can put just the health tool on there and the device list file that was generated on the Indigo mac. Indigo isn't strictly needed to run it.

BTW the age of the wiring is not a factor. The issue is how it was installed: primarily, how long are the runs and what is connected to them.

Sorry for not entirely following...so i put iHealth and the device list on my laptop, plus the PLM via USB into an outlet, and run the iHealth app without Indigo actually running on the laptop?

Sorry for not entirely following...so i put iHealth and the device list on my laptop, plus the PLM via USB into an outlet, and run the iHealth app without Indigo actually running on the laptop?

Yes there's a way to tell it to load an existing device list instead of extracting it from Indigo. It's been so long since I have used it (berkinet did the GUI) so I can't recall the exact steps, but that's the idea.

i tried this on my 2141u yesterday only the device names and codes showed.

then all hell broke loose, lights from my sensors come on even though ut was daylight, i had no control, the event log showed nothing. drove me crazy for 3 hours, i then checked in the prefs and it did not put a tick in the box when it had finished reporting.

that's because the tool does not work with the 2414, only the 2412 and 2413...that was stated in the instructions as well as on the thread.

Re the health script, I got similarly very unhealthy results with my setup and couldn't figure out what was up. Turned out to be that VMWare was running at the same time; when I quit VMWare all was good again with excellent results for almost all devices.

Try quitting all other apps and run Health again.

This tool has been great for identifying the few weak spots in my system, placing filters, etc. Thanks.

I'm wondering about another use -- would it be an efficient and effective tool for locating the best (or worst) outlets (or electrical circuits) for 2413U placement (or any controller compatible with iHealth)?

What I hope ... is that this data would be useful "in reverse" to conclude that outlets on the same circuit or located near the best performing insteon devices would also be the best locations for the 2413U.

The concern is that this is simply not true or that the iHealth performance reports are highly reflective of the 2413's current outlet location relative to all the other devices and not reflective of the "health" of various circuits or areas of the house.

In the next week, I'm moving the Indigo server to a dedicated macbook, and it seems that iHealth might be better at finding the best 2413 locations. Instead of just plugging the 2413 into outlets and trying to subjectively monitor performance or running, for example 500, iHealth iterations per outlet.

The plan would be (1) look at existing iHealth reports to identify circuits / areas in the house that have the best performance, (2) select outlets from the best iHealth candidates where it will be convenient to locate the 2413/macbook, (3) plug some unused lamplincs and dimmerlincs into the candidate outlets, (4) run a couple large iHealth tests, (5) choose the best performing of the candidate outlets.

Will this work? Is there a better way?

I'm wondering about another use -- would it be an efficient and effective tool for locating the best (or worst) outlets (or electrical circuits) for 2413U placement (or any controller compatible with iHealth)?

Absolutely, in fact if you only do ONE thing with this tool that should be it. Just try it multiple places and use the outlet that gives the best overall performance. I found huge differences moving it around the house with a laptop.

There may be tradeoffs eg if there is a cluster of poorly performing devices on some circuit then obviously you can improve their reachability by moving the PLM to that circuit. But if that circuit is inherently bad for some reason, then you have probably decreased performance between the PLM and everything else.