Buying switches for new house

Posted on
Fri Jul 07, 2017 12:07 pm
mundmc offline
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Buying switches for new house

After 6 years on Indigo, I'm finally moving out of NYC and in to a proper house. I plan to control lights with spouse-friendly switches.

Q1: Which kind!
Requirements:
- avoid Insteon given failure problems I've had with them
- MANY "switch-loops" (e.g. No meutral in the switch box)
- some of these lights are led

Options: I'm intrigued by Lutron Caseta switches, which appear to be reliable, affordable, and compatible with boxes lacking neutral wires.

Q2: The Lutron plugin appears to work well with Caseta Pro. I understand it is not officially supported. How are people doing with this one? LUTRON P-PKG1W-WH Caseta Wireless 600-watt/150-watt Multi-Location In-Wall Dimmer with Pico Remote Control Kit, White https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JJY0S4G/re ... xzbB9ENSMK

Q3: For lights operated by switch-loops, I suppose I could put Aeotec Z-wave micro switches in the wiring box near light fixtures, any thoughts on these vs the former solution? Aeotec Z-Wave Micro Dimmer, 2nd edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IRI1CEK/re ... xzb2S933XD

Q4: If I get the Indigo HomeBridge for Apple products going, do I even need a Caseta Pro hub or Luton plugin for Lurton lights?

Many thanks!


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Posted on
Fri Jul 07, 2017 1:37 pm
rehafer offline
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Re: Buying switches for new house

Switch loops are also the bane of my HA existence. All the smart switches that I've come across that work with a switch loop operate on the trickle of power that runs though the switch when 'Light Off'. That trickle is enough to light a LED bulb.


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Posted on
Fri Jul 07, 2017 2:25 pm
rehafer offline
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Re: Buying switches for new house

I imagine, if you were handy with home wiring; you get into the box that your fixture is wired to, disconnect the current wired, connect the incoming line and neutral to the Micro Dimmer, connect its load out to the fixture, and connect the two wires form the switch to the switch input of the Micro Dimmer. No local dimming, I guess, but local on / off and full remote control.


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Posted on
Fri Jul 07, 2017 7:56 pm
DaveL17 offline
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Re: Buying switches for new house

rehafer wrote:
Switch loops are also the bane of my HA existence. All the smart switches that I've come across that work with a switch loop operate on the trickle of power that runs though the switch when 'Light Off'. That trickle is enough to light a LED bulb.

Amen. I have yet to find a switch/dimmer/LED bulb combination that works (beyond a manual [dumb] dimmer). I have:

  • LED rope lights above my kitchen cabinets with Leviton Z-Wave dimmer modules that require dummy loads to turn them "fully off".
  • Leviton Z-wave in-wall switches that allow enough energy for LED bulbs to pulse.
  • a Dragon WD-100 in-wall dimmer where the LED bulbs go 5...4...3...2...100...0 when they turn off.
  • Lutron Maestro dimmers (non-Z-Wave) which have a list of "approved bulbs"--I had a really tough time trying to find the Philips 75w equivalents that would work with them (Amazon has them now).
On the other hand, I have Philips LED landscape bulbs that I love and have reduced my landscape load to 18w (I did NOT pay the $12 per bulb price that Amazon is showing; I got them for $6 at Home Depot). With a decent combination of devices and LED bulbs, I think I could reduce my entire outdoor lighting load to less than 60w (before CFLs my front porch alone was 180w...)

Right now, my install is fully Z-Wave, so I can't comment on Insteon--but I would consider Insteon for myself.....especially if it will give rock solid LED performance.

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Posted on
Sat Jul 08, 2017 9:36 am
rehafer offline
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Re: Buying switches for new house

I have several Insteon switches installed in non switch loop aka standard wired boxes. They work well with dimmable LEDs, my go to brand is Cree. LEDs that draw less than ~4w do seem to require a dummy load.
The addition of Dual-Band type switches has greatly increased Insteon reliability in my installation, YMMV



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Posted on
Sat Jul 08, 2017 12:10 pm
roussell offline
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Re: Buying switches for new house

I too have Insteon dimmers and Cree LEDs throughout my house. No problems and dims down without any flickers or other unexpected behavior. I guess I've been lucky with Insteon; I've been reading the horror stories for years but my gear has been rock solid. Since they first came on the market, I've only lost a KPL after about 3 years (which was mounted outside in a covered porch) and a PLM, which did suck, but Indigo made it easy to replace... I've even got two switchlinks installed in the plastic pool light enclosure (fibre optics to the pool from a fan-cool high intensity projector-style bulb). Been out there for 3 years, no problems.

Terry


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Posted on
Sun Jul 09, 2017 6:50 am
Professor Falken offline
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Re: Buying switches for new house

Most of my Insteon switches work pretty well, though a couple are finicky and occasionally require a reset, even to work locally. My wife likes the look of the old-school toggles (as opposed to paddles), which I think are actually an older design. That alone is probably a detriment, but they are also only single band (powerline only), so I have to make sure I have a few dual band accessories scattered around the house for a signal to reach all corners reliably.

I am, however, on my 3rd powerlinc modem in 3 years, which is somewhat annoying. While Indigo makes it relatively easy to re-sync devices when you switch that out, it is still a bit of a project. I am hoping to get a decent amount of time out f this one.

Posted on
Sun Jul 09, 2017 8:10 am
mundmc offline
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Re: Buying switches for new house

It's good to hear you all are having good luck with Insteon, I may have to give them another try.

I'm pretty comfortable with electrical, so I'll investigate z-wave switches in light fixtures where I have switch-loops.

Anybody play with Lutron?


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Posted on
Thu Jul 20, 2017 12:57 pm
dduff617 offline
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observations on Insteon component and signal reliability

specifically regarding insteon and "reliability". i'm not sure if you're referring to component reliability or signal reliability. i'll say a bit about my experiences with both.

first on component reliability. i bought insteon gear when it first came out - was desperately seeking an upgrade from crappy x-10 gear. at that time, i had a standard house with a standard mix of lamp modules, light switches, etc. i also made the mistake of buying some Insteon "ICON" products (an Insteon product line that has fortunately been discontinued). , i was returning products to SmartHome roughly once every other month or so for replacement. so i would say failure rates were pretty high. over half of the ICON products i purchased ended up failing, and i eventually pulled them out and tossed them (i didn't even want to waste time installing replacements).

i moved about six years ago, which kicked-off another round of purchasing of Insteon gear. the only Insteon device failures I've had in the last six years are all older leftover devices (mainly lamplinc's and appliancelinc's) that i moved from the old house. of roughly a hundred insteon devices purchased since around mid-2011, i've had zero failures. so i think there has been a marked improvement in reliability since "the early days" of Insteon.

regarding signal reliability, i realize this can be very situation-specific. someone can say "it works for me", and of course that's not going to help you one bit if you can't get it to work reliably in your house. a key is to monitor your HA network as it grows. use things like the survey plugin to test so you'll see problems when they crop up and then you can ask yourself "what have i bought or plugged-in lately that could be causing this problem?". generally, i have found that due to the nature of Insteon protocol, reliability generally increases as you go up from a small number of devices to a few dozens of devices. also once you have a handful of dual-mode (power line + RF) devices in your network, you don't have to worry about which of two distinct phases things are connected to. as a very vague observation, newer devices tend to work better than older ones - and this seems especially true for old devices which lack some of the reliability improvements made later (i1 and i2 engine vs. the i2cs engine which added packet checksums). i2cs has been the standard for years now, so btw, that mostly isn't something a new buyer needs to be concerned about.

a few additional anecdotes:

sometimes a single non-insteon device can kill your Insteon comms. i have a Sonos remote control that sat in an ac-connected charge cradle. when that device was plugged in, Insteon reliability throughout my house dropped considerably. i concluded it must have been the little switching power supply and some bad filtering. i've seen similar problems with some uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units and from some emergency rechargeable flashlights.

a single sick insteon device can kill your Insteon comms and affect your controller. i was troubleshooting in my mom's house (a relatively small installation with a few dozen devices). i had concluded that i had a failed 2413 controller because it kept generating error messages and was generally unreliable communicating with various modules. after spending a while going through the hassle of replacing the controller and observing the same problems, i happened to notice an unusual blinking pattern on nearby (recent vintage, dual-mode) lamplinc device. unplugging this device immediately cleared up all the signal reliability problems. it was mostly by sheer luck that i noticed this - i probably never would have suspected an insteon device and since it was in the same room where the controller was plugged in, even searching by turning off circuit breakers would not have revealed the problem easily.

Posted on
Sun Oct 29, 2017 9:31 pm
mundmc offline
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Re: Buying switches for new house

Sorry just saw this now, but thank you for the Insteon tips!

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