My Very first Insteon Dimmer finally died

Well, I just replaced the very first Insteon switch (dimmer) I ever bought. It was bought back in March of 2006 (I write the install date on each one with a Sharpie)and has lived In two homes since purchase. I used a different HA package way back then but switched to Indigo a couple years later. Anyway, that dimmer died two days ago, Indigo would still communicate with it, but it would no longer control it’s load, either remotely or locally.

Amazon delivered its replacement today and I can’t believe how easy it was for Indigo to swap the old for new. Just wanted to say great job Matt and Jay!!! I can’t imagine a better tool for Insteon control and management!

Lately I’ve been considering moving to WiFi dimmers and switches flashed with Tasmota and using FD’s MQTT plugin, and I may still grab a few Martin Jerry switches and Dimmers to play with, but it’s hard to argue with my own personal experience with Insteon. I know some have had problems but I’ve been extremely fortunate (not including the widespread PLM failures :-/ )

That was the oldest Insteon device I had, but not the oldest HA device. I have a handful of X10 modules that still come out to play every Christmas. Each year I think “I need to replace those”, but each year they go back in the Christmas boxes and wait for another year to come around.

Terry


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Well you got me beat. I just checked my Insteon devices and the oldest ones that I have are some LampLincs that I purchased in June 2008. They still work. I also still have a couple of X10 devices that I'm using but I don't have their purchase dates documented. But I know that I got them shortly after I purchased my current house in 1993.

Tim

Same here, I don’t know when I bought the X10 stuff but it was wayyyyy before the Insteon. Not sure why I started dating the Insteon stuff, maybe it was because of all the early failures people were experiencing but it’s cool to see it now.

Terry


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[matt (support)]

Thanks for the positive report!

I'm still using Insteon to drive a lot of door sensor. Those sensors seem to mirror your experience in that they work incredibly reliably. My PLMs are another story though. I had another one apparently fail a couple of weeks ago. I've been busy and haven't had a chance to get a replacement, and then it just started working again. It even failed at failing.

I'm on my second PLM (2412U) which I purchased in Nov 2009 or one month short of 10 years. So that means my first one must have crapped out in less than 2 years if you go by the date of my first LampLincs above.

Wow, aren't you lucky. I have replaced countless Insteon devices -- easily more than 50 over the years out of a 100+ installation. Indigo is great but Insteon modules are incredibly unreliable in my experience. I spoke with Steve Lee of SmartLabs about it in 2010 or so, when they first started failing and he acknowledged that they had particular problems in areas prone to electrical storms, hence the revised V2 dimmers some time ago. Apparently those are much more resistant to surges. I put in several whole house surge protectors at various fuse panels, and that quieted it down but did not stop the failures .

And no doubt thanks to Matt and Jay for making replacements easy!

Actually I have not had that good of reliability with my INSTEON devices as well. Of the 60 devices that I have purchased (since my first one back in 2008 as noted above) I have had 11 failures which equates to a 18% failure rate. I consider this to be sub-par reliability. The worst offender was the 8W LED bulb (3 bad ones) which I eventually replaced with LIFX bulbs. When I built my current house I installed a whole house surge protector, which I think has helped but who knows. In my locale there used to be quite a few power outages but the electric company has done a good job with local tree trimming for my neighborhood and I have not had a power outage for several years now.

I also still have 4 of my original X10 devices working and I don't recall my X10 devices having that bad of a hard failure rate (but they were not as operationally reliable, obviously, hence the transition to INSTEON). And I have been using a few Z-Wave devices (Energy Meter and MultiSensor6) for a few years now with no issues. Recently I just bought my first Z-Wave light switch to replace my most recent INSTEON ToggleLinc failure. Plus the Z-Wave light switch was less expensive than an INSTEON ToggleLinc. So Z-Wave it is, duh.

This thread is making me nervous. I've got a couple of dozen Insteon devices in my house approaching 6 years old now. So far, so good.

[jay (support)]

This thread is making me nervous. I've got a couple of dozen Insteon devices in my house approaching 6 years old now. So far, so good.

It's unlikely they will all fail at the same time, but you should probably start expecting some failures and plan accordingly. I have something (I think it's a KeypadLinc but haven't had the time to really research it) that's starting to fail (I've been seeing random X10 commands in the log, but I have no X10 devices and this is a typical failure mode for Insteon switches).