Just a quick bit of info on my Insteon USB indigo interface
I meant to send this info out when availability of the Insteon Indigo interfaces became unobtainium, but I neglected to do that until today. Sorry about that
Wanted to pass along how I have my Indigo Insteon USB interface set up, why I did it and how long it has been working…
Back around 2015 (or 16, can’t remember) when I first set up Indigo, I had my Insteon USB hub malfunction a short while after installing my system. It was under warranty and was replaced. The day it happened was stormy and I was wondering if a power surge was to blame for the failure.
Since I had many Insteon plug in modules, I decided to put my Indigo USB interface behind a big honking surge suppressor (I know, I know that it is not a recommended practice). Since it was dual-band - I would just collocate a plug-in module (also dual-band) close by and the interface would talk to the plug-in module (which was not behind the surge suppressor) and then it would work normally from that point on.
I at least wanted to see if that would work and it did - I noticed no difference when it was protected so I left it that way and that same interface has been working since. Maybe it would have worked anyway, but I can tell you that I have lost two phase couplers over that time and neither was behind any surge protection.
I know the current theory is the USB interfaces have poor quality capacitors and folks say they find cold solder joints and that may be true but I can also tell you cold joints (in the vast majority of cases) would either work or not work they would not likely degrade over time (based on my 40 years in a very technical hardware field). And sure, I have seen capacitors split open and or leak and fail so I’m sure better capacitors would be always better (if you had a choice) but maybe those lesser quality components are just a bit more susceptible to surges. That might also explain things in some cases.
Anyway, food for thought — if your interface is your single point of failure - maybe it is worth a quick test to see if your setup runs fine behind some protection. If it does, why not hedge your bets and go with a safer setup.
I luckily purchased a backup interface a long while back (when they were half off) - just so if I did have a failure I would not need to wait for shipping - now it is a backup so I can try to fix mine if it does crap out.
Sorry for the long post but I’m sure a lot of folks don’t have a back-up and this info might help someone postpone the end of Insteon in their setups - better to do that transition slowly over time so you don’t have a big bill and spend a ton of time in an emergency trying to swap tons of stuff over to Z-wave…..