- Posted on
Fri Apr 21, 2023 10:49 pm
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dduff617
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- Posts: 662
- Joined: Jul 05, 2006
- Location: Massachusetts, USA
I have new i3 rotary dimmer installed. Here are my observations:
Installation Issues
Nothing surprising. The switch may be a bit larger in depth. The device including the "wings" that stick out at top and bottom and typically rest on your drywall are made of plastic. They've been metal in every other smart switch I've used. I don't necessarily see this as a problem so long as the plastic doesn't get brittle over time. There are insulated integral jumper wires used for all four connections including ground (braided bare copper is used on older Insteon switches).
Fit and general appearance seem good. Packaging and included accessories (wire nuts) are similar to other Insteon devices.
Indigo allowed the i3 dimmer to replace a SwitchLinc in my Indigo database painlessly in the usual way - just by opening the Define and Sync... dialog on the old device, then having the new device send its address. One click, wait a few seconds, and it's pretty much all good to go. So that was all very smooth as one would expect.
Device Behavior with attached LED fixtures when Dimming
The dimmer behaves differently from a SwitchLinc in terms of how it works as a dimmer controlling an attached fixture. It appears they've modified the "response curve" of Insteon dim levels (1% to 100%) to the TRIAC output waveform. Specifically, I observe that if i set the module to any value between 1 and about 12%, the light comes on at the same level as the 12% setting on the old SwitchLinc.
Comparing the same type of load with an older SwitchLinc, at 1% I see no light at all, 2% light is barely visible, 3-4% it is getting brighter, etc. until about 10-12% it seems to be even with the i3. There is a barely noticeable hint of flickering in the 3-4% range.
Under no conditions did the i3 ever show any visible sign of flickering - so that is good.
An important caveat: this is entirely based on my informal observations of one specific configuration of devices - your milage may vary, obviously. I was using ~2yr old Cree brand LED trims for both the i3 and the responder SwitchLinc.
Local LED indicator
The switch has a two-level LED on the top of the dial. When switch is off, LED is at low level ("pilot light"). When switch is on, LED is at a somewhat higher level. LED is white. The two levels don't allow me to reliably discern on vs. off if I'm looking at the switch and can't see the controlled light. There's just not an obvious enough difference between the two levels. This is a difference from the familiar LED "bar graph" on the old SwitchLinc's. The i3 doesn't even attempt to give any visual indication of dim level.
Physical Operation of the Switch
The first time I tried to push the knob, the knob moved, I thought I got haptic feedback of feeling it move, but the light did not turn on. Surprised, I tried again and it worked normally. Now I'm going back and trying to see how that happened. It appears that if you make contact off-center on knob other and push, it will sometimes move a little without activating. Time will tell whether this is a rare occurrence. I can reproduce the problem if I try - for example by pushing somewhat gently, right on the top edge of the knob. I'll be interested to hear if anyone else notices this issue.
Dimmer Behavior in Multi-way Switches
With the i3 switch set up as controller and another Insteon SwitchLinc as responder, pushing the knob had the expected effect of toggling the on/off state of both the local load and the responder.
I observed that the responder device does not dim or brighten when the i3 knob was turned. This is a major functional difference between i3 and SwitchLinc when used as linked controller of other devices.
Turning on lights by Turning Knob
Since this is a design distinction from older Insteon devices, I was curious how this would work. I think these findings are "interesting" to say the least.
When the device is off and you twist the knob a small amount in either direction, the device turns on, starting at its minimum dim level, independent of the preset dim level. Indigo correctly reports the i3 device as ON at 1%. If you then twist the knob counter-clockwise, it does not turn the device back off - it just goes to the minimum of 1% - in other words, there is no "twist to turn off" function.
When turning on the i3 device on by twisting, the linked device did not turn on. Either this is a bug, a design flaw, or possibly the twist-to-turn-on function is intended to give you a "local-only" turn on mechanism. The latter seems unlikely and is inconsistent with how other Insteon products work. In short, if you have linked switches and use twist-to-turn-on, the switches do not stay in sync with each other.
I discovered (by accident) that although if you rotate the knob at slow to normal speeds, the responder will stay off, however if you rotate the knob "fast", the responder will turn on. That seems like a firmware bug to me - I certainly did not see this "feature" documented anywhere, nor can I imagine why they would design it this way.
When using twist-to-turn-on, Indigo correctly reported the status of the i3 but reported the status of the responder incorrectly at 60% even when the it remained off.
Instant-On
Double-press of the i3 knob turns the light to full brightness instantly, ignoring the ramp-rate and preset levels, in the standard Insteon tradition. It also causes the linked switch to turn full-on instantly. This answers hamw's original question.
Following double-press, Indigo correctly reports the state of the i3 device but incorrectly reports the state of the responder as being at its preset level when the device is actually at 100%.
An oddity: After double-press, I found that twisting the knob counter-clockwise caused the linked switch to switch from 100% brightness to its preset level for some reason. This was unexpected since (as described above) rotating the dimmer knob normally had no effect on the responder device.
Beep
Insteon beep command works on the i3 device.
Set LED Brightness
The Indigo Set LED Brightness appears to not be supported on the new switch - or at least Indigo does not let me pick the i3 dimmer as a target for this command.
This could be a drawback if you have a lightswitch right next to your bed, for example. It seems odd that they removed this functionality that SwitchLincs and KeypadLIncs have had for a long time. Having a lot of controlled switches in smart home can lead to a lot of light pollution.
Summary
Superficially, i3 seems to have a lot of commonality with familiar SwitchLinc Dimmers - with a slightly different physical interface.
The i3 can turn linked devices on and off using normal link preset dim levels. However, my findings indicate you can not use the i3 as an Insteon controller to dim or brighten another Insteon device acting as responder. This is a significant deviation from how Insteon devices have worked up to now, and honestly I'm quite surprised by this. It seems like an especially odd limitation for a device whose main distinction is its rotating knob, seemingly intended to be used forintuitive variable-rate dimming.
There is no ability to dim the LED lights on the switch unlike (most) SwitchLinc's.
Last Word
Definitely feel free to ask me other questions, suggest other tests, or post and share your results with using the device if you've tried them. Honestly, I'd be happy to learn that "I'm using it wrong" for at least a few of these scenarios.