INSTEON and X10 dimming

I installed INSTEON today and the transition from X10 went very smooth. Tonight when my lights (on X10 modules) were scheduled to come on they all did however none of them dimmed. I noticed in the 1.8 release notes:

- Indigo does not support using generic X10 dim/brighten commands via the PowerLinc V2.
- Indigo does not support using extended dim commands via the PowerLinc V2.
-- note preset dim commands do send and receive correctly -

Can someone explain the difference between generic and extended dim commands? Is there anyway to get dim commands to work on my legacy X10 modules?

Thanks,
Jim

After doing some more testing it seems that no matter what value I set for "dim by" the X10 driven light only dims by 10%. So if I want to dim the lamp by 50% I need to turn the lamp on and send 5 "dim by" commands.

This sound right Matt?

Jim

[matt (support)]

Hi Jim,

Different X10 modules support different types of X10 dimming commands. Generic X10 light switches, like those sold at X10.com and Radio Shack, use generic dimming commands. Leviton makes some that use extended dimming commands. And Smarthome's SwitchLincs and LampLincs (recommended) use preset dim commands. Only the last type, preset dim commands, are supported in the current beta of Indigo 1.8 by the PowerLinc V2. Note they are all supported by the older X10 only PowerLinc 1132U and 1132CU.

The goal is to improve this so that generic and extended dim X10 commands also work well with the PowerLinc V2, but I'm not sure how much progress we'll make on this. As you have noticed, generic dims sort-of work, but require multiple commands which will be very slow.

Note that Smarthome just announced some new INSTEON switches that only cost $20 each. Might be a good time to upgrade those X10 switches.

Regards,
Matt

Thanks for the info Matt. I ordered a few of the ICON switches from SmartHome today. I suspect I may have a wiring issue because of INSTEON requiring the neural. If this is the case I may just send the correct number of DIM commands for now. I really don't want to invest any more in thye older X-10 technology.

Jim