I spent many many hours starting on Saturday afternoon getting my new Insteon Smartlink to control both the new Insteon patio light switch, and the X10-only Keypadlinc kitchen light, and by 3am on Sunday morning I had finally succeeded.
Three hours in, even getting the Insteon Patio light to work seemed hopeless. But finally, I got both lights to work through Insteon, a major victory over some of the most awful software, the Insteon Smartlinc controller for iPhone and browser. The old X10 Power House controller software that runs on Windows is much easier to use. I have always liked the Insteon concept, and I think the Insteon hardware is much nicer than X10, and should be more reliable because of the dual band design, but now I see that their software is lousy and very hard to use as advertised to control X10 devices. It almost seems like they don't want the X10 compatibility feature to be useful to most people, so they can sell them new Insteon devices to replace them.
First off, I could not connect the Insteon to my kitchen network hub because that hub wasn't getting internet anymore. Because I took my main ethernet wire to the kitchen down for construction. The Kitchen Mac was getting internet through Wifi only. So I connected the Insteon Smartlinc to the main network switch in the Lab (formerly known as Computer Room). That was hard enough, with the limited space in the room, the high mounted router/switch, and getting an AC power cord to reach. I tried one setup with the Smartlinc positioned on the second shelf, and when that didn't work I got another power cord and positioned the Smartlinc on the top shelf, right next to the Linksys router. I was thinking I needed to get those RF signals to reach the kitchen despite the bathroom mirrors and other objects in the way.
But after that, hours of trying to get the patio light to respond had ended in futility. When I engaged the Linc feature of the Insteon iPhone app, and held the Set button of the Insteon switch, I got one beep but not the required double beep. I was beginning to think that Insteon was not linking to this switch because I had added an X10 code to it. I was planning to "chat" with Smarthome online on Monday. I was feeling very disappointed because I wanted to get this to work This weekend, and it was unclear if even Smarthome technical support couldn't help.
But then reading online about Smartlinc it became clear it was just as limited in range as old X10. The Insteon has both AC line and RF signaling, the Smartlinc only does AC line signaling. So if X10 signals to the kitchen from the Lab are pretty much blocked these days by line interference, the same is true for Insteon signals. So then I had to re-visit my decision of hooking up the Smartlinc in the Lab and not the Kitchen as I had originally hoped.
I then tried connecting the Smartlinc to the network switch in the kitchen. Since that switch no longer had any direct Internet connection, I turned on Internet Sharing in the kitchen Mac. That did not seem to help. The Smartlinc was not being detected by the iPhone app. Clearly I needed to re-connect the ethernet wire between Lab and Kitchen.
I had been hoping I would not have to do that until the hallway is remodeled. Or even then, I might not need this ugly connection with my whole house network wiring through the attic that I have planned for May. The wire I put up now will simply have to be taken down for the remodeling on May 14. But I needed it now so my light timers would work, and I needed it now for security.
So I hooked up the wire. I wasn't intending to do a nice job. But I didn't want to mess up the new wall. So I did it the best way ever. I ran the wire over the doorways (using AV staples, but never stapled above human passage to prevent the possibility of a staple falling on somebody) but then down along the baseboards around the entryway corner into the hallway. I had never done that before because the wire isn't long enough. But now I had a bag of ethernet couplers I ordered for the whole house network. So I used a coupler above the Lab doorway to attach a 14 foot Cat 5E patch cable. I used a couple of nails driven into the doorway above the Lab to make sure the wire there is secure, despite my no-staples-above-passageway rule. I was also careful NOT to run the ethernet cable around the Scandia rack where the router is. If I did that, tugging hard enough on the cable could cause the rack to fall over. So the cable is just drooped behind the shelf to secure it slightly, but could be pulled out (and even pull the Linksys down) if pulled hard enough. It is taped above the Lab closet with Tyvek tape, but even if the tape should fail the cable would be held in place by a picture hanger and the aforementioned droop. I try to see ways things could fail and be sure they wouldn't be catastrophic.
It all paid off because after some more fiddling, I had Internet on the kitchen ethernet switch again, and then I could see the Smartlinc through the iPhone app, with it plugged into a Kitchen outlet. Now I tried to do the linking of the Patio light switch, and I got the double beeps instantly. It was a strange feeling after having struggling with linking for hours in the evening, and never getting anything but one beep after minutes at a time. It had been a line communication issue after all, solved by moving controller near wall switch. This was about 11:45 on Sunday night.
I had started working on this project around 4pm on Saturday afternoon. I needed to back up my iPhone, then check the latest version, then re-set my Apple ID password, then install the Insteon app. I had all that done by about 5:30.
So while I had finally gotten the patio light to work, I was strongly hoping to get the kitchen light to work also. For about a decade I have had a Smarthome X10 compatible dimmer on the kitchen light. For all that time, it continues to be very flaky. I have added a phase bridge to my house, put all noisy digital devices on filters, and made other refinements, but still the X10 control of the kitchen light switch from the X10 computer module is very flaky. It went from flaky to non-working after the installation of the new patio light. Either with fluorescent or LED bulbs, the patio light makes so much electronic noise that control from the X10 computer module is now unable to control it. And that is one of my key security lights to make the home look lived in.
So when I started this projects one of the big hopes was that the new Insteon controller would be able to control both patio and kitchen lights. I could locate the unit in the kitchen all the better to control the kitchen light using X10 signals. Currently I have an RF module in the living room also on a circuit that is close enough to control the kitchen light (and all other X10 devices in house) but it has no timer or macro features.
Insteon Smartlinc is advertised as being able to control X10. But I still worried about this, and feared I might need to replace the X10 kitchen light switch with another Insteon switch. And I wouldn't be able to get to that for another month, which wouldn't be good for security.
There was nothing in the Smarlinc app that would do anything for X10 at all. No mention of X10 anywhere. I hoped matters might be a little better with the browser software. So I decided to try the Insteon browser software, which is accessed through an Insteon URL.
The Insteon browser software is very peculiar, apparently the entire thing runs through servers at Insteon. You interact using your browser using web-based controls that ultimately send signals over the internet to control your Smartlinc. This doesn't work with only a LAN connection, it requires an internet connection. People paranoid about privacy would not like this kind of arrangement. It looks like Insteon not only knows what you are doing, they could in principle control your home. Of course the iPhone app operates over the internet also, and quite likely through the same Insteon servers.
The browser software is so counter-intuitive I spent hours trying to make any sense of it at all. There is a page that lets you set up Insteon "scenes", but nothing you click there will bring you to any page that lets you actually configure those scenes, it only takes you back to the room menu. But what you do is check the "Show" box next to each scene you want to be able to configure, then it appears as a link on the Room page. You click on that link, and it takes you to a page where you can configure the scene by linking Insteon actions to it, and setting timers.
Well even on that page there is no mention of X10. But there is a link where you click to create Custom Controls. On that page you have two boxes in which you can enter special codes. Some of those codes control Insteon, others control X10. Learning the codes is not unlike learning programming. The examples at the bottom of the page only control X10 device A1, leaving you to wonder what the codes would be for other devices. So quite likely you click on the ? icon. This brings you to a page which tells you that Support has ended for the Smarthome Wiki. All you can do is download the (one page) quickstart guide or (very long) manual. I had scanned the manual at the beginning of the day and didn't see much useful for making X10 timers.
I did some Google searching and found a page that discussed how to write the custom controls for X10 devices. But it also didn't give examples for any other device than A1. It said that you had to look up the codes for other houscodes and unit numbers in a linked table. Well you click on that link, and it takes you to the page that says Support for the Smarthome Wiki has ended.
It was at this point that I strongly believed Insteon was systematically locking out information to allow X10 devices to be controlled. All the better to sell replacement Insteon devices. IMO, this has been the problem with Insteon from the very beginning, a very limited commitment to compatibility. It was this kind of narrow vision that killed both Commodore-Amiga and Digital Equipment Corporation computers. They both had wildly succesful early computers, but then tried to force customers to migrate to their new systems by limiting compatibility and support. If they had played their compatibility card to the max, they would have had a built-in advantage no competitor could touch.
But I hoped I was wrong, and was thinking I would chat with Smarthome people on Monday. Still this was nagging me. So finally I took another look at the techical end of the Smartlinc manual. Well there they also had an explanation of how to build X10 custom commands, similar to what I had seen on the Smarthome Wiki after a google search. But in this case, they had the magic tables that give you the magic characters for each house code and unit number.
For my choices, housecode O requires character "4" (A requires "6").
Unit number 8 requires character "D". Of course there is nothing intuitive about this at all, you simply have to use the lookup table in the manual.
The overall code required to turn unit O8 on is:
02634D00P102634280
and to turn unit O8 off is:
02634D00P102634380
The difference being the third from last character, which is "3" for on and "2" for off. Well this mysterious code is actually described, bit by bit, in the back of the Insteon Smartlinc manual, starting at Page 16. You have to piece together the required bits for what you want to do.
Once I actually discovered that section of the manual, it was only a minutes to success. But prior to that I had been trying many different characters. And even after I found that part of the manual, I had been using the wrong pause code due to a copying mistake. So I spent some time with an X10 monitor trying to figure out the codes that Insteon was actually creating. But once I actually copied the exact required characters from the manual, it worked. And that was about 3am.
Three hours in, even getting the Insteon Patio light to work seemed hopeless. But finally, I got both lights to work through Insteon, a major victory over some of the most awful software, the Insteon Smartlinc controller for iPhone and browser. The old X10 Power House controller software that runs on Windows is much easier to use. I have always liked the Insteon concept, and I think the Insteon hardware is much nicer than X10, and should be more reliable because of the dual band design, but now I see that their software is lousy and very hard to use as advertised to control X10 devices. It almost seems like they don't want the X10 compatibility feature to be useful to most people, so they can sell them new Insteon devices to replace them.
First off, I could not connect the Insteon to my kitchen network hub because that hub wasn't getting internet anymore. Because I took my main ethernet wire to the kitchen down for construction. The Kitchen Mac was getting internet through Wifi only. So I connected the Insteon Smartlinc to the main network switch in the Lab (formerly known as Computer Room). That was hard enough, with the limited space in the room, the high mounted router/switch, and getting an AC power cord to reach. I tried one setup with the Smartlinc positioned on the second shelf, and when that didn't work I got another power cord and positioned the Smartlinc on the top shelf, right next to the Linksys router. I was thinking I needed to get those RF signals to reach the kitchen despite the bathroom mirrors and other objects in the way.
But after that, hours of trying to get the patio light to respond had ended in futility. When I engaged the Linc feature of the Insteon iPhone app, and held the Set button of the Insteon switch, I got one beep but not the required double beep. I was beginning to think that Insteon was not linking to this switch because I had added an X10 code to it. I was planning to "chat" with Smarthome online on Monday. I was feeling very disappointed because I wanted to get this to work This weekend, and it was unclear if even Smarthome technical support couldn't help.
But then reading online about Smartlinc it became clear it was just as limited in range as old X10. The Insteon has both AC line and RF signaling, the Smartlinc only does AC line signaling. So if X10 signals to the kitchen from the Lab are pretty much blocked these days by line interference, the same is true for Insteon signals. So then I had to re-visit my decision of hooking up the Smartlinc in the Lab and not the Kitchen as I had originally hoped.
I then tried connecting the Smartlinc to the network switch in the kitchen. Since that switch no longer had any direct Internet connection, I turned on Internet Sharing in the kitchen Mac. That did not seem to help. The Smartlinc was not being detected by the iPhone app. Clearly I needed to re-connect the ethernet wire between Lab and Kitchen.
I had been hoping I would not have to do that until the hallway is remodeled. Or even then, I might not need this ugly connection with my whole house network wiring through the attic that I have planned for May. The wire I put up now will simply have to be taken down for the remodeling on May 14. But I needed it now so my light timers would work, and I needed it now for security.
So I hooked up the wire. I wasn't intending to do a nice job. But I didn't want to mess up the new wall. So I did it the best way ever. I ran the wire over the doorways (using AV staples, but never stapled above human passage to prevent the possibility of a staple falling on somebody) but then down along the baseboards around the entryway corner into the hallway. I had never done that before because the wire isn't long enough. But now I had a bag of ethernet couplers I ordered for the whole house network. So I used a coupler above the Lab doorway to attach a 14 foot Cat 5E patch cable. I used a couple of nails driven into the doorway above the Lab to make sure the wire there is secure, despite my no-staples-above-passageway rule. I was also careful NOT to run the ethernet cable around the Scandia rack where the router is. If I did that, tugging hard enough on the cable could cause the rack to fall over. So the cable is just drooped behind the shelf to secure it slightly, but could be pulled out (and even pull the Linksys down) if pulled hard enough. It is taped above the Lab closet with Tyvek tape, but even if the tape should fail the cable would be held in place by a picture hanger and the aforementioned droop. I try to see ways things could fail and be sure they wouldn't be catastrophic.
It all paid off because after some more fiddling, I had Internet on the kitchen ethernet switch again, and then I could see the Smartlinc through the iPhone app, with it plugged into a Kitchen outlet. Now I tried to do the linking of the Patio light switch, and I got the double beeps instantly. It was a strange feeling after having struggling with linking for hours in the evening, and never getting anything but one beep after minutes at a time. It had been a line communication issue after all, solved by moving controller near wall switch. This was about 11:45 on Sunday night.
I had started working on this project around 4pm on Saturday afternoon. I needed to back up my iPhone, then check the latest version, then re-set my Apple ID password, then install the Insteon app. I had all that done by about 5:30.
So while I had finally gotten the patio light to work, I was strongly hoping to get the kitchen light to work also. For about a decade I have had a Smarthome X10 compatible dimmer on the kitchen light. For all that time, it continues to be very flaky. I have added a phase bridge to my house, put all noisy digital devices on filters, and made other refinements, but still the X10 control of the kitchen light switch from the X10 computer module is very flaky. It went from flaky to non-working after the installation of the new patio light. Either with fluorescent or LED bulbs, the patio light makes so much electronic noise that control from the X10 computer module is now unable to control it. And that is one of my key security lights to make the home look lived in.
So when I started this projects one of the big hopes was that the new Insteon controller would be able to control both patio and kitchen lights. I could locate the unit in the kitchen all the better to control the kitchen light using X10 signals. Currently I have an RF module in the living room also on a circuit that is close enough to control the kitchen light (and all other X10 devices in house) but it has no timer or macro features.
Insteon Smartlinc is advertised as being able to control X10. But I still worried about this, and feared I might need to replace the X10 kitchen light switch with another Insteon switch. And I wouldn't be able to get to that for another month, which wouldn't be good for security.
There was nothing in the Smarlinc app that would do anything for X10 at all. No mention of X10 anywhere. I hoped matters might be a little better with the browser software. So I decided to try the Insteon browser software, which is accessed through an Insteon URL.
The Insteon browser software is very peculiar, apparently the entire thing runs through servers at Insteon. You interact using your browser using web-based controls that ultimately send signals over the internet to control your Smartlinc. This doesn't work with only a LAN connection, it requires an internet connection. People paranoid about privacy would not like this kind of arrangement. It looks like Insteon not only knows what you are doing, they could in principle control your home. Of course the iPhone app operates over the internet also, and quite likely through the same Insteon servers.
The browser software is so counter-intuitive I spent hours trying to make any sense of it at all. There is a page that lets you set up Insteon "scenes", but nothing you click there will bring you to any page that lets you actually configure those scenes, it only takes you back to the room menu. But what you do is check the "Show" box next to each scene you want to be able to configure, then it appears as a link on the Room page. You click on that link, and it takes you to a page where you can configure the scene by linking Insteon actions to it, and setting timers.
Well even on that page there is no mention of X10. But there is a link where you click to create Custom Controls. On that page you have two boxes in which you can enter special codes. Some of those codes control Insteon, others control X10. Learning the codes is not unlike learning programming. The examples at the bottom of the page only control X10 device A1, leaving you to wonder what the codes would be for other devices. So quite likely you click on the ? icon. This brings you to a page which tells you that Support has ended for the Smarthome Wiki. All you can do is download the (one page) quickstart guide or (very long) manual. I had scanned the manual at the beginning of the day and didn't see much useful for making X10 timers.
I did some Google searching and found a page that discussed how to write the custom controls for X10 devices. But it also didn't give examples for any other device than A1. It said that you had to look up the codes for other houscodes and unit numbers in a linked table. Well you click on that link, and it takes you to the page that says Support for the Smarthome Wiki has ended.
It was at this point that I strongly believed Insteon was systematically locking out information to allow X10 devices to be controlled. All the better to sell replacement Insteon devices. IMO, this has been the problem with Insteon from the very beginning, a very limited commitment to compatibility. It was this kind of narrow vision that killed both Commodore-Amiga and Digital Equipment Corporation computers. They both had wildly succesful early computers, but then tried to force customers to migrate to their new systems by limiting compatibility and support. If they had played their compatibility card to the max, they would have had a built-in advantage no competitor could touch.
But I hoped I was wrong, and was thinking I would chat with Smarthome people on Monday. Still this was nagging me. So finally I took another look at the techical end of the Smartlinc manual. Well there they also had an explanation of how to build X10 custom commands, similar to what I had seen on the Smarthome Wiki after a google search. But in this case, they had the magic tables that give you the magic characters for each house code and unit number.
For my choices, housecode O requires character "4" (A requires "6").
Unit number 8 requires character "D". Of course there is nothing intuitive about this at all, you simply have to use the lookup table in the manual.
The overall code required to turn unit O8 on is:
02634D00P102634280
and to turn unit O8 off is:
02634D00P102634380
The difference being the third from last character, which is "3" for on and "2" for off. Well this mysterious code is actually described, bit by bit, in the back of the Insteon Smartlinc manual, starting at Page 16. You have to piece together the required bits for what you want to do.
Once I actually discovered that section of the manual, it was only a minutes to success. But prior to that I had been trying many different characters. And even after I found that part of the manual, I had been using the wrong pause code due to a copying mistake. So I spent some time with an X10 monitor trying to figure out the codes that Insteon was actually creating. But once I actually copied the exact required characters from the manual, it worked. And that was about 3am.
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