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    EV charging causes comm problems

    Just recently I've determined that when I am charging my Bolt EV, some of my farther out devices seem to have comm errors. I can see the number of hops increase and sometimes I get an Unknown (-1) status on a device. Comm reliability % is below 20%. I may have seen it in the past when my elec water heater and the elec dryer are running at the same time. I'm assuming that some sort of noise is being introduced. For reference, when I say high usage it seems to occur above 8kw use. It is a chargepoint EVSE.

    I'm not looking for a 'fix' but I did want to raise an awareness that Insteon might have comm problems as a result of high use by other kinds of devices. I knew motors might do this but not the EVSE or a water heater.

    #2
    Thanks for reporting.
    Mark

    HS3 Pro 4.2.19.5
    Hardware: Insteon Serial PLM | AD2USB for Vista Alarm | HAI Omnistat2 | 1-Wire HA7E | RFXrec433 | Dahua Cameras | LiftMaster Internet Gateway | Tuya Smart Plugs
    Plugins: Insteon (mine) | Vista Alarm (mine) | Omnistat 3 | Ultra1Wire3 | RFXCOM | HS MyQ | BLRadar | BLDenon | Tuya | Jon00 Charting | Jon00 Links
    Platform: Windows Server 2022 Standard, i5-12600K/3.7GHz/10 core, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD

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      #3
      An electric water heater should not cause problems with Insteon because it is a purely resistive device. In most cases it actually helps Insteon because it bridges both power phases and provides a path for signals to jump phases. An electric dryer (or washer) can cause problems if they have an electronic control. Your EV charger can easily cause trouble because they use a switching power supply to convert AC to DC to charge the battery. They can be noisy. Not a lot you can do about that unless it is a 15 amp plug-in-the-wall charger - if so you can use a 15amp filter.

      However, you might be able to improve your Insteon system inn other places so it can cope with the EV charger. Refer to these two links for more info on making your Insteon system more robust.

      http://board.homeseer.com/showthread...ne#post1226477
      https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/li...e?q=filterlinc

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        #4
        Originally posted by logbuilder View Post
        ...I'm not looking for a 'fix' but I did want to raise an awareness that Insteon might have comm problems as a result of high use by other kinds of devices. I knew motors might do this but not the EVSE or a water heater.
        It's not the amount of power being used. It's the type of load instead. Any highly capacitive load will absorb the Insteon power line signal. Many electronic loads (like switching power supplies) can generate electrical and RF noise in the same bands that Insteon uses. In either case, the signal to noise can be lowered to where it doesn't work anymore.

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          #5
          Thanks Burrington! You have gone far deeper into understanding this than I. Great writeups.

          On my suspicion that the hot water heater causing it, your info indicates it isn't the water heater. It probably is the elec clothes dryer. The dryer and the water heater are often on at the same time when doing laundry.

          Thanks again.

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            #6
            If you do not have a filterlinc on your laptop/PC/printer/modem, that is the first place to start. Those are all guaranteed Insteon signal killers and usually located on the same plug as the Insteon PLM/Hub. So the signal is dead before it even gets out of the room. Plug your power bar into the bottom of the filterlinc, and then everything else into the power bar. Keep the PLM/Hub plugged directly into the wall. You can plug the PLM into the front outlet of the filterlinc (the front outlet is straight through not filtered), but that can cause it to overheat and shorten its life. I use a 3-way octopus plug between the filterlinc and the PLM to give an airspace for cooling.

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              #7
              Re: Electric Vehicle Chargers causing Insteon problems:

              As interest to others who may read this thread, I have a Tesla Model S with a 100 amp wall charger and dual in-car chargers. Even at full 72 amp charge there is no noticeable affect on Insteon.

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