Hi,
I have a setup which is mostly Z-Wave and Philips Hue but where the keypads are Insteon (I have 5 Insteon keypads, 5 insteon outlets, 72 Z-Wave devices, and 25 Hue devices). These keypads are used mostly to enable/disable scenes and convey whether a scene is enabled [1]. Most scenes (think "night", "morning", "day", "evening") are triggered by either time-of-day or motion sensors ... that is, we rarely press any buttons.... as such, most of the traffic to my Insteon keypads are from Homeseer to enable/disable a button (and rarely from a keypad to Homeseer). So far, so good.
Here's an example of the keypad in my foyer:
and here are the rules that trigger the "Island" button (button F):
This works reasonably well but I'm running into comm reliability problems and it's been getting worse the past few weeks... it used to be around 98-99%% but nowadays it seems to be in the low nineties. Essentially every other day, a button isn't updated (e.g. it fails to turn on or off) and I have to manually push it. It's annoying to the point that I'm ready to rip the keypads out of the wall and replace them with something else... but figured I'd post about it here before doing anything that drastic!
Here are some more details about my setup:
One other note about my setup is that a lot of the keypad buttons are turned on/off at the same time... e.g. when my house transitions from day to evening mode, the following happens:
FWIW, I'm surprised comm reliability is this bad... it's almost as if there are no retries being done at all and it's just like UDP where packets can be lost. I mean, with proper retries I'd expect comm reliability either to be 0% or 100% just like with how e.g. TCP works ... that is, it keeps retrying and may be slow but it'll get there eventually.... In stark contrast, my Z-Wave setup has been rock solid, never experienced any packet loss there... I have experienced slow-downs and pop-corn effects but that's fine, the point is that eventually it converges against being correct.
Thanks for any insight!
Regards,
David
[1] : the use of the word "scene" in this post is meant in the abstract sense... e.g. not Z-Wave or Insteon native scenes... e.g. the way I use scenes is that for each scene I have a device in Homeseer to track whether it's enabled and then events to configure lights when this device is turned on and off.
I have a setup which is mostly Z-Wave and Philips Hue but where the keypads are Insteon (I have 5 Insteon keypads, 5 insteon outlets, 72 Z-Wave devices, and 25 Hue devices). These keypads are used mostly to enable/disable scenes and convey whether a scene is enabled [1]. Most scenes (think "night", "morning", "day", "evening") are triggered by either time-of-day or motion sensors ... that is, we rarely press any buttons.... as such, most of the traffic to my Insteon keypads are from Homeseer to enable/disable a button (and rarely from a keypad to Homeseer). So far, so good.
Here's an example of the keypad in my foyer:
and here are the rules that trigger the "Island" button (button F):
This works reasonably well but I'm running into comm reliability problems and it's been getting worse the past few weeks... it used to be around 98-99%% but nowadays it seems to be in the low nineties. Essentially every other day, a button isn't updated (e.g. it fails to turn on or off) and I have to manually push it. It's annoying to the point that I'm ready to rip the keypads out of the wall and replace them with something else... but figured I'd post about it here before doing anything that drastic!
Here are some more details about my setup:
- Insteon 2413U USB Modem Interface, Dual-Band (White)
- Placed centrally in house, no farther than 20 feet from any keypad and no more than 2-3 walls to penetrate
- Only other device on the circuit is a lamp
- 5 x dual-band keypads (combination of dimmers and switches, one 6-button, four 8-button)
- 5 x dual-band dual on/off outlets
- Maximum hops: 4
- Command retries: 25
- Response Timeout (sec): 5
One other note about my setup is that a lot of the keypad buttons are turned on/off at the same time... e.g. when my house transitions from day to evening mode, the following happens:
- Foyer Keypad:
- Day button turns off
- Evening button turns on
- Outside Lights button turns on
- Living Room Keypad
- Lamps button turns on
- Hallway Keypad
- Driveway button turns on
- Front Door Keypad
- Path Lights button turns on
- Post Light button turns on
FWIW, I'm surprised comm reliability is this bad... it's almost as if there are no retries being done at all and it's just like UDP where packets can be lost. I mean, with proper retries I'd expect comm reliability either to be 0% or 100% just like with how e.g. TCP works ... that is, it keeps retrying and may be slow but it'll get there eventually.... In stark contrast, my Z-Wave setup has been rock solid, never experienced any packet loss there... I have experienced slow-downs and pop-corn effects but that's fine, the point is that eventually it converges against being correct.
Thanks for any insight!
Regards,
David
[1] : the use of the word "scene" in this post is meant in the abstract sense... e.g. not Z-Wave or Insteon native scenes... e.g. the way I use scenes is that for each scene I have a device in Homeseer to track whether it's enabled and then events to configure lights when this device is turned on and off.
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