insteon

Insteon, Apple style

Submitted by Steve on Wed, 01/20/2010 - 2:07am
Since moving to this house, I had gone from running one 24/7 computer server to three -- actually four if you consider a hibernating laptop. The web site you're looking at right now ran on one of them -- a FreeBSD Unix server. A Windows box ran my home automation set up. The other computer, running Ubuntu Linux, was mostly work related.

Thing is, the juice needed to run these servers and the related hardware was killing me, including the air conditioning needed to counteract the heat they produced in my small office. The three computers together drew about 700 watt/hours. Add a monitor, KVM, DSL modem, router, hub and backup and I was burning about 900 watts/hour x 24 hours x 365 days. At Con Ed's prevailing rates, it costs $1400/year just to run those three computers. That doesn't include the laptop or the A/C.

Last spring I decided that I had to simplify my hardware and by summer I had a plan: I would move everything to one computer. The problem was, the only computer capable of something like this is the one computer I didn't own: an Apple Macintosh. A Mac Pro seemed like the ideal candidate. Using software from VMware, I would be able to run my Linux and Windows software concurrent with the Mac's OSX operating system. All would share the Mac's beautiful 24" cinema display.

Could it really be that simple? Actually, yes it was. I took delivery of my 8 core, 16GB Mac Pro on the morning of Dec 8. By that evening I had Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP happily humming as virtual machines under OSX. XP even ran noticeably faster than it did on my Pentium 4 machine. I was happy.

But the devil's always in the details, and one of these demons was that the Insteon controller for my existing Windows-based home automation software required a DB9 serial jack. Macs don't have DB9 jacks. In fact, Macs don't even have serial ports, just USB and Firewire. While there are USB serial port emulators, there was a larger show-stopper preventing me from moving my existing Windows-based home automation software to an XP virtual machine on the Mac. Under VMware, virtual machines can only access the USB ports when they are the foreground application, or when it has "focus". That would defeat the purpose of running Insteon on a virtual machine because unless XP was the foreground application when an Insteon event fired, the message would never get sent.

If you're a regular reader of this irregular blog, you know that most of my home's lighting is controlled by computers, not by mechanical switches. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can read the background here. The bottom line is that I love home automation, I have a small fortune invested in it and, one way or another, it needs a central controller. And it appeared that I would have port everything over to the Mac. Short story: ka-ching!

The Insteon software I used on Windows is called HouseLinc. For Macs, the Indigo software seemed to be the way to go. As luck would have it, I already had a USB-based Insteon controller laying around from another project which would save me about eighty bucks. But as MY luck would have it, it was DOA. After spending an evening trying to get it working, I remembered. It was a victim when one of my Con Ed feeder cables shorted out in the street a couple of years ago.

I ordered a new 2414U Powerlinc controller from Smarthome.com. It arrived a week later. As soon as I opened the cover on the cardboard box I knew I was hosed. The device was in pieces -- not as in "broken during shipping" but "some bonehead didn't finish putting it together". What was just as disturbing was that Smarthome didn't sound one bit surprised by my complaint.

Note to the Insteon people: if you don't want Insteon to suffer the same Death By Obscurity as X10, you had better start producing better quality hardware. Only die-hard fan boys will overlook shoddy merchandise. I had to replace my first broken Insteon device two weeks ago: a relay wall switch. It was only three years old and cost $70. That's not acceptable.

Another week passed and I finally received a functioning 2414U. The migration was uneventful and everything worked fine. It was with a bit of sadness that I turned off my Dell Pentium 4 Windows machine, probably for the last time.



    Beware the Sucker Holes

    Submitted by Steve on Wed, 02/04/2009 - 12:43pm
    No, that's not a pornographic double entendre. "Sucker hole" is a term I learned from an old flight instructor. It's a break in the clouds which beckons naive, non-instrument rated pilots to take a chance on finding clear skies through that hole only to have the clouds close in on them and leave them in zero visibility.

    ISY99-i Last week I said I'd post my progress with the new Insteon home automation device, the ISY99-i. Lemme digress for a second. Say what you will about marketing droids, but when a company goes to the trouble of holding a brain jam to create a slick product name for its baby -- like "Insteon" for example -- it says that someone was paying at least a little attention to the customer. Needless to say, this wasn't done with the ISY99-i.

    I've been through this so many times that I knew with 89% certainty what I was embarking on. Out of the box I saw that I was going to have problems. For one, the packing slip said that there was a DB9 serial cable. In fact, it was a cable with a DB9 on one end and an ethernet connector on the other. Useless to me, or for any other purpose I could think of. And there was no manual, just a link to a web site, where it talked about an installation disk, which also wasn't included. After a half hour of searching the site for a download I ran across a forum message saying that the ISY99-i doesn't use an installation disk.

    You know, I can understand why a paper manual might be out of date, but a web site? This wasn't a good start. It only got worse from there.

    For one, the device requires Java to be installed on your computer. My professional experience with Java includes countless crashed web browsers, broken web sites, locked up devices, bloated web servers and poorly written spyware. The ISY99-i didn't do much to temper my dislike for Java. But that's only after I managed to get into the software. I spent most of the afternoon trying to communicate with a dead device until a response to my "Helllp!!" message on the company's forum told me that I had to disable my anti-virus software. What?!! Does the company really expect its customers to also invest in compatible A/V software to use their product?
    Read more »


    My house "blue screened", or The Confessions of a House Geek

    Submitted by Steve on Sat, 01/24/2009 - 8:27pm
    I had my first Insteon home automation device failure this week. Unfortunately, it happened to the brains of the "automation" part -- the software/hardware combination that executes the timers that turn the lights on and off. Specifically, the culprit was the PowerLinc device that bridges my house to the USB port on my computer which runs the timers.

    2414u Here's the little sucker. At 70 bucks, it's not like changing a lightbulb. Okay, I was pissed about it, especially as it's only a little over two years old. But, fact is, I was never happy with this automation set up. For one thing, it requires leaving a Windows box on 24/7 for the timers to work. And the HouseLinc software I was using must have some memory leaks in it because once I removed it from my computer it seemed to gain an extra half a processor.

    What I really want is an Insteon driver for Linux/FreeBSD that would let me build my own timers in Perl, which I could run under Unix cron. That's what I did with my former X10 automation layout, which was decidedly more hobbyist-friendly than Insteon but decidedly more flaky as well, which is why I got rid of it. I spent a couple of hours Googling for open source alternatives to no avail before winding up back at the SmartHome web site.

    It was there I noticed a couple of new Insteon products. One was a relatively inexpensive home automation controller that runs from a smart phone. It got 4 out of 6 on my Coolness Meter but it was functionally less than I had with HouseLinc. True Geeks don't downgrade.
    Read more »


    Insteon, A Year Later.

    Submitted by Steve on Mon, 09/01/2008 - 12:01am
    Last year, I was struggling with upgrading my home automation hardware from fickle X10 to the latest/greatest, Insteon. While cleaning up the blog today I ran across a comment I'd made promising to write about my experience with Insteon after a year of living with it. That was like 18 months ago so I'm a bit late.

    The summary? It's been flawless. About the best thing I can say about a technology is that it works so well you forget that it's technology. You turn on a conventional light switch; you expect it to work. It's been pretty much the same with Insteon.

    The problems I had with Insteon initially reduced to two things: a very noisy powerline LAN for my Slingbox and I didn't have enough Insteon devices in my network to provide a reliable communications cloud. After retiring the problematic Slingbox (the Worst Customer Support Ever) and adding more Insteon switches, my problems disappeared.
    Read more »


      Robot, robot

      Submitted by Steve on Thu, 07/05/2007 - 12:31pm
      There was a song by a Chicago band called The Flock that I used to love during my trippy teen days: 
      Robot, robot arms and legs
Teeth, bones, hair, its all there
Robot, robot arms and legs
Battery's dead, head's dead.
(Mechanical man, mechanical man!)
      Whenever I muck with my home automation hardware this song plays over and over again in my head. It's pretty maddening.

      Sitting on my dining room table since last Thanksgiving was a small pile of boxes containing Insteon controllers, in-wall dimmers, relays and the like that have been waiting patiently for me to complete the master bedroom renovation. I was intending to do client work over the Fourth but after sixteen consecutive days of building database stored procedures I needed a break! So I assembled my tools and got busy making that pile smaller.

      Anyone who has read the X10 primer I posted here knows that I'm a nut for home automation gear. And anyone who has read my blog knows that I've been very faithful with renovating and reproducing the original assets in this old house. But you can keep your Chicago Electric rotary and push button switches and your old pull chain fixtures. I want my electrical system state-of-the-art!
      Read more »


      Insteon Rides Again

      Submitted by Steve on Sun, 12/10/2006 - 12:10pm
      I thought I'd post an update on my trials and tribulations with the Insteon home automation network here. A couple of months ago I posted an X10 and Insteon home automation primer. At that point I was just getting into upgrading my problematic X10 stuff here with the newer, wireless Insteon hardware from SmartHome and didn't know how well this stuff would work or what problems I'd find. However I was fed up with X10's flakiness and Insteon looked like an improvement, at least on paper.

      I ran into problems with Insteon from the git-go, mostly devices that either didn't work or worked only part-time. I was ready to go back to the toggle switch world. But I decided to forge ahead with the upgrade anyway. I'm glad I did because things magically started working.
      Read more »


      When Robots Attack

      Submitted by Steve on Sat, 10/21/2006 - 10:00am
      Being the gadget freak I am, I'm of course a big fan of home automation. 90% of my house is under X10 control and the command of a FreeBSD server running some perl scripts I hacked together. I've already written some articles about X10 and my trials and tribs with it so I won't repeat them here.

      I love having my house turn its own lights on/off. I like setting up whole-house lighting schemes, available at the touch of a button. But truthfully, X10 is a lot like owning a 1970s-vintage Triumph motorcycle. You run it for a while, then you spend a whole lot of time fixing it. X10 devices will work fine for years only to suddenly stop responding to commands. After hours of sleuthing you find that it's because the battery charger for your new camera is generating a noise storm on your household wiring.
      Read more »


      Insteon - The Next Generation

      Submitted by Steve on Thu, 08/24/2006 - 7:34pm
      There have been times when I've been so fed up with an annoying X10 glitch that I've wanted to chuck it all and move back to the toggle switch world. But I'm so used to the convenience of X10 that this Luddite rebelliousness lasts about three seconds.

      In the past few years new technologies challenging X10's low cost and DIY-ability have become available. With the exception of dark horses like UPB, HomePlug, CeBus and a couple of others, and of course the hyper-expensive dedicated control line stuff, most newer home automation devices have abandoned problematic powerline protocols and adopted short-range wireless. The latter group includes Insteon, ZigBee, Z-Wave and Bluetooth. Wireless has become so reliable, pervasive and the hardware has gotten small enough that wireless is a natural for home automation.
      Read more »


      Syndicate content