With the full understanding and expectation that “beauty is oftentimes in the eye of the beholder” I thought I’d ask the question. I’m getting close to pulling the trigger on replacing most/all of my home’s switches to either:
Leviton VRE06-1LZ and VRS-15 (with necessary companions where needed)
Insteon 2477D and 2477S
I’ve also tested Coopers and GEs and (for me) it has come down to the above two. Cost is, of course, a consideration but I also believe you (generally) get what you pay for. After bulk discounts, I can do an Insteon installation for about 1/3 (yep!) the cost of Leviton. The wife likes both but seems to be leaning a little towards Leviton.
Some notes:
The Leviton “remembers” where it was at the last time you set it re: dim level.
The Insteon “feel” is a little “light” or “cheap” (may be too harsh of a word)
The Insteon fades up nicely from 0 to the requested level so memory may not be an issue (just push and hold up)
Both “look fine” on the wall with maybe the edge going slightly to the Leviton (subjective, I know)
Both seem to dim LED loads just fine. (no flickering or buzzing that I can hear/see)
I was wondering if I can get people to chime in with their experiences of both/either - especially if you have a larger-scale deployment.
I’m running Alsteon with one switch and it seems fine. It’s a little clunky to set up at first (associate with PLM - then create device in Vera) but after that it’s OK. Does it scale well? Is it generally less/more reliable than Z-Wave?
If you do device to go Insteon, take some of that savings and get an ISY controller. You can use the ISY plugin to have access to the dimmer / switches, but the reliability and control of the ISY. I use to use Altsteon, but it started to become limited. I have both controllers working together with out issue. If you device on the Leviton switchers / dimmers, they are pricey, but wroth the money if you want to stick with z-wave. That is all I have in the house except for a few locations that do not get much use.
[quote=“garrettwp, post:2, topic:179818”]If you do device to go Insteon, take some of that savings and get an ISY controller. You can use the ISY plugin to have access to the dimmer / switches, but the reliability and control of the ISY. I use to use Altsteon, but it started to become limited. I have both controllers working together with out issue. If you device on the Leviton switchers / dimmers, they are pricey, but wroth the money if you want to stick with z-wave. That is all I have in the house except for a few locations that do not get much use.
Garrett[/quote]
Garrett -
Are you saying all you have is Leviton or Insteon? I’ve seen your ISY posts, etc so assumed you have a lot of Insteon but the above insinuates otherwise. Would you mind sharing your limitations and why you went ISY? All I’m looking to do (I think) is lighting control over Insteon (no sensors, etc). I will probably have around 20-24 switches/dimmers.
I have both. My switches / dimmers are all leviton. My insteon devices consist of KeypadLincs and FanLincs. I have many KeypadLincs through out the house. It was much cheaper than buying the leviton scene controllers and work very well. I have the ISY as I wanted better insteon support as Altsteon has it’s limitations. At the time prior to buying the ISY, I was using Altsteon but it did not support the ability to control the button lights for when devices are on etc e.g. z-wave devices. I bought the ISY and developed a plugin that works with Vera. It allows control of the Insteon devices and instant feedback. It also allows me to control the scenes and programs on the ISY. A few other users on this forum have switched over to using the ISY from Alsteon. PurdueGuy has contributed to the plugin as well. There is also some support for the z-wave portion of the ISY. I feel that the ISY has much better control.
[quote=“garrettwp, post:5, topic:179818”]I have both. My switches / dimmers are all leviton. My insteon devices consist of KeypadLincs and FanLincs. I have many KeypadLincs through out the house. It was much cheaper than buying the leviton scene controllers and work very well. I have the ISY as I wanted better insteon support as Altsteon has it’s limitations. At the time prior to buying the ISY, I was using Altsteon but it did not support the ability to control the button lights for when devices are on etc e.g. z-wave devices. I bought the ISY and developed a plugin that works with Vera. It allows control of the Insteon devices and instant feedback. It also allows me to control the scenes and programs on the ISY. A few other users on this forum have switched over to using the ISY from Alsteon. PurdueGuy has contributed to the plugin as well. There is also some support for the z-wave portion of the ISY. I feel that the ISY has much better control.
Garrett[/quote]
Thanks. It looks like you have to buy a PLM too (which makes sense). Unfortunately, I have a 2413U which is not compatible! >:( (I presume because the ISY has a serial connection.) sigh $79, gone.
Although - I do get pretty decent response time from Alsteon (regarding status). I guess, if I go Insteon, I could always start with Alsteon and move to ISY later…
Don’t get me wrong, Altsteon is great. But not for the faint of heart to setup. If you are just using it for Switches and Dimmers, you should be fine. However, development has stalled on it, so support may be hard to come by.
I have Leviton Vizia RF+ switches all over the house.
[ul][li]15x Dimmers (VRI06, VRI10) + Matching Dimmers[/li]
[li]7x Switches (VRS15)[/li]
[li]2x Fan Controllers (VRF01)[/li]
[li]3x Scene Controllers + Load (VRCS4-MRX)[/li][/ul]
Initially bought a bunch of Appliance modules, mostly older stock stuff from Monster Cable (rebadged older Vizia RF, slower Z-Wave speeds) to act as repeaters as I built out the Network.
Probably not an issue if you build out the Network all-at-once, but mine was built out over the last 5 yrs.
General comments:
[ul][li]In general I’d use Leviton again, they’re solid.[/li]
[li]The Scene controllers are finnicky, but that’s probably an artifact of how they’re setup under Vera.[/li]
[li]I have about 8x more VRS15 unit to put in, that I haven’t gotten around to.[/li]
[li]Coverage was greatly improved by running an External antenna on Vera3 (see hack thread)[/li]
[li]I’m using CREE Light Bulbs from Home Depot these days with great success on the VRI Dimmers. (Cree A19 TW 2700K, Cree BR30 2700K).
I’m running 1x, 2x and 4x bulb configurations with no noticable hum or flicker - unless I mix-n-match LED bulb types on a circuit.[/li]
[li]I have a few VRE-06 units that I intended to put in, but never needed to once I found decent LED Bulbs that work with the cheaper VRI models.[/li]
[li]Dimming LED bulbs to lowest levels using VRI models doesn’t dim to equivalent of Incandescent bulbs, but I don’t need that… [/li][/ul]
Thanks for taking the time to write up such lengthy responses.
Today I moved the Cooper I was testing down to the basement. This allowed me to put the Leviton up to a more high-traffic area to hopefully get a better idea what I’m going to do.
Thanks for the tip on being able to let Insteon remember where it was at. The manual online discusses this clearly. The “quick start” in the box did not.
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