What can Altsteon do?

Other Devices & Integrations More Home Control
#1

I have some Insteon dimmers and the Vera basic options are obviously poor. I see all this talk about Alsteon but I can’t figure out exactly what it does. What options will it give me on my dimmers that I don’t have now?

I’m considering returning my Insteon dimmers and going all z-wave if Alsteon isn’t a lot more powerful.

Thanks in advance!

#2

Altsteon works with a lot more Insteon devices, like scene controllers, fan controllers, etc. Altsteon also gets events from the Insteon network. This allows the lights to update the Vera UI when controlled locally, this also allows insteon switches and scene controllers to trigger events in the Vera UI. In general, it is what should be included with the Vera when they advertise Insteon support. It is certainly worth giving a shot before you make any returns.

#3

Thanks for the reply. Will it add any device options? I find it a little disheartening that I cannot adjust the ramp rate. There are a lot of scenes where I’d like the ramp rate to be very slow.

#4

Not that I know of directly (although the daemon seems capable). Some of the insteon switches could set separate “local” and “scene” ramp rates. So I usually set the local rate faster than the remote rate. However, this might be switch version dependent. I have been trying to work with fba on a solution to another problem which would allow the scene rate to be used from altsteon. However, in its current state, I think it is using the “instant” on command, so it is always instant.