I apologize for the newbie question. What is the benefit of hooking up an Insteon system to my Vera system?
At this point probably nothing. I think z-wave plus negates any benefit that Insteon had.
The things that drew me in initially were the instant status updates at a decent price, easy control over settings like ramp rate and association with other switches, and a combo fan/light module. The fan module is still a benefit, but it doesn’t work with Vera’s native Insteon support so it’s not really that attractive.
There are many for me. Fanlincs to control my fans, keypadlincs (scene controller) being cheaper and more reliable than zwave solutions as well as having other devices available that aren’t available for the zwave platform.
- Garrett
Well if you have insteon devices already the benefit of hooking it up to vera is that you can control multiple devices types all in Vera. Otherwise you would have different controllers and apps.
If you are asking why insteon devices instead of z-wave devices that is a different question. Personally I prefer insteon for light switches because of how I can setup groups (scenes) that work irrespective of the status of the HA controller. This makes it wife friendly. I also preferred the insteon dimmers. (I actually use z-wave light switch and insteon dimmers mainly due to aesthetic reasons, my z-wave switches only control outside lights - all internal lights are on dual band dimmers).
The next question is what do you use to control Insteon:
- a separate device like the ISY or the Insteon Hub - works but you have separate apps and lack scene integration
- the native insteon support in Vera - hahaha, yeah the support is a joke (IMO), I asked the Vera folks and the said they didn’t plan on evolving this
- the altsteon plugin in Vera - I think this was abandoned, but not sure and I know it works for some.
- the ISY plugin that brings the ISY controlled insteon devices into the Vera. This is what I am planning to do.
Hopefully that gives you some pointers to think about as you read the forum threads and you work out what works for you.
Alex
Thank you all. I still have a lot to learn.
I will keep an eye out on this thread for other people’s input as I get more acquainted with Vera and see if adding insteon support is needed for what I am trying to do.
What are you trying to do?
Honestly, I don’t have anything specific in mind. I am just exploring the capabilities of the system to see if I get any ideas.
Right now I have only a handful of scenes running, nothing fancy. Just turning on and off some lights
I’ve been using insteon since 2006, and if you’re not invested now, run away!
They’ve been a nightmare for me, chronically failing hardware, buggy device interaction, nothing but buggy software and support (mostly due to the hardware and quirks, never ending exceptions), and did I mention the devices all tend to fail?
Look at reviews of even their plm controllers, they’re all known to fail ~1yr, and this has been mostly consistent. When they don’t die within the year, it’s because I gave up and didn’t use it. Almost all of my original switchlinc dimmers die (~14-16?), most of the keypadlync’s developed issues (needing super-hard pushes to work), eventually dying, etc.
Hardware failures aside, almost any thing non-default never works or isn’t supported properly by anyone, so anything other than a dumb switch is useless unless you plan on developing your own code to support them.
Sadly I’ve always replaced small chunks of failed devices over the years, only to watch more die, over and over, never quite being enough warrant ripping all of them (probably 25-30 dimmers), and they are still sadly the cheapest and most attractive out there when you don’t factor replacing them constantly.