A message from Steve at Smarthome.

[snedecor]

Why do button press problems continue to plague Insteon switches?

I have bought switches from Smarthome, when they were X-10 only, from Leviton, and even from X-10 itself, and more recently, due to my decision to get away from X-10 to Insteon, lots of Insteon paddle type decora lighting switches. I have only had problems with the Insteon switches, primarily the ICONS. NONE of the other brands have EVER had such frustrating problems.

From the beginning, the many of the switches have become problematic when responding to local on commands from the paddle. They will not respond to local paddle presses, even though you hear the micro-switch activating. X-10 and Insteon commands will activate the "on" just fine, but local paddle presses do not. Sometimes, you can hit the switch multiple times , and it finally activates.

I have even sent some Icon switches back for warranty replacement. The replacements are now starting to fail, ALWAYS on the ON keypress.

It is disheartening to pay $35 to $50 for a simple light switch and have so many failures. The WAF goes into the toilet if she can't turn on a light when entering a room. I'm even considering putting those crappy X-10 stick-a-switches next to my Insteon light switches, so that at least I'll have a way to turn the lights on in a room.

Why is this happening? Is it the micro-switches, the progamming in the microcontroller, or what?


You have competitors out there, Smarthome, (Z-wave, UPB to name a few) that are either equal or close to you in cost. I'm seriously considering moving on, biting the bullet, and letting everyone I know why I am moving on.

 

[Herdfan]

I have even sent some Icon switches back for warranty replacement. The replacements are now starting to fail, ALWAYS on the ON keypress.

What is interesting is I posted about this problem back when it was more prevalent that it is now. I had HL running and we had the HVAC guy out here doing our PM. He went into the attic like he normally did and came back saying the switch didn't work. So I turned the light on via a keypad and figured it was just another failure.

What was interesting is that HL had been logging and all the presses were being received as OFF presses. Not want to leave it up to the HVAC guy, I went up and tried to turn the light on myself and sure enough, HL logged them as OFF presses.

After SH refused to replace the device (it was an ICON 1 month out of warranty), I went Lutron and have never looked back or had a device fail.

 

[Xpendable]

What was interesting is that HL had been logging and all the presses were being received as OFF presses. Not want to leave it up to the HVAC guy, I went up and tried to turn the light on myself and sure enough, HL logged them as OFF presses.

Are you sure you didn't mount the switch upside down? Sorry, I couldn't resist! All kiding aside, I do remember you complaining about that way back when.

 

[KenM]

I WAS going to keep my trap shut (ya right! As long as * deleted because my comments were were/are out of line, sorry)

To me, it is so nice that someone from SH is willing to help in any public forum, in any way. Remember that one saying .. "Do not shoot the messenger".

I suspect that Steve is just doing the best job that he can. For someone like me, who has at times, been (sort of) in Steve's place, I can say, to Steve... You are braver than I am, not for $1000 would I jump into this 'debate' on the side of INSTEON.

I do need to know, ... What in the he@l is the correct way to spell INSTEON? Is it all capital letters, or just the first letter?

In their documentation, INSTEON seemed the correct spelling.

That is just me, a little crazy after too many years of hard core programming and customer support.

Steve, I respect you man.



ken

edit corrected my own bad
k

 

[Herdfan]

[Are you sure you didn't mount the switch upside down? :

LOL

 

[SteveL]

Why do button press problems continue to plague Insteon switches?

I have bought switches from Smarthome, when they were X-10 only, from Leviton, and even from X-10 itself, and more recently, due to my decision to get away from X-10 to Insteon, lots of Insteon paddle type decora lighting switches. I have only had problems with the Insteon switches, primarily the ICONS. NONE of the other brands have EVER had such frustrating problems.

From the beginning, the many of the switches have become problematic when responding to local on commands from the paddle. They will not respond to local paddle presses, even though you hear the micro-switch activating. X-10 and Insteon commands will activate the "on" just fine, but local paddle presses do not. Sometimes, you can hit the switch multiple times , and it finally activates.

I have even sent some Icon switches back for warranty replacement. The replacements are now starting to fail, ALWAYS on the ON keypress.

It is disheartening to pay $35 to $50 for a simple light switch and have so many failures. The WAF goes into the toilet if she can't turn on a light when entering a room. I'm even considering putting those crappy X-10 stick-a-switches next to my Insteon light switches, so that at least I'll have a way to turn the lights on in a room.

Why is this happening? Is it the micro-switches, the progamming in the microcontroller, or what?


You have competitors out there, Smarthome, (Z-wave, UPB to name a few) that are either equal or close to you in cost. I'm seriously considering moving on, biting the bullet, and letting everyone I know why I am moving on.

snedecor,

I am sorry to hear about your experience. I started putting the INSTEON switches in on a professional level shortly after they came out. I did ten houses with over 100 switches in each over the period of 5 months. Of those homes, eight of them have never had a switch go bad, in one of them I had to replace about 10 over the course of a year and a half, and the third I have almost replaced everyone. Smarthome has extended the warranty on this problem for 7 years from date of purchase. Just because it sounds like the micro switch sounds like it is being engaged it probably is not. If you were to take the paddle off and push the switches on and off it will probably work. Since that problem was fixed I have not seen this happen again. Keep in mind that the National Electrical Code states that you have to derate the switches by 20% when they are ganged together in a box. I am not sure if this was your case, but the icon switch is rated at 300W and if it is in a box with other devices, it is only good for 240W. I wish you luck with whatever technology you go with.


SteveL

 

[snedecor]

Why do button press problems continue to plague Insteon switches?

I have bought switches from Smarthome, when they were X-10 only, from Leviton, and even from X-10 itself, and more recently, due to my decision to get away from X-10 to Insteon, lots of Insteon paddle type decora lighting switches. I have only had problems with the Insteon switches, primarily the ICONS. NONE of the other brands have EVER had such frustrating problems.

From the beginning, the many of the switches have become problematic when responding to local on commands from the paddle. They will not respond to local paddle presses, even though you hear the micro-switch activating. X-10 and Insteon commands will activate the "on" just fine, but local paddle presses do not. Sometimes, you can hit the switch multiple times , and it finally activates.

I have even sent some Icon switches back for warranty replacement. The replacements are now starting to fail, ALWAYS on the ON keypress.

It is disheartening to pay $35 to $50 for a simple light switch and have so many failures. The WAF goes into the toilet if she can't turn on a light when entering a room. I'm even considering putting those crappy X-10 stick-a-switches next to my Insteon light switches, so that at least I'll have a way to turn the lights on in a room.

Why is this happening? Is it the micro-switches, the progamming in the microcontroller, or what?


You have competitors out there, Smarthome, (Z-wave, UPB to name a few) that are either equal or close to you in cost. I'm seriously considering moving on, biting the bullet, and letting everyone I know why I am moving on.

snedecor,

I am sorry to hear about your experience. I started putting the INSTEON switches in on a professional level shortly after they came out. I did ten houses with over 100 switches in each over the period of 5 months. Of those homes, eight of them have never had a switch go bad, in one of them I had to replace about 10 over the course of a year and a half, and the third I have almost replaced everyone. Smarthome has extended the warranty on this problem for 7 years from date of purchase. Just because it sounds like the micro switch sounds like it is being engaged it probably is not. If you were to take the paddle off and push the switches on and off it will probably work. Since that problem was fixed I have not seen this happen again. Keep in mind that the National Electrical Code states that you have to derate the switches by 20% when they are ganged together in a box. I am not sure if this was your case, but the icon switch is rated at 300W and if it is in a box with other devices, it is only good for 240W. I wish you luck with whatever technology you go with.


SteveL

Steve,

Thanks for (apparently) nothing, sir.

1) Almost all of the failures are in single switch boxes, with a single incandescent fixture in the ceiling.

2) You say "I'm sorry to hear about your experience", and then comes the knife... "I wish you luck with whatever technology you go with". Do you actually want to make customers happy by excelling at customer service and fixing what you broke by obviously having poor build quality, or do you (as a company) just want to rope in new customers who haven't experienced the problems you foisted off on previous customers?

As you may have seen, the economy is tanking. New, naive customers are going to be harder and harder to come by. Think of the goodwill you could have engendered by stating, "We stand by our Insteon switches. No matter where you bought them, for x years we will replace the switches (and the replacements, should they fail)" Then, we become loyal to the company, not just the brand and the item. Happy customers are more likely to be willing to pay the outrageous list prices you charge (didn't think we noticed?).

Oh, well, off to participate in the "Which technology should I use to replace all my failing Insteon switches" thread....

 

[Herdfan]

but the icon switch is rated at 300W

Except for that first batch that had the 600W stickers on them.

 

[Xpendable]

If you were to take the paddle off and push the switches on and off it will probably work.

Steve, I'm afraid you may have been misinformed. After extensive research by both Smarthome and customers, it was discovered and confirmed that there was a problem with some of microswitches themselves. I believe it was discovered that some (not all) of the microswitches had defective manufacturing that actually caused them to fail over time. I think this was due to oxidation of the contactor inside the microswitch, or perhaps the solder joints. You could buy a SwitchLinc that worked perfectly when first installed, but eventually the bad microswitches would fail due to oxidation -- even if the switch was rarely physically operated.

I had about 5 or 6 of these switches that failed on me. I took the paddles off each one and pressed the microswitches manually with a pencil eraser. I found that over time, they worked less and less until they stopped working entirely. You'd still hear a "click", but the microswitch no longer functioned. So your statement that taking the paddle off and pushing the switches would probably work was invalid back when this happened. I remember being told by Smarthome that eventually manufacturing was switched to use a different microswitch to fix this problem.

 

[SteveL]

I was a combination of the paddle and microswitch switch together. It started to take more and more pressure to push the microswitch and it required the spring in the paddle to push the plunger with enough force to engage the switch. There is a seperation between the pressure that is put on the switch and how much pressure the spring against the plunger pushed on the microswitch. You may have had a unique case but in most cases the microswitch still works, it just needed more pressure to engage it than the spring could provide. This problem has been identified and resolved with switches that have been shipping for a year and a half now. If you kept pushing on the microswitch alot after the switch paddle is off it will probably become harder and harder to control over time. That was not my point. I was pointing out that in most cases where the switch stopped working you could still control it directly from the microswitch.

SteveL

 

[SteveL]

I didn't say they were poor springs. It was the fact that the microswitch started to take more pressure to engage it. With the new design they are rock solid.

SteveL

 

[SteveL]

What new design paddles? The original paddles will work fine on the new switches.

SteveL

 

[electron]

Since everyone seems to be pretty active now, you are all more than welcome to join us in the chat, where it might be easier to discuss this.

 

[Sendero]

Hi my name is Steve, I'm the Nation Sales & Training Manager for INSTEON at Smarthome. I have been an automation contractor and installer of these products for some time and for the last 2 ½ years I have been training dealer / installers on the INSTEON product line.

I have been following the threads here with interest and I would like to help clear up some information and lend a hand to those who need help. I would like to offer installation advice and troubleshooting tips for those that have had some troubles with their installs. I will not be answering developer protocol questions, but I can provide quick and efficient ways to install and program your INSTEON devices. I travel quite often for the company so I will not be monitoring the board on a regular basis but feel free to email me and I will do what I can to offer any support.

www.insteon.net is also a way to get in contact with me and our developer forum. We also post INSTEON training locations on this site. If you are not a Smarthome dealer and you would like to go to a training then plese contact me direct.

SteveL

Hi Steve,
What is the real support on devices? I have 2 icon switches and 1 keypadlinc that have all developed issues this week. The two icon switces have problems with the physical switch. One of them only recognizes the top of the paddle and the other only recognizes the bottom. Now if only I could combine them

As for the keypadlinc, its apparently toast. No electrical events in the house. Just one day I went to use it and all the lights were out. No result from pressing any of the buttons. I just replaced it and one of the Icons tonight. I think that this is unacceptable to have three devices go bad in my sytem. Since I bought in a couple groups of switches, I cannot tell you how long I have had them. I know it's been no more than 2 years. These were installed in my house that I only puchased 2 years ago.

 

[SteveL]

Hi my name is Steve, I'm the Nation Sales & Training Manager for INSTEON at Smarthome. I have been an automation contractor and installer of these products for some time and for the last 2 ½ years I have been training dealer / installers on the INSTEON product line.

I have been following the threads here with interest and I would like to help clear up some information and lend a hand to those who need help. I would like to offer installation advice and troubleshooting tips for those that have had some troubles with their installs. I will not be answering developer protocol questions, but I can provide quick and efficient ways to install and program your INSTEON devices. I travel quite often for the company so I will not be monitoring the board on a regular basis but feel free to email me and I will do what I can to offer any support.

www.insteon.net is also a way to get in contact with me and our developer forum. We also post INSTEON training locations on this site. If you are not a Smarthome dealer and you would like to go to a training then plese contact me direct.

SteveL

Hi Steve,
What is the real support on devices? I have 2 icon switches and 1 keypadlinc that have all developed issues this week. The two icon switces have problems with the physical switch. One of them only recognizes the top of the paddle and the other only recognizes the bottom. Now if only I could combine them

As for the keypadlinc, its apparently toast. No electrical events in the house. Just one day I went to use it and all the lights were out. No result from pressing any of the buttons. I just replaced it and one of the Icons tonight. I think that this is unacceptable to have three devices go bad in my sytem. Since I bought in a couple groups of switches, I cannot tell you how long I have had them. I know it's been no more than 2 years. These were installed in my house that I only puchased 2 years ago.

sendero,

The icon switches you have sound like they were manufactured before the microswitch change some time ago. The problem with the switches has an extended warrenty on them for 7 years. The keypad power supply has a voltage range where it can opperate safely. I'm not sure where the numbers are but somewhere around 130V on the Hi side and 90V on the Low side. If the voltage spikes or dips beyond these points the power supply can drop off line and look like it is dead though it actually protects the switch from damage. A simple power reset will bring the switch back by pulling out the set button for 5 seconds and just tapping it back in. If this does not fix it then it sounds like the keypad went bad. Please contact me directly if you need further help.

SteveL