Re: Insteon Review

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

I swapped locations for the two RF modules. The one with the rapidly
flickering LED is no longer flickering. The one that was stable is now
flickering. So there is some environmental cause. I suspect some noise
source on the phase with the flickering LED. I'll try to isolate the source
later. It may be the pulses from an unknown source I've shown in the
screenshots at www.mbx-usa.com/insteon.htm which although present on the
other phase are very low amplitude or it might be noise from an ATX power
supply that's on the phase where the rapid flickring occurs.

Interestingly, while testing that all modules still worked, I saw my first
"missed" command. The module on the phase opposite the controller took a few
seconds to respond to an OFF command. The LED on the controller flashed
on/off for several seconds as it does when the target module is unplugged.
Note that the module did respond after a longer than normal delay - it
apparently sent a NAK (or failed to send an ACK) and the controller tried
again. I am more and more impressed with the Insteon technology.

I also moved the ESM1 to the other phase. It shows brief activity when the
LED blinks off periodically. The time between these events varies from 10 to
30 seconds. The powerline activity is not present if the RF unit is
unplugged so I speculate that it's either some Insteon housekeeping message
or maybe some other 900MHz device in the neighborhood. In a mixed
environment it presents a potential for collisions with X-10 PLC signals.