Re: [mh] What’s better than Insteon?

On 12/12/20 2:04 AM, Tom MacLean wrote:
> I am planning a basement reno that will lead to a bunch more modules.  Is there another automation technology I should be considering?

I have had so so many troubles over so many years with Insteon. It has 
cost me plenty of dollars and aggravation. Lights failing to switch for 
periods, units failing, more wacky stuff ... and the diagnostics have 
always been incredibly difficult.  I'm finally, after 15+ years, giving 
up on it. (Anyone want to buy some old Insteon parts?)

I am about 90% converted to Shelly devices. These are surprisingly 
inexpensive ($15-$20 per switch). Unlike Insteon switches, Shelly boxes 
are little things that are wired in with an existing switch--they don't 
replace the switch. Like the Sonoff tech that someone else mentioned, 
you can put custom firmware on the Shelly's but I haven't bothered and 
probably won't. The stock stuff works fine. They have some cool features 
like showing power consumption. With a jumper change some of them work 
on 12Vdc for the garage door.

Shellys by default do not do any cloud connection but can be configured 
to do them. My firewall tells me that they have not attempted to "get 
out" of my local network except for time synchronization, which fails 
because I don't allow IOT to access the outside world for any reason. It 
all still works.

Each little $20 device has its own web server and is super easy to 
configure. It has been a joy, compared to all the frustration I have had 
in the past with Insteon home automation.

Here is an interesting article that convinced me to try Shelly: 
https://robdobson.com/2020/11/the-10-reasons-i-ripped-out-a-6k-lighting-system/ 
. The author was dumping z-wave, and does not mention Insteon, but the 
lessons are the same: annoying proprietary protocols, having to link 
devices in, etc. etc.

In my case, I hate Perl and was only using Misterhouse in the hopes that 
it would be prove that Insteon could work reliably. It didn't (not the 
fault of Misterhouse, I think--the Insteon just wasn't reliable). So 
with my Shellys I just do my own little scripts with Python and my home 
web server. To turn on a light it's just a curl request to the web 
server on the device.  I can manage from my phone.

Rich



________________________________________________________
To unsubscribe from this list, go to: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/misterhouse-users