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Insteon Compared
- NOTES
- This page has not been editted in quite some time and contains some significantly out of date information. If you are new to Misterhouse and Insteon please stick to the rather detailed Insteon page for the time being. It has been significantly revised to make it more accurate
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The section below was originally written by me, rookie user Marc MERLIN, and represent my view and understanding alone (although hopefully with corrections from better informed people were appropriate). It is absolutely not meant at putting Zwave or UPB down, which both have their strenghts over Insteon, but to portrait as accurately as possible the differences between them, especially from the point of view of an mh user (features of a protocol, if not supported by mh, won't be as important to an mh user).
If you are trying to decide for a home automation system other than X10 that you can control from an open source solution which you can hack on, at the time of this writing, Insteon has full two way support in misterhouse and is being actively maintained. From talking to Jason Sharpee, the UPB maintainer, UPB should have similar feature support in misterhouse as Insteon has. Zwave support was also confirmed to be 2 way by David Satterfield, driver maintainer. Below are comparisons of Insteon, Zwave and UPB based on the best of my knowledge. Please provide corrections and updates to the misterhouse list or correct the wiki directly if you have access. When in doubt, please understate or use 'may' or 'should work' :)
For an outlet, it's easy for the HA device to get power since the outlet has both hot and neutral, which the plug in module draws from. For a light switch, hot goes to the light switch, to the light at which point it becomes neutral and closes the circuit. Older houses do not have the neutral wire present in the light switch box. If that is the case, it is a problem because if you have no light bulb to close the circuit, your light switch doesn't have any current flowing through its 2 wires and no way to allow a smart switch to run and receive commands. Problem is that some loads, like a CFL, look like an open circuit and prevent the smart switch from getting a closed loop to get current from and the signals it's watching for. Newer houses have the neutral wire (white or grey) go through the light switch box, which allows you to wire the switch between hot and neutral regardless of what you have on the load wire and whether that load is a light filament that can close a circuit, or a CFL that can't. X10 and Zwave can at least work without a neutral wire if you have light bulbs (not CFLs). Insteon and UPB require neutral to function. So, before you buy anything, check that the light switches you're planning on replacing have a neutral wire nearby or that you can have an electrician add that neutral wire. If you can't, stick with X10 or Zwave and don't expect to be able to run CFLs (also not all Zwave devices support 2 wire/neutral-less operation, but at least some do).
- Update: Insteon supports connections without neutral wires at the switch now. See 2-Wire INSTEON Dimmer Kit and 2-Wire INSTEON Switch Kit. Note that those are a workaround for the lack of neutral wire at the switch box, they cost more, but the work.
First, see the Insteon primer from smarthome and you can also see their obviously biased, but still interesting comparison between Insteon, UPB, and Zwave (among others). Another very nice page to look at is this HA Systems Comparison Page.
- Insteon may or may not be the best technology of the 4 depending on your requirements, but in the cases where it's not perfect, proper understanding of how it works allows for making it work very reliably. Another important point for me, is that it has the very good support in mh thanks to lots of work from Gregg Liming (please don't Email him directly, Email the list if the archives don't help, he's good at reading and replying there). Also Insteon is currently cheaper than both Zwave and UPB while not being clearly inferior for most uses.
- Insteon, like X10, goes over power lines but the target device must ACK the message or gets it sent 3 times. Each device also rebroadcasts the signal, making it stronger. Insteon is 2 way and can query devices (like some X10 devices with extended codes). This makes Insteon a very clear winner over X10 (which it was designed to be). In other words, unless you can't afford at least Insteon, it does not make much sense to deploy even two way X10 devices with extended codes in a new house today: too many things can damage the signal and the protocol does not support acks. More simply, Insteon is a clear superset of X10, except for people who don't have neutral wires as explained above.
- Insteon is the only one that is backward compatible with X10, which can be useful for having dirt cheap X10 RF remotes control Insteon switches directly (without going through mh). For Zwave/UPB, you need to get an X10 receiver and bridge/resend from X10 to the native protocol. Note however that the insteon access points that you need to bridge your two phases, are not compatible with X10 RF remotes or X10 wireless motion sensors (Insteon uses its own RF protocol). You have to use an X10 RF receiver to receive those codes and bridge them on the power line.
- UPB is like Insteon where the signal is more reliable than X10, but its signal is stronger and it also costs more than Insteon. UPB does not have RF bridges like Insteon, however it has higher voltage signal for better reach and resiliency to signal suckers. UPB also has a few extra configuration features (like a programmable multi-color LED in the switch, or autodiscovery of all devices, which Insteon does not have). UPB needs to be initially configured in windows via upstart, but then you can fully use it in mh. UPB is more expensive than Insteon (1.5-2x) but UPB users tend to say you get what you pay for :). See mh UPB page for a few more details.
- UPB is the only one to allow for a light switch to be programatically disconnected from its load (basically a switch is an independent initiator and responder). In Insteon, a switch can switch any other load, but it must switch its own load wire (although you don't have to connect it to anything). It however lacks in the RF remotes and transmitters category. People seem to use X1RF devices and an X10RF to UPB bridge (Insteon and Zwave both have a reliable native RF protocol with acknowledgments that are lacking from the X10RF solution).
- this HA system comparison page says that Zwave does not allow switches to link to other switches for n way setups (UPB and Insteon do). However, not counting X10, **Zwave is the only one that has at least some devices that work in houses without neutral wiring** (well, Insteon supports this now too, see 2-Wire INSTEON Dimmer Kit and 2-Wire INSTEON Switch Kit).
- Insteon is not dual powerline/RF like the Insteon docs may imply, so it's not a Zwave killer (Zwave on the other hand is RF only), however Insteon can use multiple access points to not only bridge the signal between phases, but also to repeat the signal in hard to reach areas in your house, or across a GFI outlet that eats signal (GFIs, or ground fault interruptors are typically in kitchens, bathrooms, and garages, and are used to further protect your circuits from shorts. They however can also dampen/eat powerline signals). Insteon can win over Zwave since you can have a long run to a far away device via the powerline, where RF from Zwave would not reach. On the flipside, Zwave does win in situations were your power line is dirty and you cannot locate the sources to put filters on.
- Zwave should be a reasonable competitor to Insteon and its support in mh looks close if not equivalent to Insteon or UPB: the mh Zwave page seems to imply you only have one way support, but it does have 2 way support with the RZC0P-1LW serial interface on the devices that support it. However, not all Zwave devices can send unsolicited messages back (i.e. you toggling a switch being recorded by mh works with expensive Leviton switches but not cheaper Intermatic ones) whereas all UPB and Insteon switches send local toggle info regardless which vendor you got them from. Zwave is harder to configure as all devices are not all equal (some are routers, some are not) and more or less require you to setup your network with a master controller (all Insteon devices are equal on the network and rebroadcast everything. They can be configured locally or remotely via the PLM you already need, as opposed to a separate master controller. UPB is the same I believe). David Satterfield, driver maintainer said he had no real issues with RF interference or range, but it is a known issue that you can't go as far without devices to repeat the RF signal (so the more devices you have, the better).
- Insteon however needs you to understand that you have 2 phases in your house, and you may have to trace devices on a few of your lines if you find yourself in need of filters due to signal suckers (devices that suck up the low voltage DC signals Insteon sends on the line). Zwave doesn't need filters since it doesn't go through the power lines (so it will do better), and UPB is said to have a strong enough (40V DC) signal that it reaches very far and is mostly immune to signal suckers that otherwise would need to be behind a filter for Insteon and X10.
- Zwave is multi vendor but some vendors have added features on their devices (like switches that report local toggles vs ones that don't). UPB is also multi vendor, and I'm told all devices are compatible and offer the same features. Insteon is multi vendor kinda (see insteon.net), but most of the devices come from smarthome. That said, Insteon compatibility between smarthome and the few other vendors has not been a problem so far and they are all full 2 way with reporting of local toggles.
- Insteon likely has the most detailed documentation in mh :)
In the interest of full disclosure, while I do like insteon, its features and its pricepoint, despite everything I learned, I still have occasional commands that get delayed, or lost on my network (mostly between keypadlincs, where I believe the retries aren't as reliable/many as what I can do from misterhouse from the PLM). It's rare, but it does happen. The good news is that I can have my PLM and mh listen for commands and notice if some didn't get to their destination by polling devices from time to time, and correct the problem in software (so, you don't have to worry about your fish dying if your water pump is on insteon and somehow the on command got lost, which again, should be very rare or never happen. Gregg's take on this, is that anyone who puts his pets' survival in the hand of home automation is an idiot ;) ). In all fairness, I have no idea if Zwave or UPB are truly trouble free either. If you have hard data either way (with a decent install, not just one switch and 2 lights :) ), please update this wiki accordingly.
Dimming CFLs have always been a bit tricky since they can introduce noise on the powerline, and they are not all created equal. I'm guessing they probably work fine with Zwave since Zwave is RF (as long sa the Zwave switch you use has a neutral wire or is a plug in module; there is no way it'll work with a 2 wire switch). UPB is said to have issues with dimming CFLs low because it introduces noise that could look like UPB commands. As for Insteon, while Smarthome does not officially support use of dimmable CFLs with their switchlinc dimmers, they work for me, at least given the right dimmable CFL. You can otherwise use any CFL (dimmable or not) with an Insteon switchlinc relay. Non dimmable CFLs will kind of work with switchlinc dimmers, but may not be happy. You should avoid that combination. I personally found these for $1/CFL after rebates: 12 Dimmable Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs CFL 75w=15w from ULA/ U Lighting America. While they are in no way perfect, they do dim to almost nothing and work with the dimmer switches. They however are prone to flickering a bit at very low brightness (less than 30%) when you have several in parallel, and you can actually see them dim a bit when you send lots of Insteon codes on the powerline, but otherwise they've been working well enough for me. Be however wary of well enough though: my network is not super reliable (as in my PLM sometimes has to retransmit even at night when there are no other uses of the network and it is not uncommon to see replies with a hop count of 1 or 0). Because those are mostly on power legs that have all my wall switches and CFLs, I do think CFLs do damage the Insteon signal somewhat. Insteon just seems to work well enough despite that most of the time.
For more details about CFL noise, you can read this page on CFLs vs X10 which is relevant for Insteon too.