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Insteon is a new technology from SmartHome Design. This new powerline carrier technology facilitates much better
communication between devices, keypads, and a home automation system.
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It's
hard to put into words how impressive HCA is... All of the Insteon
improvements really shine through in the latest release. The new VSE making
linking Insteon devices so easy, I can now link everything without having to
run all over the house pushing buttons. That along with the Insteon
thermostat, EZRain and IR control features mean there is very little left in
my house that I can't easily automate.
-- Eric W
During the development of HCA 8 we concentrated on Insteon.
Our goal was to provide you with a set of tools to best deploy and manage an
Insteon network. These changes are:
 | Visual Scene Editor
Rather than creating scenes manually, HCA 8 provides a
visual method to program scene controllers and scene responders. |
| Database capture
HCA reads the memory from your Insteon devices.
This let's HCA better understand all the links between all your devices.
This helps keep HCA's state up to date with your devices, let's HCA show the
connections between devices, and hunt down network linking problems. |
| Map for documentation of network
How are all your devices programmed? What happens
if a device loses it's programming or breaks? With the Insteon Network
Map you can see at a glance what controls and what responds. |
| Read existing Insteon network
If you have already installed and linked Insteon gear, HCA can read out the
contents of a device and follow the links to locate other devices.
This method then lets you create HCA devices to represent them. From
an Insteon network quickly build a HCA design. |
| Device Replace
Replacing a device in an Insteon network is challenging.
Not only does it have to be installed but it has to be reprogrammed and also
all other devices that link with it. This is a major job. HCA 8
can do it all for you with the Device Replace Wizard. |
| Improved linking tabs for devices and controllers
In HCA 7 we gave you the ability to link devices with HCA
so that HCA could start programs when HCA devices sent messages and the
ability for HCA to control KeypadLinc indicator LEDs. In HCA 8 we
still have that ability but by using the new method of reading and writing
device memory we can do it simpler and quicker. |
| Network clean
It's not hard to have linking problems in an Insteon
network. If one device gets reset or you remove a device other devices
that link with it retain their references to the now missing device.
HCA can detect and remove those "dead" links. |
| Multi-Way wizard
While the Visual Scene Editor is easy to use, if you want
to create a multi-way association -each device controls all the others in
the association and all respond to each other - HCA 8 provides a wizard to
do all the work for you. |
| EZ-Rain
The Insteon irrigation controller - the EZ-Rain - is
supported |
| Thermostat
The Insteon thermostat adapter is supported. |
| EZIO
The Insteon input output module is supported |
| RemoteLinc
The Insteon wireless remote is supported |
| PowerLinc dialog
Normally you no need to access the linking tables inside
the 2414U PowerLinc. But sometimes you do to resolve problems.
HCA provides an extensive dialog for that. |
| Improved HCA program triggering
More options for trigger programs from Insteon messages |
| Improved design checker for Insteon devices
Now that HCA has the linking databases of all your
devices, it can look for and report on more possible error conditions. |
One of the biggest change to HCA 8 is the introduction of
the Visual Scene Editor. Just what is that?
Suppose you have a bunch of lights you want to all go on
at the same time to various preset levels, you can of course do this in HCA with
a Visual Program, but Insteon allows a single scene command to which each device
will respond to a certain set value – the result is much quicker response to
commands.
In HCA it is simple to create this scene: From the menu select Insteon -
Visual Scene Editor. This opens a dialog to select the scene to edit.
Click on the “Create New Scene…” button to start creating a new scene. Give the
Scene a name, choose the device and key to control the scene, and click “OK”
button.
You will now be in the VSE - shown in the HCA display pane - with a scene which
has a controller but nothing is controlled yet.
To add devices to this scene, you drag devices from the Design Pane (left) onto
the VSE in the display pane – HCA will only allow you to drag devices which can
be controlled.
When you drop the device on the display pane in the VSE, a pop-up menu will
display asking for the parameters (brightness level and ramp rate) for that
device in that scene.
Continue to drop devices in the scene. Suppose you want a single scene
which includes all of your outside lights, so that you can turn all of the
outside lights on at the same time to a specified brightness level. You
can create an outside "high" scene which puts them all at 100% and an outside
"normal" scene which puts them all at lower levels to save electricity and light
bulbs but still provide light.
Once you have all of the devices you want in the scene and the settings are as
you want, right click on the VSE background and select “Program” to program the
scene into the devices.
Think of scenes as just a web of links, linking a controller action to a bunch
of preset levels in devices. Activating the scene (controller button goes on)
sets all of the devices to the specified levels. Deactivating the scene
(controller button goes off) turns off lights, switches, and button indicators.
What the VSE provides is an automated way to link many devices at programmed
levels to one controller action. HCA Triggered scenes can be activated under
program control, while button controlled scenes do the same thing as what would
happen if you were to manually link the devices together, except that HCA does
all of the linking so you don’t need to run around the house pushing buttons.
If you are looking for more information on V8 changes,
here are some specific chapters:
We know that no one likes to read documentation. But
Insteon is complex and we
strongly suggest you read this appendix. Please do so - it is fairly painless.
HCA 8 supports Insteon in these ways:
| HCA communicates over the powerline using the USB
Insteon PowerLinc V2 Controller. |
| You can directly control any device. On, Off, and
Dim operations supported.
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| Status can be queried for any device. |
| You can create HCA program triggers based upon Insteon
keypad or switch action |
| You can use Insteon devices in HCA schedules and programs. |
| Using HCA power failure recovery, you can provide better
control over individual devices than what the devices can do themselves. |
| Supports using the 2414U PowerLinc for legacy X10 sends
and receives. |
But while all this is great stuff, the bigger picture is
where it's at. HCA supports multiple automation interfaces
simultaneously. This means that with HCA you can bridge between the
Insteon,
UPB, wireless, and X10 worlds. All you need do is attach a wireless interface,
an X10 interface, and a UPB interface and HCA can receive and transmit to each
type of device and provide the bridge you need.
Do you need to use motion sensors to control Insteon devices? No
problem! HCA can receive wireless motion sensor transmissions (using the
W800RF32) and then transmit commands to the Insteon
devices using the PowerLinc.
Do you have some X10 devices, some Insteon devices, and
some UPB devices?
HCA can receive commands from Insteon keypads and run programs to send commands to
X10 and UPB devices. Or receive X10 commands and transmit Insteon commands. Or
have programs and groups that manipulate all these device types.
Using HCA, a fully functional automation solution can be
built from those components that you need - choosing the best parts from all the
automation worlds.
A few notes on the 2414U Insteon PowerLinc:
HCA can
use the 2414U to send and receive both Insteon and X10 commands.
X10 support is, however, not as good in some areas as other X10 interfaces.
What's not as good? Two things: Dimming for the oldest type of X10 devices
- LM465 - and those devices that use extended command sequences - the LM14,
AM14, and some Leviton devices. If you have many of these devices and you
also want to use Insteon you may want to consider using the 2414U for Insteon
and a CM11 or LynX-10PLC for X10 commands.
HCA 8 doesn't support downloading of schedules and
programs to the 2414U PowerLinc memory like we do with the 1132CU PowerLinc.
Insteon support is in both HCA
Standard, HCA Plus and in HCA Pro.
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