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The Johnnynine Weblog - How to control Insteon devices with an RF remote control
A weblog by Johnny Hughes
 
 Wednesday, April 12, 2006
As of this article, no one has released a native Insteon RF remote control.  However since all Insteon devices are backwards compatible with X10, there is a solution.

For less than $30 I ordered RR501 Wireless RF Transceiver and a KR22A Credit Card Keychain Controller online from Automated Outlet.

I first used the free InHomeFre software application to receive the X10 signal on the powerline and convert it to an Insteon signal.  However there were two problems with this.  The first is that the room I wanted to control the lights in is on the opposite phase as the computer running the software.  Because I do not have a phase coupler and am not willing to invest to much money in legacy X10 technology I had to locate the RF receiver on the other side of the house near the computer.  The distance between the remote control and the X10 RF receiver caused about a 75% reliability factor.  This is unacceptable, granted we are talking X10 here so I don't expect 100%.  The second problem was that by using the InHomeFre software (along with an Insteon PowerLinc V2 USB) there was a delay of a second or two between pressing a button on the remote and the light responding.  So I deemed this solution just not acceptable on both counts.

Knowing that insteon devices are backwards compatible with X10 I decided to give that a try.  I moved the X10 RF receiver into the same room I wanted to control and used the remote to set the X10 address on each device.  This went very smoothly.  I then tested the remote on each device and it just worked.  It's about 99% reliable and the delay between pressing the button and the light reacting is barely noticeable.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006 12:54:32 PM (US Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]   Home Automation  | 
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