At the time of my previous post, I had just made the decision to switch from X10 to INSTEON.

It was an intense experience because of the extensive capabilities.

To begin with, INSTEON will work on its own by linking to other INSTEON units, but it is is best to own a gateway such as the SmartLinc or even better, the ISY.

I started with an INSTEON SmartLinc, a discontinued device I revived with Eventghost. After a partial rewrite of the Eventghost plugin, I was able to get control and status of my home lighting system.

Within a week, I found another great product, “MobiLinc.” This interfaced well with the SmartLinc and has a Tasker plugin that allowed me to create  visually pleasing “scenes” (as Tasker calls them). Each icon you see here is courtesy of the support department at MobiLinc. The Tasker scene below illustrates the ability to control my lights by touching each icon on the screen.

The consistent status updates help manage energy efficiency and INSTEON is extremely accurate with this, by allowing me to see at a glance which devices are powered on.

Initially with INSTEON, tapping the icon would trigger an AutoRemote message to Eventghost to toggle the light. When that feedback from the switch was received by the SmartLinc plugin, Eventghost would send an AutoRemote message back to the phone to set the variable and turn the icon to its proper state. The response time for the status update on the phone was lengthy, and the delay time was somewhat inconvenient.

Due to this lag time with INSTEON, I was quite excited to receive my ISY 994i. With INSTEON, there was a lot of room for improvement, but the pairing of Eventghost and SmartLinc did not allow for it. The ISY allowed for more extensive  integration with MobiLinc.  I did a complete rewrite of my entire automation system and the way my phone interfaced with it.

Continued in Part 2.