for those who are interested in TED ( The Energy Detective)

So does TED interfere with Insteon or not? A quick google search when I read the news about Google PowerMeter supporting TED brought back numerous links to posts about Insteon dying when TED was installed/used, which would seem to make sense because it is yet more data being pumped over the powerlines...

I'd like to understand if problems are really being seen and/or how they might be mitigated because it does look like a cool product to help give information about energy usage!

Cheers
Lee

I'd like to understand if problems are really being seen and/or how they might be mitigated because it does look like a cool product to help give information about energy usage!

The only problems I had was when a MTU became fried; nothing in my insteon system worked until I got it replaced (free under warranty).

The TED killed my X10, but Insteon works fine.

The TED killed my X10, but Insteon works fine.

I really, really want to get the TED 5000.. but if my X10 motion sensors cease to work.. replacing those with INSTEON sensors at $35/pop would suck, plus I prefer the way the X10 ones work..

I only have one X10 keychain remote and 8 X10 motion sensors -- the rest is all INSTEON. Can anyone else chime in with their experiences here?

I do have a little wireless receiver thing I bought to extend range (not the little white receivers; it's a black slim set-top box with an external antenna) and I have a BoosterLinc as well.. wonder if those two things might help maintain functionality with my sensors?

-j

Jingai,
I have exactly the same situation with several X10 motion detectors and everything else converted to Insteon. I completely agree that I really would prefer to keep the X10 motion detectors, and I also have the V572AB RF receiver that I purchased from Norm (and love!).

I ordered an Energy Detective 5000 that should be arriving Monday, 12 Oct. I will post results after I have it installed. I'm very hopeful that I will be able to continue using the X10 motion detectors...

I ordered an Energy Detective 5000 that should be arriving Monday, 12 Oct. I will post results after I have it installed. I'm very hopeful that I will be able to continue using the X10 motion detectors...

Please do! And thank you

-j

I've had my TED5000 for almost a month now. I've noticed no interference whatsoever with my INSTEON equipment. The same cannot be said for the few remaining X10 light switches that I have. When I first set up the TED5000 the lights attached to the X10 switches would come on randomly, but they would always came on and stay on. I cannot comment on the X10 motion sensors because I do not have any of them. But I presume that they would be affected in some manner.

What I ended up doing to solve this interference problem was to buy an X10 power line filter and having it installed so that it isolates the branch circuit that I have the MTU (black wire) on in addition to the Gateway. Note that there is an option in one of the TED's setup windows to only select the black wire from the MTUs and not the Red wire. (You could install a second X10 power line filter but why go to that expense). Of course, you cannot have any X10 equipment on the branch circuit isolated with the power line feeder, nor the INSTEON power line unit.

One I had this installed my X10 lights started to work reliably again and the TED also is still working. One thing that I did notice with the TED was that as I was turning the breakers on/off (with the Gateway) it appears that the information inside the Gateway for the running totals got corrupted. But that should take care of itself when I start the new billing cycle in another week, hopefully.

I made a workflow to run on your mac that will download the xml data and also a script to convert it to csv

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=798553

I made a workflow to run on your mac that will download the xml data and also a script to convert it to csv

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=798553

Cool stuff!. There is also this thread which shows you how to track usage in Indigo.

http://www.perceptiveautomation.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=5002&highlight=ted5000

I gotta say. The 5000 is a far superior product to the 1000. both in reliability (so far), and in ease of use/access.

My Energy Detective 5000 arrived Monday as planned and I installed it that day. Apologies for not posting results before now, but my dog became quite ill over the weekend and I have been dealing with that this week.

Anyway, I installed a double-pole 20A breaker for TED as recommended in the installation guide. The Gateway is connected to an outlet inside my network patch panel in the garage, which is located only inches away from the breaker box. I have it connected to my Juniper Netscreen firewall appliance, which is also living inside the network patch panel.

I will freely admit that I connected everything in such a way as to maximize convenience, fully expecting to have to make some changes to improve reliability. The outlet that the Gateway is connected to also has an APC UPS connected to it that provides power to the cable modem, Juniper device, a wireless access point, and a VoIP gateway.

So far, so good. Insteon appears to have not been affected whatsoever. And much to my surprise, TED has maintained consistent, reasonable, reliable communication with the Gateway even though it's connected to the same outlet as a UPS. X10 has not been quite so smooth, but it hasn't been intolerable either. I've noticed no change in reliability with the motion detectors. They've always been about 95% reliable, and that pattern seems to continue unchanged. I have a very old X10 light switch that is installed in a room that really doesn't need any automation and it appears to be the biggest problem at this point. As someone else mentioned earlier, that light will turn on randomly and stay on until I manually turn it off. Nothing appears in Indigo's log suggesting that an "on" signal was received. I'm almost certainly going to revert to a standard non-automated switch in that room, as I've yet to find a reason to even use the X10 capabilities there at all. I also have floodlights over the driveway that turn themselves on and send an X10 "on" command to the front porch lights and that functionality hasn't been as reliable since installing TED, either.

All in all, if you're like me and have mostly Insteon with a few X10 devices that aren't critical, you're probably fine. I can definitely tell a difference in the reliability of the X10 devices that I have left, but to be fair, those same devices have always been less reliable than the Insteon equipment.

Hopefully I will have some time to dig into those excellent scripts that will allow me to get TED's data into Indigo soon! Thanks for sharing those, and I hope that this information is helpful.