INSTEON Home Automation Starter Kit

Table of Content

• Connect with Us Connect with Us
• It all starts at the hub
• Amazon Holiday Sale:  Garmin vivoactive 4S, Smaller-Sized GPS Smartwatch only $159.99
• Insteon Starter Kit, and its Dual-Band technology, makes building your smart home easy, plus affordable.
• Additional Resources: Product Manuals
• The History of Qatari Hajj pilgrimage
• Easy device scheduling

Wonder what triggered the motion sensor or just want to check in on the kids or your pets? Add a wireless camera and you'll see it all from your smartphone. The INSTEON cameras feature pan/tilt control and night vision. Setting up this camera within the INSTEON for Hub app is the easiest setup routine that you've ever seen and anyone can do it.

Its purpose is to connect and control all your devices and appliances, quite common with most connected hubs. However, Insteon Hub is quite different from current smart home hubs, like Samsung SmartThings, Iris by Lowe's or Wink. The INSTEON Hub stores your homes configuration in the cloud which allows access from any number of smartphones and tablets you may own. Simply download the app, sign in and all your settings (devices, scenes, icons, timers, etc.) are there to enjoy. They like the idea of controlling gadgets and appliances inside the home while away on a trip or at the office. Joining portable devices such as smartphones or tablets to online connectivity, this feature on a Web-connected home allows people to have the means of control over gadgets and devices connected to the home network.

Connect with Us Connect with Us

My living room is lit by an overhead light and several lamps. I replaced one light bulb with a dimmable Insteon 60-watt-equivalent LED bulb and plugged two other lamps into plug-in dimmer modules (these cost $50 each if you need more than the two that come in the kit). Insteon also offers in-wall dimmers and switches (priced from $50 to $80, depending on their capabilities). This system is designed to be scalable that users may be able to add in new dimmers, lights thermostats and sensors over time.

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It all starts at the hub

The Insteon Home Automation system is compatible with iOS and Android devices.

Another nice feature Insteon offers is its compatibility with iOS, Android and Windows devices. Not many smart home hubs work with this many smartphone operating systems. Create alerts by adding water leak sensors, motion sensors, door/window sensors and more. The INSTEON Hub will send text and email alerts to you as well as anyone else you wish.

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If I had been setting up the camera on a weekday, I could have availed myself of Insteon’s excellent toll-free support—a service the company actively encourages you to make use of. Insteon’s tech-support folks will set up port forwarding and solve networking issues for you by taking control of your Mac or PC . Support is not available on weeknights or Sundays, though, which is when most DIYers will need it.

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Plug and play setup, controls all my Insteon devices without problems. You’re supposed to be able to use the app to set up the camera, but it failed during several attempts. So I resorted to reading the manual and configured it using port forwarding and dynamic DNS so I could use its browser-based interface.

This year, Insteon followed up with another great comprehensive smart home network called Insteon Starter Kit, what we think is a great for those just starting on their smart home adventures. The kit acts as a remote-control system with the help of your smartphone. Insteon sent GearBrain a kit—and we put it through our tests.

Additional Resources: Product Manuals

When your signal is blocked, Insteon will continue to deliver the signal across your home's power lines. None of the other smart home systems with wireless protocols, such as Zigbee, Z-Wave, Bluetooth and even Wi-Fi, offer this dual-band connectivity. Other systems on the market charge hundreds of dollars a year for services that you can get for free with the INSTEON Hub.

Like the RF-only Z-Wave technology, each Insteon device is both a transmitter and a receiver, and the resulting network forms a mesh. Unlike Z-Wave, however, Insteon doesn’t rely on a routing table. As a result, the Insteon motion and door/window sensors continued to control the lights, even after I unplugged the Insteon hub. Insteon Starter Kit comes with two dimmer modules and an Insteon Hub, which is the center and brains of the system.