Greg In The Desert

Smarthome has pre-released a few of dual band Insteon devices. These devices use the wired Insteon protocol and also broadcast and receive the wireless Insteon protocol. These devices also double as as an Access Point.

The new LampLinc also comes in a new housing with manual controls.

LampLinc – INSTEON Plug-In Lamp Dimmer Module (Dual-Band), 2-Pin Item# 2457D2 Price: $49.99

The INSTEON LampLinc Dimmer (Dual-Band) is a full-featured plug-in lamp dimmer that can be remotely controlled by a RemoteLinc, KeypadLinc, or any other INSTEON controller. This simple-to-use plug-in dimmer has advanced features like an adjustable ramp rate that slowly brings the lamp on, a preset dim level that stores your preferred choice of 32 brightness levels when turning the lamp on initially, as well as local control, so you can still use the lamp’s built-in switch to turn the light on and off. This LampLinc is made to be plugged into any wall outlet. This dimmer can control incandescent loads up to 300 watts.

There is also a dual band PowerLinc (PowerLinc – INSTEON USB Interface (Dual-Band) Item# 2413U Price: $99.99). I have no doubt that the remaining Smarthome Insteon devices will become dual band as well. While I think this is a great development, I really wish they would release a ceiling fan controller.

iHome Remote brings an 3rd party Indigo interface to your phone as a stand alone application. That’s interesting because there is a iPhone application available from developer of Indigo, Perceptive Automation, for free.

Why purchase iHome Remote? The official free app only works with 4.0, if you don’t want to pay the upgrade fee from 3.0 to 4.0, iHome Remote will work with 3.0. iHome Remote doesn’t have access to action groups but it does have access to Scenes which the official app does not. iHome Remote is $8.99 from the iTunes App Store.

Have you ever wondered if you left the lights on at home? Do you want to have everything just so before arriving home?

Used in conjunction with Indigo on your Mac, iHome will allow you to control your home lighting (Insteon and X10) using your iPhone or iPod Touch from anywhere.

** This app requires the Indigo Control Server from Perceptive Automation to be running on your Mac to work and is compatible with either version 3 or the soon to be released version 4 of Indigo.

FEATURES:
- View the status of your home lights and appliances
- Control lights and their dim level
- Turn appliances on and off
- Execute Scenes/Action Groups
- Access your home from anywhere
- Insteon and X10 control

Both Insteon and X10 allow you to add automation to your home without any rewiring required.

Insteon is a new standard in home control, which features true bidirectional communication to ensure that your iPhone knows the status of what you are controlling.

With iHome and Indigo, you can have full remote control of your home!

It’s 3AM. My Girlfriend has to get up for work but I don’t get up for several more hours. The motion detectors for the bathroom should turn on the light for her automatically but there’s nothing worse then have a light turn on full blast, for her and me. The script attempts to address this issue by calculating the time between sunset and sunrise and adjusting dim level of the light based on what the current time is. So if it’s 12:00AM the dim is set to about 50%, the closer to sunrise the less the light dims. This is an attachment script for use with Indigo.

[Updated:] Some slight changes to the script so you can use it with non dimming devices. It will just turn them on.

You can download it here.