Hello all, first off: I miss my Indigo setup.

I used to have all of my Insteon lamps and dimmers, IRtrans, motion detectors, iTunes/Music, Aircon, etc. controlled by my MacMini server in my old apartment, and life was good. I'm in no means an expert in home automation, but get the general gist and wrote a couple good applescripts to do some cool stuff with IR, etc.

I have recently bought a large old town house which has some new wiring and some old wiring, and ancient light fixtures with no neutral wires. I tried setting up some Insteon devices to see if I could successfully start a network and I think the wiring is going to cause me issues, although again, I am no expert so maybe I am doing something wrong.

Do I need to wait for Zwave or Zigbee support to implement automatic control of lights, etc? I really don't want to give up on Indigo, but I'm not sure Insteon/X10 is going to work.

The only device I have in my new home is a Nest Thermostat - which I must say has been really nicely done!

Thanks everyone,

Ted

Have you seen that Insteon now offers a larger selection of dual band devices and is promoting the mysterious i2CS modules as being more reliable and robust? I haven't paid as much attention to two-wire solutions as my home has not required them, but I've seen marketing for Insteon switches that do not require a neutral.

Some of the dual band devices the that have been released since you changed apartments include: swithclincs, lamplincs, the 2413U powerlinc modem, outlet dimmers, and the fanlincs. Might be more, including in-linelincs.

You can install a SwitchLinc Dimmer in a wall box that only has a hot wire and load wire without rewiring the switch, but it requires the use of a SwitchLinc Dimmer (or ICON dimmer) in the switch box and an In-LineLinc Dimmer in the light fixture box. It also requires you to connect the neutral line that's in the light fixture box to the load line (in the fixture box) that goes to the switch box, thus converting the load line that's in the switch box into a neutral line to power the SwitchLinc Dimmer. You then link the SwitchLinc Dimmer as a controller for the In-LineLinc Dimmer so the switch controls the load, and you can control the In-LineLinc Dimmer from Indigo. I have one room in my house with this setup and it works well.

Smarthome used to sell a 2-Wire INSTEON Dimmer Kit with pre-linked ICON switch and In-LineLinc Dimmer, but they don't any longer. They do still have the instructions on wiring it, though, here.