IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - October 2015 - 144

Controller A

Repeater B

Responder C

FIGURE 4. Repeating messages (figure courtesy of Insteon Inc.).

FIGURE 6. Insteon hub (photo courtesy of
Insteon Inc.).

FIGURE 5. Insteon application on Apple
IPhone (photo courtesy of Insteon Inc.).

7 acting as Controllers can also send
messages to a single Insteon device 3
acting as a Responder.
Any Insteon device can repeat messages, as with device B in Figure 4,
which is shown relaying a message from
device A acting as a Controller to device
C acting as a Responder. (The message
may repeat up to three times, then the
message expires.)
Insteon technology may be built into
many different kinds of equipment, and it
can interface with all kinds of non-Insteon equipment via communications bridges. Applications for Insteon-enabled
equipment are diverse (Figure 5). A partial list of applications includes:
▼ home management; incorporating
sensors; heating, ventilating, and

144 IEEE ConsumEr ElECtronICs magazInE

air-conditioning; appliances; lighting; and security systems
▼ audio/video remote control, with tieins to home management
▼ energy management
▼ remote monitoring via the Internet
▼ interoperation with voice recognition
and response, cameras, and other sensors.
Products that can be improved using
Insteon technology include:
▼ electrical devices such as plug-in or
wire-in dimmers, switches, or outlets
▼ home appliances
▼ annunciators, thermostats, access
controllers
▼ pool/spa and irrigation controllers
▼ environmental, device status, motion,
room occupancy, or contact sensors
▼ PC, touchscreen, keypad, handheld,
or key fob controllers.
Using bridges to other networking
standards, Insteon devices can interoperate with other devices, communicating using Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11),
Bluetooth (IEEE 802.15.1), ZigBee
(IEEE 802.15.4), Z-Wave, WiMax
(IEEE 802.16), HomePlug, HomeRF,
Intellon, Echelon Lonworks, CEBus
(EIA-600), or other future technology.

october 2015

Of course solutions like these come
and go every few years, which is why
Insteon has opened their application programming interface for any developer or
hobbyist to view and with which to
develop. It is based on the Representational State Transfer protocol and is available at http://docs.insteon.apiary.io/.
I was sent an Insteon starter kit,
which included a hub (Figure 6), an
LED bulb, a power plug adapter, a
remote control, and a light dimmer. It
took about an hour to get everything up
and running. It seems like an interesting
idea, and I can see that this would be a
great system when integrated with a
smart phone and some dedicated artificial intelligence. Time will tell as more
applications are interconnected to make
usability streamlined. I would like to
give a "shout out" to IEEE Member
Christopher Perez, Design and Test
engineer, Insteon, who was kind enough
to provide fodder for this article and
excited enough about his work at Insteon to share the inner workings on their
new proprietary standard. Now if I can
convince him to allow the IEEE Consumer Electronics Society Standards
Committee to incorporate his propriety
standard into an open IEEE standard,
life would be golden.
As always, the comments and opinions in this article are mine alone and
do not represent the stance of the IEEE.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William Lumpkins is the vice-president
of Engineering at O&S Services and a
senior editor of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine. He is the IEEE Systems Man & Cybernetics Standards
chair and the IEEE Sensors Council
Standards chair.

REFERENCE
[1] C. Perez. Insteon: The details. White
paper. [Online]. Avaliable: http://cache.insteon.
com/pdf/insteondetails.pdf

http://docs.insteon.apiary.io/ http://www.cache.insteon

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - October 2015