Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Flexible and Powerful, February 6, 2008
UPDATED: I give this dimmer a 5 star rating because of its great value and modularity for the price, despite the gotchas below.
What makes this 600 Watt dimmer so great is the flexibility to use it by itself, or program it to work with other Insteon dimmers throughout the house. Put one in the dining room, living room, bedroom or bathroom; wherever you need to dim the lights. You replace the existing light switch with this electronic dimmer, which is a little bulkier but will still fit into any existing wall box. Unlike cheaper dimmers, you can easily set and the initial lighting level and ramp rate.
Now for the fun part. With the addition of a couple of Insteon Access Points (these are included in starter kits with the dimmers), your dimmers can control each other. For example, if you want to switch off all of the lights in the house and turn on the porch light from your bedroom, you can link the dimmers together with a couple of button presses on each dimmer switch. Then with one button click in your bedroom, everything turns off or on as desired.
The price is the next best part. Installing an intelligent whole-house system will cost thousands of dollars, but with the Insteon approach, it costs about $50 per room. And the average homeowner with a a wiring book from Home Depot can replace a switch in 15 minutes to a half hour.
Some gotchas:
Wires - Most light switches only require 3 wires: hot, load and ground. Because there are electronics in the dimmer, you need hot AND common, plus load and ground. Sometimes common (white) is not in the switch box.
Connecting - These dimmers are not bullet-proof! Don't reverse the load and hot which are sometimes both black. Just check carefully with a voltage checker to determine the hot wire and label it.
Wattage - If you have more than 6 bulbs being controlled by a dimmer switch, make sure you use the 1000 Watt version (2476DH) since you can exceed the 600 Watt limit for this dimmer. They can be damaged by too much current or heat.
Heat - These things do put off heat. If you put two Insteon dimmers in a 2-gang wall box together, they can overheat if there is inadequate space to keep them cool. This is not a fire hazard or anything, but can damage the electronics in the dimmer. One of my dimmers started pulsing the lights when I would dim or switch it off. This was due to too much heat and I had to replace it.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great product if used right, December 5, 2008
Excellent product, works great for me. For all automation enthusiasts and DIY-ers make sure you understand the technology. Most of bad reviews are given by people that did not do their homework beforehand. Read about Insteon here: http://www.insteon.net/
Most common problems with Insteon that I heard about was related to:
1. plugging in devices into powerline filters.
2. not using phase couplers/AccessPoints.
3. abscence of neutral wire for wire-in switches.
4. Confusing wireless and wired transmission (bought switch and remote without access point and blamed switch on abscence of RF control) Insteon is capable of RF and powerline transfer, but wired-in devices almost always do not have wireless capabilities, only powerline, and access points work like wireless gateways to connect powerline and wireless devices.
So, make sure that you have neutral wire (most often white) available in the wall or that you know how to get neutral in there.
And make sure you buy access points if you want to use more then one device. It is a MUST.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent capabilities but expensive, October 30, 2009
I installed about a dozen of these dimmers and companion switch pads in a large rec room / home theater. They work very well and have almost infinite programming capabilities. One word of caution is to be extremely careful not to short any output of these dimmers as it will likely destroy the unit rather than trip a breaker. Once installed properly they have worked flawlessly despite power surges and outages.
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