After a few months of putting off installing the On-Q switches, I have chosen to go with Switchlincs and use the Insteon technology instead. There switches are available at Smarthome and are awesome!!! The main reason for this decision is because they guys who did the pre-wire did not pull enough cat-5 cable for me to be able to use the slave switches in the 3 and 4 way locations. I figured a way to make them work but was not really happy with the look and feel of the On-Q switches. Plus, the Insteon switches are almost ½ the depth of the On-Q switches and made for a lot easier installation.

I replaced about ½ of the On-Q switches I had installed earlier and have more on order. I have to say that I love them so far! They feel nice, look nice, were easy to install and the advanced features of the switch are both functional and easy to program. The shallow depth of the switches also made them easy to fit into locations with 3 and 4 switches.

The only problem I see right now is a known flickering or flashing problem which seems to happen when the lights are dimmed below 50% on circuits with over 300 watts of light. There is a lot of talk about this problem on the Smarthome Forum and also on the Homeseer forum so I’m sure that the developers at Smartlabs are working on a cure. I have been told that they have what they think to be the cure in the latest version of the Togglelinc so only time will tell.

All in all I have about 120 switches to install and I’m ordering 40 a month so I hope to have them all switched out to Insteon switches by October. I’m really taking it slow to see if they cure the flickering problem before I end up with a lot of switches I have to replace or modify once a cure is discovered.

Other than that, I’ve kind of gotten off track with the home automation system of the new house because I’ve had a lot of outside yard work to get completed. I hope to get back on track with the automation portion real soon and will post an update when I get a chance.

Visit Smarthome to learn more about Insteon Switchlinc Switches

Read my update that I posted back in November