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    Windows Phone & Starter Kit

    Just got my Starter Kit from Microsoft Store. I am excited there is a windows phone app. I set up the hub easy enough. But the Camera was very difficult. It actually would not recognize the camera from Windows Phone no matter what I did. I ended up using the wife Apple iOS iPhone, and it worked just as it should first time with no changes. There is some problem with windows phone and the camera detection. The camera now shows up on the windows phone and seems to work well. I like the system, I look forward to expanding it. I did notice that the Camera has a lot more options than the app allows. (Any of the apps). I also want to figure out how to set the motion sensor to only alert me at certain times of the day automatically.

    #2
    Which camera?
    Message from Forum Admin: stusviews passed away in April 2018. Stu was a huge fan of Insteon and a huge presence on both the Smarthome and Insteon forums, helping thousands of us along the way (he had nearly 20,000 posts to his name). We thank him for his contributions, dedication, and passion for making the Smart Home a reality. He will truly be missed.
    Saving energy is not always free. Be a world saver.

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      #3
      It is the one that came with [url]http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/INSTEON-Starter-Kit/productID.300075200[/url] I can log into it, but I am not sure the model number.

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        #4
        Log in, select Device Management, select Mail Service Settings, fill in the fields, select Submit and Test in that order. If all goes well select Alarm Service Settings and check Motion Detect Armed. From there you'll be able to set a schedule.
        Message from Forum Admin: stusviews passed away in April 2018. Stu was a huge fan of Insteon and a huge presence on both the Smarthome and Insteon forums, helping thousands of us along the way (he had nearly 20,000 posts to his name). We thank him for his contributions, dedication, and passion for making the Smart Home a reality. He will truly be missed.
        Saving energy is not always free. Be a world saver.

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          #5
          Thank you. I meant the stand alone motion detector, but I like the settings on the camera for that purpose. I wish I could access some of these settings through the Windows Phone App.
          With the motion detector, I have created a scene, where the motion detector turns on a light, and it's only supposed to be active during evening, but it runs all the time, despite what the scene is scheduled to.

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            #6
            The Motion Sensor is an entity unto itself and cannot be scheduled using a scene. HouseLinc can accomplish that, but requires a 24/7 Windows computer.
            Message from Forum Admin: stusviews passed away in April 2018. Stu was a huge fan of Insteon and a huge presence on both the Smarthome and Insteon forums, helping thousands of us along the way (he had nearly 20,000 posts to his name). We thank him for his contributions, dedication, and passion for making the Smart Home a reality. He will truly be missed.
            Saving energy is not always free. Be a world saver.

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              #7
              That makes no sense. I cannot schedule a motion sensor to not activate while I am home? It seems silly to not be able to schedule it to send alerts when I am not here.

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                #8
                For the scene turning on the light at night, you might try going about it slightly differently, using the motion detector's built in 'night only' mode. You can adjust what the motion sensor deems 'night' via it's photocell, but not time of day or that status of other devices.

                I agree that conditional alerts (particularly with the door sensor) would be hugely popular.

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                  #9
                  Another choice is to use an external power supply plugged into an On/Off module and schedule the module.
                  Message from Forum Admin: stusviews passed away in April 2018. Stu was a huge fan of Insteon and a huge presence on both the Smarthome and Insteon forums, helping thousands of us along the way (he had nearly 20,000 posts to his name). We thank him for his contributions, dedication, and passion for making the Smart Home a reality. He will truly be missed.
                  Saving energy is not always free. Be a world saver.

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                    #10
                    So even though I schedule the scene that connects the two devices, the scene schedule is ignored. I also set night only mode, and it is ignored too. This does not work at all like I would expect

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                      #11
                      I have set it to 1% sensitivity, I still get activations in a lit room. I tried 99% and same thing. How do I make the motion detector only turn on the light at night? Seems like such a basic thing to be able to do.

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                        #12
                        My experience is that the Motion Sensor considers an indoor room as being as dark as it gets unless some sun is shining on it. Outdoors that translates to about an 1/2 to 1 hour before sunset.
                        Message from Forum Admin: stusviews passed away in April 2018. Stu was a huge fan of Insteon and a huge presence on both the Smarthome and Insteon forums, helping thousands of us along the way (he had nearly 20,000 posts to his name). We thank him for his contributions, dedication, and passion for making the Smart Home a reality. He will truly be missed.
                        Saving energy is not always free. Be a world saver.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          That has not been my experience, I have it set to 2%, Yesterday was the first night where it worked, kinda. Only activating when it was actually dark in the room. I must say. Overall, I am really disappointed in Insteon, I have lots of problems setting things up from the Windows Phone App. Lots of misspellings in the software, and it does not seem to actually set things from Windows Phone properly. I often have to find my wife's phone to set things up. Today's project was a leak sensor. Set it up on Windows Phone, and it seemed to take. Then I attempted to test it. The light came on, and the app indicated active. But that's it. No notifications. So I turned off the Wet Alert, and turned it back on. I then turned on dry alert. It sets, and then I go back to it, and its unset. I check it on iPhone, and it shows dry and wet set.

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                            #14
                            Back to the motion sensor thinking it's night in daylight.. I found the settings for the alert notifications. Filled them in, saved it. Nothing. I found the Default SMS/TEXT address in the system hub. Updated it. Came back, now blank. It won't keep it.

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                              #15
                              After Speaking to Taylor at the phone number for Insteon, I have learned much.
                              One, They have no idea why I am having problems with alerts, the hub is acting strangely and they suggest deleting the account and factory resetting the hub. Project for when I get home.
                              Two, The inability to save the default SMS/Text settings from a mobile device is a known issue. It does not work. Setting from the windows Desktop app seems to work.
                              Three, Lower settings on the light sensitivity mean that the sensor is less likely to think it is night. It hasn't worked for me yet, but that's the official word.
                              Four, The add scene screen on the window phone app is misspelled. Confirmed by tech, a very sloppy programming mistake, not encouraging.
                              Five. It is confirmed that the Leak sensor does not accurately report it's dry alert status on Windows Phone. The tech was able to reproduce that. On other devices, it is accurately reported.
                              Six. The ability to schedule scenes with triggers does nothing. It's a complete waste of time. It give a false sense that you're doing something, when actually, nothing is done.
                              Seven. The IP Camera could not be added by windows phone. They were unable to confirm this, I will try again tonight.
                              Eight. If you do schedule a scene. You cannot delete that schedule from the windows app. It seems to work from the windows phone app though. This problem was discovered just after my phone call.

                              I am not pleased that I seem to be a beta tester for insteon. Some of these issues should have come up in testing. There is also no list of known issues published, so I can check my sanity. I also find it very concerning that if the device is failing to send alerts, that it does not indicate so somewhere. There should be a way to test alerts. I would be happy to contract to test devices and functionality, provided I don't have to pay money for them too.

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