Dear Friends,
I appreciate all the feedback we have received since our last email. We are working on prioritizing many of your ideas for future releases of Director.
Legacy Wired Thermostat Update
We believe we are nearing the end of our testing of the Insteon Thermostat with the beta users. It is likely you will see Thermostat added in a public release by end of February.
Feature Updates Coming Soon
Scene Rooms – As mentioned in the last email, we are working on an overhaul to Scenes in Director. Currently if you select the Scene tab, you get one long list of scenes. We are converting the Scene tab to a similar layout as Devices. This means you will be able to put scenes in rooms and favorites in the Scene tab. This allows easier navigation of your scenes.
Connect – You might have noticed a new option under Settings named “View House Config & Export”. When you tap the arrow on this row you will be brought to a website that you login to that will list the configuration of your Insteon network. This will give you a list of Devices, Scenes, Rooms, Schedules, and more. In addition, you will be able to login to this same website from your Mac or PC and download a CSV (excel spreadsheet friendly format) to store your Insteon information. Click on this link to check it out https://connect.insteon.com/
User Guide – Under Support and Feedback we have added a Director User Guide. Although the information is a little sparse, we will continue to build this over time. This may be helpful for newer Insteon customers. Click on this link to view www.insteon.com/director-help
Column Tiles in Devices – In the Device tab we now save which column view (2, 3, or 4) you use in Devices so that when you go back into the App it will remember which one you last used.
Future Director Features
Here is a list of things we will be adding, although we do not have a timeline for a release yet.
Keypads – We are working on a revision to the view of the keypad so that you will see 4, 6, or 8 buttons when you select a keypad tile. Currently we are showing you a switch to control the load. The updated view will show you the buttons on the keypad and whether they are on or off. In addition, you will be able to turn that button on or off and activate or deactivate the scene.
Enable/Disable Schedules – We will add the ability to enable and disable a schedule. Currently you must delete a schedule to remove it. This will allow you to disable a schedule so you can skip a few days or months.
Scene Tile Overhaul – In addition to updates to rooms for scenes, we will be reformatting the scene tiles, so they look like squares (similar to devices) and update the information on the tile. This will allow you to see more scenes per room.
Insteon For Hub (old App)
We were informed that notifications for Android are likely to be turned off in the June timeframe. These notifications are managed by Microsoft and since we do not have access to the source code, we are unable to remedy this.
Tip – Pseudo Random Schedules
One way to create pseudo random schedules is to create multiple scenes for lights to appear random. For instance, if you create 3 scenes, let’s call them Sunset Weekend, Sunset MWF, and Sunset TuTh. You can schedule these scenes at slightly different on and off times that run on different days. Although not random, someone would really need to pay attention across the week to figure out they are not random. In these scenes you might turn different lights on in the house to show there is different movement. If you want to appear even more random, you could create 7 different scenes, one for each day of the
week. If you mix in different lights, someone will really need to watch your home closely for over a week to detect a pattern.
If you want to be even more geeky, you can create layered scenes. Let’s take the Weekend, MWF, and TuTh examples above. You create 6 scenes as follows:
On Weekend – Turns on a group of lights, but with no off time.
Off Weekend- Turns the first group of lights off as you turn bedroom lights on (or other lights on).
On MWF - Turns on a group of lights, but with no off time (different time).
Off MWF - Turn the first group of lights off as you turn bedroom lights on (or other lights on, different time).
On TuTh- Turns on a group of lights, but with no off time (different time).
Off TuTh - Turn the first group of lights off as you turn bedroom lights on (or other lights on, different time).
Tip – Disable A Schedule
This is a temporary hack until we add the enable/disable schedule feature. If you want to keep a schedule but disable it, you can unclick all of the days. Effectively this preserves the schedule and the on/off time, but it will not run.
Finally, I have a favor to ask. If you’ve been pleased with our progress in the Director app, please consider supporting our efforts by leaving a positive rating on Apple App Store or Google Play Store. If not or if you’ve got ideas on how we can make it better, please use the links below my signature to submit your thoughts and feedback.
Need help or have feedback?
Download the new Insteon Director App for Hub 2 (2245-222)
Two-year anniversary and next webinar date set