My Home Automation project

We’ll after receiving back some of my hard earned money thru 2008. I shelved out the $159 for the Insteon T1700 thermostat.
It can be found here.

The device is quite small, which is fine and thinner that my orginary Honeywell one which was a real plus.  To install was also very simple.
And technical support was awesome!!!  Who expects to call a company and receive a live person and be able to troubleshoot on the phone in less that 3 min.  And to top it off the rep even called me back since he had to leave. At the end it was a simple dip switch due to my model.  So if after you install it and when you turn on cool and heat comes out and vice-versa, just turn on dip switch two and your set!  Thats Again Mike from Venstar!!!!

The only thing would be the ‘light’ on the side of the Insteon module.  so in dark areas it does stand out.
Like mentioned above the device is very small and the insteon module even smaller.
For example check out the image in comparison to my hand

Setting Mode, Getting Temperature of Thermostat

Ok, enough Pictures and talk, lets see how to control this device.

First forget about sending ON/OFF commands, for me they didnt work, nor did they do anything.  What we will be using is the 0×02 command instead of 0×11 for on or 0×13 for OFF.  What I has able to find was the higher numbers after that worked. I’ll show you what

Ive got and show examples after.  In my case I couldnt send request using the regular PLC commands so I ended using the low level calls using the sendhex function, that article can be found here

More ways to speak to your Insteon Devices

For the examples my PLC is # “0D 51 32” and my Thermostat is “01 02 03“.

0×6b – Bit 2 – Get Thermostat Mode (Returned is 00=off,01=Heat,02=Cool,03=Auto,04=Fan)

 
	'Send

	Sm.SendPLCHex("02 40 01 A1 00 09 FD 9B 0D 51 32 01 02 03 05 6B 02") 
	Sm.SendPLCHex("02 46 01 42 10 9F") ' Execute my command

	'You should get the reponse on the Last Bit of your reponse.  For example
	04 01 02 03 0D 51 32 26 6B 02

	So in this case 0x02 Means the device is on COOL.

0×6b – Bit 3 - Get Temperature (Returned is the temperature, you convert to decimal and divide by two)

	'Send
	Sm.SendPLCHex("02 40 01 A1 00 09 FD 9B 0D 51 32 01 02 03 05 6B 03")
	Sm.SendPLCHex("02 46 01 42 10 9F") ' Execute my command
	'You should get the reponse on the Last Bit of your reponse.  For example
	04 01 02 03 0D 51 32 26 6B 9A 
	So in this case 0x9A Converted to decimal is 154 divide
        that by two and you get 77 degrees!!
0x6b - Bit 4 - Set to Heat

'Send
Sm.SendPLCHex("02 40 01 A1 00 09 FD 9B 0D 51 32 01 02 03 05 6B 04")
Sm.SendPLCHex("02 46 01 42 10 9F") ' Execute my command
0x6b - Bit 5 - Set to Cool

'Send
Sm.SendPLCHex("02 40 01 A1 00 09 FD 9B 0D 51 32 01 02 03 05 6B 05")
Sm.SendPLCHex("02 46 01 42 10 9F") ' Execute my command

0×6b – Bit 6 – Set to Auto (To switch automatically from Cool to Heat depending on your settings)

	'Send
	Sm.SendPLCHex("02 40 01 A1 00 09 FD 9B 0D 51 32 01 02 03 05 6B 06")
	Sm.SendPLCHex("02 46 01 42 10 9F") ' Execute my command

0×6b – Bit 7 - Fan on

	'Send
	Sm.SendPLCHex("02 40 01 A1 00 09 FD 9B 0D 51 32 01 02 03 05 6B 07")
	Sm.SendPLCHex("02 46 01 42 10 9F") ' Execute my command

0×6b – Bit 8 – Fan off

	'Send
	Sm.SendPLCHex("02 40 01 A1 00 09 FD 9B 0D 51 32 01 02 03 05 6B 08")
	Sm.SendPLCHex("02 46 01 42 10 9F") ' Execute my command

0×6b – Bit 9 – All Off

	'Send
	Sm.SendPLCHex("02 40 01 A1 00 09 FD 9B 0D 51 32 01 02 03 05 6B 09")
	Sm.SendPLCHex("02 46 01 42 10 9F") ' Execute my command

Setting the Cool / Heat Thermostat Temperature

Here insteon of 0×6B we will be using the 0×6C for Cool and 0×6D for HEAT.  So lets say you’ve set your device to Cool and want to lower it to 75 Degrees.  Just like when we read the temperature, when we set it we need to multiply the requested value * 2 and convert it to HEX.  In the sample below the variable Set_Temp holds what we want it to.  The next statement converts it to HEX and *2 and presto!

'This is the temperature we want to set Cool to!
Set_Temp="75"
Dim Temp As String = Hex(Set_Temp * 2)
Sm.SendPLCHex("02 40 01 A1 00 09 FD 9B 0D 51 32 01 02 03 05 6C " + Temp)
Sm.SendPLCHex("02 46 01 42 10 9F")

'This is the temperature we want to set heat to!
Set_Temp="70"
Dim Temp As String = Hex(Set_Temp * 2)
Sm.SendPLCHex("02 40 01 A1 00 09 FD 9B 0D 51 32 01 02 03 05 6D " + Temp)
Sm.SendPLCHex("02 46 01 42 10 9F")

Hope this works for you and its working great for me.  Each hour I poll the temperature and as part of that routine I poll my thermostat to keey the information up to date. I’ll post more as I find out!