SmartLinc – INSTEON Central Controller 2412N Review
DOUG — ORANGE, CA Date: 4/23/2010
Review: You’ve seen it, right? The iPhone commercial that shows a family waiting for their flight at the airport and then they remember that they forgot to lock the door or turn off a light. Well, that commercial advertises a company and service that requires a monthly fee of 13-15 dollars a month. The SmartLinc can do the same but with no monthly fee. Just get this connected to your home router, set your port for accessing outside of your home and add devices to things you want to control lamps: LampLinc, wall switches: SwitchLinc. It uses a web application so you’re not locked into an Apple app. That means you can log into your home and control it while at a computer or mobile phone. Very simple device setup and well worth the price.
DEBRA — CENTERVILLE, MA Date: 6/29/2010
Review: Excellent. Love this item. Very easy to install and use.
CHRISTOPHER — SAN CARLOS, CA Date: 6/11/2010
Review: So far this works great, though you have to be careful about resetting it and losing all your settings, also don’t use DHCP!
SCOTT — SAN JOSE, CA Date: 6/9/2010
Review: I use the product to control my X10 devices from my IPhone through Safari and it works great. The quickstart guide was straightforward and took no time to get it set up. It did take a little extra research time to configure the controller to communicate with the X10 devices, but once I figured out how to code it in, it works great. I recommend it to anyone who would like a way to control their home automation(X10 devices in my case) via your IPhone.
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Buy the SmartLinc – INSTEON Central Controller 2412N at Smarthome.com
One of the worst products I have ever had the misfortune of purchasing. Does not work well with Android and Linux. The product is riddled with bugs and poor design. Could not recommend anyone purchasing this useless product if you run android or linux. This guy’s review pretty much sums up my experience:
http://homewireless.org/wp/2010/03/the-insteon-smartlinc-controller-review/
If you want some juicy technical details on why this product is such an epic fail(well one of the reasons) then check out this post:
http://www.mvlug.org/JoePfeiffer/SlowGetWithSmartLinc
Sorry you have been having problems with this product. Our representatives can offer technical support to help you utilize this product to its fullest. Feel free to contact them at 800-762-7846, they are available Mon-Fri 8:00am-9:00pm and Sat 10:00am-4:00pm ET.
I contacted support, they never tested the product with android and linux(Epic QA Fail). Some of the bugs they are already aware of but have no plans to release a firmware upgrade to fix the problems. I found the support generally pretty poor with a low level of technical expertise exhibited by the support staff.
Thanks much for the post, windows/iphone only hardware is unacceptable, there is a reason why TCP and http are specs that everyone should respect.
it is also near unusable on webOS / TouchPad.
If you cannot get the Internet on your Linux machine or Android phone, then maybe you should update your equipment with serial modems. The 2412n comes with web based gui (simple and lacking? yes) that my 95yo Grandmother accesses with her Galaxy S and Ubuntu.