It’s a pretty cool unit.  In addition to the fingerprints, you can also get in via PIN number or mechanical key, which I guess is a fail-safe if you get amnesia and have your fingers chopped off.  There is no worry of power outage either, there’s a secret battery point where you touch a 9V battery to juice it up temporarily since the 4 double ‘A’ batteries are inside on the backside of the unit.

To program it, I had to set up a master print code.  This print is different from the entrance print.  It is only used to program the other 99 entrance codes.  To program the master print I had to remove some hardware and push a couple of buttons in the back at the same time with special tools to activate the unit to accept a master print.  Once that was done I set up the PIN for back up entrance.  I had to prep the unit and then enter my own 8 digit number to create the new PIN.  Once that was completed I put the unit back together and started to program the unit for fingerprint recognition.  There are 99 open slots for fingerprints.  I put my master print down to activate the unit to accept an entrance print, inputted a two digit number, and placed a different finger on the sensor to read it and then read it again.  It beeped telling me it was saved.  I tried and sure enough, I heard the motor turn and activate the handle.  I pushed down on the handle and the door opened.  Pretty cool.

What now, Mr. Spock?!  That’s what I thought…

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Last night I received the SwitchLinc 3-Way Dimmer – INSTEON 3-Way Dimmer Kit from Smarthome (smarthome.com).  What’s nice is that I can order from their website early in the morning and get the product the next day for the low end on shipping.  Their headquarters are about 30 miles away.   The SwitchLinc 3-Way Dimmer – INSTEON 3-Way Dimmer Kit works for lights switches that are three pole switches, meaning two light switches that control the same lights.

The instructions were well written, if I read them when I decided to pull everything out of the walls.  I partially read steps 1 through 6.  I didn’t realize until after there were about 25 steps altogether.  Go fig.  I started at 8:30pm

Needless to say it took me a could of times to get this in the right way.  The first time once all the wires were connected, wrongly connected, the 6 ceiling lights would come on, then go off, flicker, and then repeat.  I thought to myself, sweet, we will just have to get used to that.  After about 10 seconds of that I decided to figure this mess out.

I read the directions word for word and by 11:30pm the lights dimmed on and the family room was with light of any intensity.  Now I know what to do next time.  I’ll have to install another set in our bedroom.  Hopefully this time it will only take me about 30 minutes to get those ones in.  I’ll post when that happens.

Product-wise, these switches are nice to look at, they have a white light that is on the left side of the switch to tell you the intensity of the light strength.  What’s cool is that you can program the lights to ramp up as fast as you want or as slow as you want and to what intensity you want it to go to.  eg. You can set the intesity at 50% of full power and have it take 3 seconds for the lights to slowly ramp up to 50%.  You can tap the pad again and have 100% intensity or you can hold the pad down to ramp up the intesity to whatever you want.  Pretty cool.

For more information check-out Smarthome’s website for more information.   www.smarthome.com

Directlink to this product:
SwitchLinc-3-Way-Dimmer-INSTEON-3-Way-Dimmer-Kit

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