mvgossman

No way would I go cheap on Amazon's Smart Plug or any other plug that is not ISY controllable unless I absolutely know I will not need to control it. The price difference is not a meaningful one worth sacrificing functionality that might be nice to have later. I went cheap this once just because it is absolutely one that would be turned on and off in the room with its Echo Dot and nothing else. I also don't need dimming. Having said that, you can set up some simple routines for the Amazon Smart Plug, such as turning off at specific times and sunrise/sunset. Nothing like the ISY, not even close, but there's a role for the Amazon Plug here in this one situation. Has the price of the Lamplinc gone down? When I went to verify the prices, I found $24.99 for the Amazon and $49.99 for the Lamplinc. I could have sworn the Lamplinc was more in the past, maybe they're feeling the competitive price pressure. If you need dimming and ISY control, being twice the price is well worth it.

I bought an Amazon Smart Plug for $24.99 because I know that I will not need to control it with the ISY994i, and it costs less than the Insteon Lamplinc. It's a neat little device, and simple to set up. So is there in fact a way to control is from the ISY994i in case I need to have another controllable outlet and want to use the Amazon Smart Plug? I searched for inquiries on this matter in the forum, I'm kind of surprised that hasn't come up! Mitch

Very strange - maybe the light flicker I had is due to some other strange interaction with the power supply on the UPS, triggering enough noise on the system to generate a signal to the Insteon dimmer switch on that circuit. Simple question - how does one look to see what insteon commands are being sent in the past x minutes? I could turn off all breakers except the light flickering circuit and the ISY994i's circuit and observe the traffic.

PLM is not plugged into the UPS, didn't even try since I'm aware that it wouldn't work. At least for my UPS (APC model) the ISY994i definitely causes this strange behavior in my system. The only explanation I can think of is that the current draw from the ISY's transformer somehow causes sudden quick current draws and the flickering. It's exactly the same kind of flicker you see when your AC unit or even refrigerator kicks in. Is it normal for the Tx and Rx lights to flicker in a regular pattern, like a heartbeat, when there is no Insteon traffic? Mitch

Some months ago I started noticing that two sets of ceiling lights in the house on two different circuits, using Insteon dimmer switches, would flicker intermittently,. just a fraction of a second dimming, then normal. Very annoying. I found the time today to try to track down the cause by isolating one of the flickering light circuits and starting up other circuits one at a time to identify the offending device that's causing the flickering. I narrowed it down to the ISY994i - flicker stops when unplugged! I plugged it in again, unplugged the cable to the PLM, no change, flicker returned. I unplugged it from the network cable to the ethernet switch - no change! I unplugged it completely again and the flickering resolved. Well some months ago I had a power surge that trashed some Insteon switches so I got scared and get two uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) for a desktop computer at one location and at the wiring cabinet, and a whole home surge protector, and plugged in critical items such as my Apple Airport for protection into the UPS. I figured why not also plugged the ISY994i transformer into the UPS. So I tried unplugging it and instead plugging it into an unprotected outlet and the problem light flickering elsewhere went away! Everything's fine now. Is there some weird incompatibility of the ISY994i power supply or the ISY994i being unhappy with power coming through a UPS? Sure seems that way. I was initially concerned that there was a problem with the ISY994i because the frequency of the flicker of the Rx Tx LEDs is not too different from the flicker of the lights on the lighting circuit. Is this flicker normal? See video. Mitch

I reviewed the link you provided, Brian, I bet it is a power supply issue. I have lost many an Insteon switch to power surges with thunderstorms, I recently installed a whole-home surge protector that is supposed to sacrifice itself to absorb the load, but it's still working so enough must have slipped through to the 2413S PLM to do it in. Or it just died. By the way, the green light on it is lit and looks normal. Going to Smarthome. I might take a crack at the power supply repair later to have a spare.

Sorry I meant to point this fact out: Yes the ISY994i boots up normally, only the leftmost blue LED is on and not flashing. Inquiries to it from the Console (and iPhone app) produce a momentary flash of other LEDs which I believe is normal. I have restarted the PLM well before ISY. The PLM diagnostics shows the PLM is active, I forget the exact wording. The PLM table comes back empty. I will look at the link provided, thanks. It's enough of a PITA to not have the ISY to justify spending $79.99 to zero in on this and get it going.

Was away and returned to find my ISY994i wasn't processing programs and cannot control lights from the Console. I suspect a lightning strike/surge. I do have a backup of the ISY but everything works OK except each and every device in my system is inactive on the console (a million "OK" buttons to touch to be sure). Restore of the Modem does not work from the Console. I did a factory reset and tried again, no go - failed restore message. However, Diagnostics says it is communicating with it. Before I replace it, any other ideas to bring things to life? Could it in fact by the ISY? If it is dead, what is the correct procedure to install a new one? Restore Modem? Anything else? Restore Devices also? I do lack a basic understand of what the division of labor is between the modem and the ISY. Thanks!

I'm sorry, I'm a little foggy on how to do this. If anyone has time to outline it and get me to understand I'd appreciate it. What I want to understand is this - take for example my stair lights. There are two circuits with two switches each but I always control them all at the same time. I have a scene set up to turn them on and off with any of the switches as a controller to go to 10%. I also have a program that turns them all on at sunset and off again at sunrise. What I want to do is have a scene that turns them on via a program to go to 20% at a half hour before sunset. So how do I make a separate scene that the program triggers to set them all to 20% without colliding with the scene that causes each switch to trigger the scene to set them all to 10%? I foresee the switches now causing the scene to go to 20% after I make this new scene incorrectly. As you can see I lack a fundamental understanding of all the settings available when setting up a scene, where you click the scene itself and the individual devices in the scene there's a whole selection of individual settings for the devices and a copy button which I don't understand. I'm seeing that this thread could be very useful to newbies. I'm not a total newbie, just new to this particular aspect.

Thanks again, another related question on Scenes. When you click on the scene name in the console, each member of the scene is present with its own ramp rate and on level. Is this to determine what happens when the whole scene is turned on with the ISY? And each item in the scene container, when highlighted shows itself in red and the other in blue. Is this in order to determine what happens when each is manually turned on and what to tell the others to do completely differently, if you wish, from the Scene attributes mentioned above? If I am on the right track here, then in order to have different programs to do different things to the scene from when you press the switches, or to have different intensities with different names, you'd create a scene whose global attributes are as you desire? Mitch

Thanks - what is the purpose of the "Adjust Scene" function. It superficially sounds like a way to set that scene to an arbitrary brightness. Mitch

How do you make a program that turns on all devices in a Scene to a certain level? I've been having to set each individual device in the scene manually as an individual line item in the "THEN" section of a program, seems unsatisfying, and I haven't found in trial and error or searching here and elsewhere for a more elegant way that works. Related question is, if one of the items in that scene is a KPL button, how do you turn that one button on (or off)? Mitch

That's a very good question and I did verify nothing else runs at that time. And a good idea to adjust the time to something else. I'm debugging this one item at a time, even to the point of not reseting the device. Did that the first time last night.

Hi - thank you for that. Great minds work alike. Yesterday I returned home, no change after making the changes to that program. Lights did not turn on but the record shows it executed on schedule. So I started from scratch, deleted the program, recreated it identically, and I did a power off-power on with the ISY994i. What is so strange is that when I made a change to the program to turn the lights on about 2 hours after sunset I sat there until the exact minute and watched the lights snap on. We'll see when I get home, y young daughter definitely lets me know that the lights didn't go on. My next step will be to do the on-off condition you mentioned, someone else suggested that and it has the additional advantage of being clearer, cleaner, and one program. After that I might implement the beta firmware. Mitch

I did just that - I confirmed that the program ran, it ran as true, and there is no other reference to "Christmas Tree" anyplace in the system.

I was going to wait until tomorrow to do a rigorous test because maybe something's different and magical about "before sunset" that makes it fail. But I did just to a test with a specific time and I watched it run correctly, lights went on. I then ran it for 1 hour 58 minutes after sunset and it also turned the lights on correctly. I'm wondering if something got corrupted in the program "IF" clause somehow, bet it works tomorrow. Stay turned!

Good suggestions all. See the screenshot of the "Christmas Lights off", triggers at 2:00 AM. Nothing unusual, and when I got up this morning they were indeed off. See the screenshot of activity, it shows that today, 30 minutes prior to sunset at 4:02 that program ran. I gather that it ran "TRUE" according to that report and should have turned those lights on. They did not today! I did Kush's advice to select a THEN item, update, and save, will see what I come home to tomorrow. It did turn off the green stripe, it was fooled into thinking it is a fresh program that hasn't run an IF yet. If nothing works, I will convert to the THEN ELSE construct instead of separate On and Off programs and see what happens. Gary Funk: Thanks for testing it. What is your ISY Firmware? Mine is 4.6.2, the current non-beta. Maybe there's a bug. Oberkc: My basis for feeling that the program isn't working is the fact that the lights do not turn on. Two of them have no switch, they are LampLincs that no one would mess with and I rely on the program to turn them on and off. The current state of the tree one for example is "Off" so ISY thinks it's off too. I just ran the "Then" and everything snapped on like it should. If nothing works tomorrow after the Update/Save trick above, I will convert to the THEN ELSE construct instead of separate On and Off programs and see what happens.

Back home. If that is true, then when I activate the "Then" manually they should be promptly turned off by that rogue program. I'll post the lights off program next.

Currently I have two programs - the one shown at disk (-30 min from sunrise) to turn on and one triggered at 1:00am to turn off. Why has this arrangement worked before but not now? But probably clearer and cleaner the way you describe. Mitch

Never had this happen before, a program for turning on the Christmas Light SL's and a Lamplinc for 30 minutes prior to sunset. It doesn't trigger! When I "Run Then" manually, bam it's fine. Why isn't this triggering? I confirmed the time of day down by ISY994i is correct. See screenshot. That's right, we have a leg lamp. By the way, the green stripe means that the condition is true. What does it mean in a situation like this where the condition is only true for an instant when the specific time arrives? Mitch

Playing around with IFTTT for the first time, Portal all set with the correct settings, key established, and on IFTTT.COM configured with a simple inbound IFTTT event consisting of trigger of Alexa "say a specific phrase" and the "That" is Maker to send a web request to the Portal's configured URL for a program. It doesn't work, including via a test of the applet on the IFTTT website. When going in to review the settings I see that the "Method", which I had set to "Post" goes back to "Get", I assume that's the issue. Why won "Post" stick? Mitch

I figured it out but I'm confused. I had two ISYs on one Amazon Alexa account. I had the "preferred ISY" designated as the one at my other home from where I am working now. I changed that and it works fine now. Which proves I do not understand what "preferred ISY" means. When I issue commands at either home it controls devices even at the other location. This isn't what I want so I'm probably going to create a separate Alexa account for the other home so there's no crosstalk. Thanks all for the help, if anyone knows how things are supposed to be done with two ISYs on one account I'm interested to learn!

I made a second test program and added some different synonyms and no go. But AHA - the "donkey" program does NOT appear at all in the list of devices even after multiple discoveries. There's no mistake, the ISY portal does show the "Donkey" when adding from the "Programs" tab and it's stored properly, and still it doesn't get sent through to my Echo Dot or the App.

Thanks... Yes to having performed "discover devices". I have the ISY Optimized for Smart Home V2, was just trying everything possible. Doing "Run Then" performs the desired test program correctly. "Alexa turn on donkey", response "Sorry, I couldn't find a device or group named donkey in Mitchell's account". I wish I could put in a screenshot. The thing that doesn't seem right is that there's no "IF" condition in this program.

I've had he Echo Dot working fine with the ISY Portal for devices and scenes. Just tried to add an ISY994i Program. It adds fine, with the correct spoken command, as a program, I'm looking right at it on the ISY Portal. Spoken command is there - random test word "Donkey". I have the program with the desired action, just a test light to go on, in "THEN". I have no conditions under "IF". "Alexa, turn on Donkey". "Alexa, turn on program Donkey". "Alexa, ask izzy to turn on Donkey". Nothing works and I'm at a dead end after researching. What am I doing wrong?? Mitch