apostolakisl

I have succesfully used "is not" lots of times in a "status" program but was just playing with it as a "control" program. The goal was to have a program run anytime a switch was touched in any way. Two lines I figured would do it. if switch xyz is switched on or if switch xyz is not switched on I have discovered the the "not switched on" doesn't seem to do anything. I figured it would trigger the program if you did anything to the switch, except turn it on. I further experimented by writing the line if switch xzy is not switched on all by itself. Nothing I did to that switch caused the program to run. So I don't quite understand what "is not switched" means to ISY in a control line.

I have succesfully used "is not" lots of times in a "status" program but was just playing with it as a "control" program. The goal was to have a program run anytime a switch was touched in any way. Two lines I figured would do it. if switch xyz is switched on or if switch xyz is not switched on I have discovered the the "not switched on" doesn't seem to do anything. I figured it would trigger the program if you did anything to the switch, except turn it on. I further experimented by writing the line if switch xzy is not switched on all by itself. Nothing I did to that switch caused the program to run. So I don't quite understand what "is not switched" means to ISY in a control line.

The else section of your first program will start running every time the motion sensor goes from "on" to "off" (I assume it can only be on/off) or if someone physically controls the switch to anything but "on". So if your motion sensor is on the fritz, then someone controlling the light to anything but "on" won't disable your second program. You might add "or control living room light is switched off" which will cause the program to run the "then" anytime anyone physically touches the switch at all. With that done you will have the opposite problem in that if the motion detector is stuck "on" the else section will never have call to run. If you add to your "then" statement "run program occupancy detector else" it will have the effect of disabling the night lighting program every time someone touches the switch and causes the else to starts its 24 hour countdown to switching the lights to auto. The only question I have is if a "then" clause can run an "else" clause of the same program. You might need to copy that else clause to a whole different program if that is the case. Other than that, I can't figure a way to mess it up. Addendum: You can have the "then" section run the "else" section of the same program. Addendum 2: It ocurred to me that since nothing else is referencing the "else" clause, you wouldn't need the "then" clause to run the "else" clause, you would just add the "else" clause contents to the end of the "then" clause. So in short, anytime the motion detector changed state, or the switch was pushed, the program would disable the night lighting program and reset the countdown to re-enabling the night lighting program for another 24 hours.

I once had a keypad linc led brightness adjust from a program and it seriously scrambled stuff. I ended up having to remove the switch from ISY, factory reset it, and put it back to ISY. I don't know why this happened but I will never use programs to change the led brightness again.

Sounds like you are starting to get the hang of this. It takes a while and you will still make lots of mistakes and scratch your head saying "why the heck is it doing that?" The ISY programming interface is very powerful but has a few quirks that aren't that intuitive. Once you get to know those things you will start to find it to be a fun challenge to get your programs to do all kinds of subtle things.

I believe you are correct except that scenes do not have a status. You will need to use one or both of the switches to monitor the status. That program will evaluate at 1) Sunset 2) 11 pm 3) any time the status is addressed (of whatever switch you choose to watch) You would be better off to write a program that turns the lights on at sunset, and another program that turns them off at 11pm.

It does no harm to send an "on" command to a device that is already on (or "off" to a device that is already off, or any command for that matter). In fact, there is a world of possibilities using things like an "on" command to a light that is already on. For example, I have my bedroom and bathroom lights set to turn on to 25% if they are off and you switch them off. It is a way to easily turn the lights dimly on if you need to get up during the night. If you have lights on a timer and you want to override the timer, this is another great use. For example, if the light is already on but it is timing down to a shut off shortly, then clicking "on" can abort that timer and allow them to stay on. When writing ISY programs it will help you greatly to understand triggers. In ISY programs, the "if" clause may be re-evaluated (triggered) while the program is still running and in that case, the program is aborted and started over. So if a "then" clause is still running, it will abort (like if you have a "wait" command in it). The most common situation that confuses people is the difference between a "status" and "control". Control statements are only triggers if the actual event happend (ie control on, even if it is already on). So if a program is running and "control on" is the only condition, that program will run to completion unless someone hits "on" on that switch. Also, "control" statements always pertain to the actual device being controlled. "control on" means someone physically pushed the "on" paddle. This is different then "status on" which works no matter how the device became on. Status statments are triggers any time there is any traffic relating to the device. So if you say "status on" in a program the program will abort and re-evaluate the entire "if" clause should any command be sent to that device and it doesn't matter what state the device is currently in.

Look at the Wiki as oberck says. A good motion program will 1) turn the light on for a period of time if the light is already off 2) do nothing if the light is already on 3) do nothing during the daytime 4) allow you to adandon the timer by either hitting the on or off button on the switch (and having the light follow that command as well). 5) not get caught in an endless loop By using multiple programs, separating your "then" from "if" sections, and using flag programs all of this can be done.

You will probably need to have two programs. The second program contains the "then" section of your current program. The first program has your current statements but also includes an "and status off" of one of the lights in the scene. The then section of this program will run the the then section of the second program. The reason for this is becuase adding the "status off" statement in the if section will cause the program to retrigger when the then secton turns it on and kill your program again. All of your headaches here are based on the fact that you have the delay mixed into the same program with all of these conditions. That delay allows for the program to be terminated since the then section changes things in the "if" section. By separating the "then" items into a whole different program you avoid this problem and you could actually go back to using "status" as you wrote thins the first time.

I am not so sure that this is true. As you pointed out, each 'off' statement triggers an evaluation, at which point it will halt the program and start it at the beginning. This assumes that the motion sensor sends repeated off's, which I suspect it will (after the motion sensor time-out period). The only problem that I can see is if the motion sensor time-out is longer than the program wait period. Based on the original post, however, it sounds as if the motion sensor wait period is less than 5 seconds. I was making the assumption that continuous motion would keep the motion detector in a continuous state of "off". In that situation the program would run its timed course to conclusion and shut the light off. If the motion paused, the motion detector went to "on" state, then back to "off" state it would work fine. So maybe if you did a jumping jack, stood still for a few seconds, then did another jumping jack. If the motion detector continued to send "off" commands despite already being "off", I think it would work I was just reading my last post and think I may have miss-spoken on one item. I said that status changes reset a status program no matter what the change is. In fact, I believe that a status update also resets the program, even if there is no change. For example, an Insteon switch may be off already and you hit "off". That also will reset the program despite no change at all.

Probably the reason that this didn't work the first time is because of the concept of triggers. In ISY, a trigger is something that causes the If section to be evaluated. When the If section is evaluated it will restart the program. "Status" is a trigger every time the status of that device changes, regardless of what the status changes is (on to off, off to on, partial on to some other partial on, etc). So, the motion detector is tripped, it becomes "off", this starts the program. But, since the motion dectector switches back to "on" when no further motion ocurrs, the program restarts when the motion stops long enough for the motion detector to switch back to "on" status. This time however, the if section is no longer true (because this change was to the "on" state) so the else section is exectued, which you had empty. Since the program was interupted prior to the delay you wrote in, it never finished the then section. If you stood in front of the motion detector and did jumping jacks, it probably would have finished and shut off even though motion was still going on, becuase there was no status change. "control" is a trigger only when the device was controlled as written. So, your program written as "control off" only gets evaluated when the motion detector changes to off. When it swtiches back on again, the program keeps running, unless it is tripped again prior to completing and this starts it over. But, now you want it to start over which effectively keeps the light on until the motion stops happening for a while. While writing the program using "control off" as you did works, it does have a flaw in that continuous motion will not keep the light on. I would suggest writing this as two programs, one that switches the light on when the motion detecotr switches to "off", and one that turns the light off several seconds after the motion detector switches to "on".

The IR Blaster that comes with the unit shoots 15 feet to where it is picked up by my channel plus whole house music system which repeats it in my media closet. I made no special provisions for this and it works very nicely.

You don't need to enable internet access, in fact, you don't even need an internet connection to get your sunset/sunrise. Under "configuration" tab, "system" subtab, you will see where to fill in your city. This sets the sunrise/sunset. An internet connection (or at least a home network connection) is necessary if you want to control your isy from anywhere but plugged directly into it. An internet connection is completely necessary for weatherbug. Please note, an internet connection and internet access are not the same thing. Enabling internet access automatically configures your home network to forward external requests to your ISY. This only works with certain routers so if you don't have one of those you need to do it manually. An internet connection is necessary if you want your ISY to be able to pull info from the internet (like weatherbug), or send stuff to the internet (like emails), but otherwise is optional. It will still control Insteon stuff without it.

The issue of devices being written to without progress bars and the flag at the bottom saying ready is consistent. I have now seen it happen on several occasions.

My upgrade went through fine. I even copied the directions to MS word so as to keep the instructions up with browser closed. The only odd thing was that after the upgrade, it indicated a device needed a write even though no changes were made to it. When I tried to activate the write nothing happened. I logged off, then back on a couple times before it would actually do the write. Then it quit doing the write (according to the progress bars), but still had the "writing" tag next to the device. Finally it went away. I am thinking that perhaps it was doing the writes in the background even though the "ready" flag was up and no progress bars existed. It is working fine now.

If you could communicate with everything fine before the firware update and now you can't, I doubt resetting devices will work since you would just be writing the same thing back to the devices. But my bet is that you won't be able to write to them anyway. Will it let you reinstall the firmare? Try downloading a fresh copy and install that again.

Try clearing your java cache again and logon using the http://your.ip.address/admin I did an update once and accidentally used the wrong version number in the java applet http and it opened a non-functioning console just like you describe. Once correcting that, all was fine. If this does let you logon, try redownloading the firmware and doing another install.

Excel blocks my ISY logs because I have a self signed certificate (I believe that is the reason). Anyway, I can set the security to low and view the files. But I hate doing that because I know I will forget to put it back. They have a feature for "trusted publishers" in the macro security section. Does anyone know how to set that up to allow my ISY logs?

You shouldn't have this extra level of dhcp addressing. You should shut off the dhcp server function on that unit. Don't use this router as a router, only a swtich. When using a router as just a switch, plug nothing into the WAN side, everything goes to the LAN ports (the wireless connections should automatically be "LAN")

Michel, I tried to edit out the extra \n's in the resource editor followed by pushing "update" then "save". After closing the dialog box and then reopening it, the extra /n's are still there. I also noticed that some of the codes have a /r prepended to the line of code. This also does not get saved when I remove it. Making other changes is saved. Lou

jcanter, Did you try unplugging the isy and repluggin it in?

Michel, It is working now on gmail but they (the real messages) are going to junk folder. Why the "test" messages don't go to the junk folder but the actual ones do is a mystery to me. And the real messages from the default mail server still are not showing up anywhere. The test messages do go through fine to the regular mail folder. Thanks, Lou

Two things: 1) I upgraded from 2.8.8 to 2.8.9 and my "about" menu also continued to say 2.8.8 despite the updates being there and despite clearing the java cache. I installed a second time and it fixed it. 2) I believe this happened when I went to 2.8.7, but I lost my ability to use mobile linc pro from outside of my local network. I would get an error stating the ssl failed. I redid my self signed SSL certificate and it looks like it is fixed. I have never had to do that with any past upgrades.

Michel, I was testing the program by using the "run then" command. I used the same program and changed the "to" section from an email address to a text message address. I left everything else the same. The texts come through but the emails do not. ISY is not indicating any errors. Again, when I test email from the configuration page I do get the test email. And yes, there is content in both body and subject and it does come through to the text message address. The email gets nothing, and I did check junk folder. Lou

Sort of related but different problem. I can't get notifications to send me emails from programs. It sends text messages fine and I can send emails using the "test" button on the configuration page. But executing emails from programs, well, it just doesn't happen. I am using your default email server.