apostolakisl

First off, very happy to have the node server. Not complaining, trying to be constructive. So many different situations with node servers because of the vast differences in node specific needs, so my comments are more to the general construct of PG, not to this node. I get it, PG is this generic template. The whole concept of the manually entered key is just not a user friendly situation. It isn't the end of the world, but it isn't really a GUI and everyone wants GUI's. Lots of directions to read and then you must manually type in "keys" precisely as expected and wondering "was the colon part of the key?" type stuff. The general format for these sorts of things are that all the "keys" are already there. Makes it obvious what info needs to be entered for values. With this particular node server, the value has the potential to get out of hand. For example, lets say you have 25 ir codes for a device, trying to input that into the format of "key" / "value", well that "value" line will be insane. You'd have to do it in a text editor and copy/paste it over. Lots of opportunity for screw ups, getting all your commas, quotes, and spaces right. Which is where I am now as I am adding my 5th "button" to the same device and plan to add about 15 to that device, with others to follow. Within PG, a system where you have radio buttons to push "add device", then "add code" would be more typical GUI stuff. Obviously, with iTach, you have these crazy *** codes that are generated for each and every ir message in the world. And unlike every other universal remote, which keeps all that code internal, itach keeps none of it onboard, instead requiring that you send the crazy code with each request. So, yeah, tough. Now I don't know anything about "control tower", I have actually been using my itach for a good 7 or 8 years as is without need to change anything, so maybe this is something new they added to simplify the ir code retrieval. All my codes I had to generate myself, which was a PITA since often times they didn't work. A lot of trial and error. What I have done here is just copy/paste the codes over from where I saved them on ISY network resources. I totally didn't need to install this node server, but I prefer using nodes to network resources, and I am also a glutton for punishment . . . screwing with things that work perfectly fine and breaking the golden rule of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". Oh well.

The screen shot was the most helpful, but you can't put that into the Node server display, I'm sure. Where things get unclear is whether things like "" symbols, or , symbols, or spaces are part of the language of explanation or part of the actual parameters. Often times people use the <> symbols to make that clear or if you could change text color or similar to make it clear what actually goes there. Finally, just a general polyglot comment. For this thing to really go mainstream, need to get rid of all this manual configuration of "key' and "value". Needs to have custom menus for each node server with pre-labeled slots, drop down's when appropriate, and then once configured, have it displayed in a more user friendly format. Basically, something like the polyglot ISY config page where it has pre-labeled slots for all the parameters like user, password, ip, port, etc.

Just spent some time with some trial and error. Anyone setting it up might find my experience helpful. The basic theme is that each device/ virtual remote occupies a single custom parameter. So if your TV has 20 buttons to control, it is just a single line with the "key" being the name of the remote (ie TV) and the "value" part being a very long single line of 20 commands one after the next. The format allows for 2 codes per button. If you put nothing for the second code, it just does the same as the first code. You can not eliminate code 2 from the drop down menu by not including "code2, hexcode2" in the preamble part of the "value" section. Here is an example of 2 buttons I installed for a single remote. Note the double space between the two buttons. The precursor part of <function, code1, hexcode1, code2, hexcode2> is just entered once at the very start of the "value" section of the custom parameter, from there on, a double space between each button setup. function, code1, hexcode1, code2, hexcode2 "whole house on","sendir,1:1,1,38580,1,1,19,177,19,177,19,177,19,178,19,178,19,178,19,274,19,178,19,178,19,178,19,274,19,3858" "whole house off","sendir,1:1,1,38343,1,1,15,180,14,181,19,176,19,176,19,176,19,272,19,272,19,176,19,176,19,177,19,272,19,4907"

Never mind. I deleted it and re-added and now it shows the nodes.

I did put the isy info, ip, username, password, and it says "connected", since I don't know what else it would connect to, I assume this means ISY. It also lists ISY as 5.3.3 which is correct along with the correct UUID, neither of which were entered by me but rather discovered.

I just installed and ran PG3 on polisy. It appears to have connected to my ISY, it says "connected" and it lists the uuid of my ISY in the settings. However, on the dashboard, it lists no nodes, unmanaged or otherwise. When I try to add a node , it asks me what slot and the drop down makes any number I want available. Should it not see that I already have nodes (from PG3 and IoGuy) occupying many of those slots?

I have been having a similar issue with my Husqvarna mower node.

What you are asking doesn't make any sense. Are you asking if there is an IP address to control your switch through ISY? If so, then yes, it is all documented in the REST command instructions in the wiki.

If you are asking if you can know the Insteon address of a switch that is not already added to ISY from ISY, the answer is no. If the automatic discovery method isn't working, then I suspect your switch has comm issues. Of course there is always the sticker on the switch, but that can fall off. Anyway, in short, if using the auto discovery doesn't work, odds are good that manually entering the address isn't going to work either.

I don't get a whole lot of snow here. I would speculate that snow at night would be the same issue as rain at night with a camera that "shines" IR light. Maybe with enough snow it would all just be white and not trigger anything though.

Not much ambient light where I am. Unless the moon is bright. I have decorative landscape lights only. Putting out general area lighting doesn't appeal to me from an aesthetic. I suppose a real IR camera, a thermal camera in other words, would do the trick.

And another nice feature of BI is that the same camera can be used multiple times with different programming to create different triggers.

I don't know what animals have IR vision. A lot of insects see UV. I would be interested to learn more about IR vision. I get insects flying around the camera, but that is a rare trigger, and same with cobwebs. The fact is, unless you have a camera with true AI that can identify a deer as something different than a human, there is just no way to stop that false alarm. And of course other forms of MS will detect the deer also. The main complaint I have is with heavy rain and false triggers at night. Daytime rain is not an issue, it is the rain drops being lit up by the IR at night. I'm sure if I were better at programming it, I might be able to prevent it. The rain issue is that it will wake me up in the middle of the night and I'll have to pull out my phone to disable it. The more traditional MS won't get tricked by rain. I suppose a hybrid system that requires both to trigger might work best. Rain Trigger: Real night time trigger:

Blue Iris has excellent motion sensing ability that is customizable. You can designate the number of pixels, the amount of contrast, how far the pixels move, contrast levels, and so on. The most useful feature is to set zones and then set rules that require an object to travel from zone to zone. For example, I have Blue Iris monitor my driveway at the street. I have set up 3 zones within the camera field of view. Zone 1 is the 1/3 of the driveway closest to the street, zone 2 is in the middle and zone 3 is the part closest to the house. The rule requires that an object start in zone 1, travel through zone 2, and then if it enters zone 3, then it is a trigger. If this happens, then it triggers a program in ISY that causes my light switches through the house to chirp, announcing a visitor and BI sends me an email with a picture. Shortcomings: I have the occasional deer trigger it in the middle of the night and for some reason when the camera switches from black and white to color around sunrise I get a false trigger sometimes. Also heavy rain gives me false triggers. I set a second program to disable the first program for 2 hours which I activate with rain and I also have a timeout on it so multiple visitors all at once don't keep making my house go beep. I have similar programs for my cameras pointing around the house and at the doors that turn lights on when it detects someone approaching the house.

On this line of thought, if you unplug your ISY from the internet but leave it plugged into your PLM, any outside interference from the likes of IFTTT, Alexa, etc will be eliminated.

I suppose if unplugging ISY fixes the problem for sure, then what I have to say here won't matter. But, I have been on this forum for over a decade and I have never heard of anyone having an ISY do what troubles you. If it was ISY, it wasn't ISY's fault, it was programs that were doing exactly what they were supposed to do, just that the person writing the program didn't understand ISY programming or had a program they forgot about. But you have zero programs, so that rules out programs. I have had Insteon/ISY get bad links. I believe the source of these bad links was me moving switches around and linking/unlinking a bunch of stuff. ISY seems to have been the source of the problems by failing to remove links from its database. So even after factory reset and restore from ISY, ISY just put the bad links back on the device. While ISY may have been the source of the bad links, once the links are written, it is not ISY mediating the problem, the links are on the devices and the problem would still be there even if you unplugged it. The only cure was to delete the devices from ISY and add them back manually. My symptoms were that lights would seemingly randomly turn on or off. But it wasn't random, it was someone/something controlling a device elsewhere in the house. In summary, if it always certain devices that have the issue, consider deleting those devices from ISY, factory resetting them, and then adding them back to ISY. The problem, however, is that it may not be the "misbehaving" device that has the bad link but rather the other device in the bad link pair. Of note, using ISY to check the links on a device and compare to the database does not help diagnose this problem because ISY thinks the links should be there. However, if you run a link scan, then completely delete the device and add it back in, re-creating all the scenes and settings as before, you will see that the device now has fewer links than before.

You can use the status of the lights. For example, if your scene has two lights with on-level set to 50%, then your if clause would be. If status dimmer 1 is 50% and status dimmer 2 is 50% Then

If you are up for it, trying opening the inline linc and replace the capacitors. It is not just the PLM's that fail on dead caps. You have to drill out the rivet holding the voltage regulator to the aluminum case/ heat sink, otherwise it is just a handful of tiny screws holding it together. I had several 2476D dimmers that died and after I fixed my PLM, I decided to try them just to see, and all but one were fixed with new caps.

ISY does have a "copy program" function where it will duplicate. So you can make a template and duplicate 21 times and then just edit the details.

If your ISY console shows the value change to "run", then status will definitely pick that up. If there are only 2 status', and you only want the program to run when it changes from not running to running, then there isn't really any way for things to get messed up. "control" is useful when you want a program to trigger even if the status doesn't change. For example, hitting the "on" paddle when the light is already on will run using control, but it won't run on status.

Using the "control" requires that the event was initiate at/by the device. I'm not sure exactly about the rain machine nor do I know how the rain machine is turning on in your situation. For example, if it is turning on in response to an ISY program or another Insteon device, then there will be no "control" message issued from the device, only a "status" message. Examples that I know for sure to illustrate. 1) A light switch only issues a "control" message when you press the light switch button. Turning on/off any other way only issues a "status" message. 2) A motion sensor will issue a "control" message whenever you trigger the motion.

Polyglot can be hosted locally or you can host it on UD's server. If you want UD to host it, then purchase it. It isn't expensive but it is a subscription. The portal also allows you to access your ISY from outside your LAN without opening any ports. Also helps manage different users and integrate with Alexa/Google. A big down side to polyglot on the cloud is if your internet goes down, you have no polyglot and anything ISY needs from it to run programs and stuff will be dead. On the upside, it doesn't take much to setup when on the cloud. If you want polyglot local, the cheapest way to add it is to buy a raspberry pi and install polyglot on it. The rpi with an SD card might be around 50 bucks. If you want to spend some extra for an enclosure you can, and should if it isn't otherwise secured out of harms way. Setting up your rpi with polyglot will require you know about rpi or that you follow some detailed directions to the letter. You could also buy a polyisy. Polyisy can also host ISY and ultimately it will be required I imagine as the firmware gets fancier and fancier and requires the added horsepower. Not sure, but I think polyisy might ship with polyglot pre-installed, otherwise installing it on polyisy will be very similar to a rpi. I got my polyisy in the very first round and had to do all that configuring manually. Polyglot really expands ISY capabilities. There are dozens, perhaps even getting up near 100 apps you can install on polyglot that add functionality and integration. Last I checked, the full list of nodes available using the cloud version of polyglot was shorter than locally hosted, but I can't say for certain as I don't use the cloud version. Things like integrating with your alarm system, getting weather data, tracking your water, electricity, your roomba, your tesla, and so on are on polyglot. And of course, detailed time and date info. Here is a list. https://polyglot.universal-devices.com/ These are all free to install. Though a new version of polyglot (v3) is now available with paid nodes. The hope is that with the $$ incentive, the number of nodes and degree of functionality will go up. But I use over a dozen of the current free nodes and most are really good.

@satwar You are using programs I wrote many many years ago way before node servers existed. Those programs are no longer needed. It is far simpler to install a node server.

Then the ISY Time/Data node server has a node just for that.

Do you mean even/odd as per the day of the month? ie, 29,31,1,3,5,etc? Or do you mean every other day? ISY time/data node server does both if you want. There is an even/odd day node that goes by the day of month (as in the example above). There is also the node "days since epoch" which just counts day after day after day since Jan 1, 1970. So you can do an even/odd with that by dividing by 2 and if the remainder is 0, it is an even day, if it is 1, it is an odd day. You will need to transfer the value to a variable. every other day - [ID 008E][Parent 0093][Not Enabled] If Time is 12:00:01AM Then $i.every.other.day = 'ISY Time Data' Days since Unix Epoch days $i.every.other.day %= 2 Else EDIT: You can can also do even/odd weeks by first dividing by 7, then remainder divide (%=) by 2. This works for my recycling which comes every other week.