apostolakisl

why don't you screen shot us the Elk XEP configuration page on your RP2 and the Elk Configuration page on your ISY. (black out your Elk code). I have a feeling something is just not set correctly.

I have the latest firmware and mine is working fine. In fact it has never not worked on any firmware version since I got the Elk module when it first came out years ago. And I have installed most of the firmware alpha/betas along the way. Every time I didn't have connectivity I soon realized it was because I forget to disconnect from Elk RP.

that isn't going to fix it. A router assigned static address is no different than a device set static ip address (except that a router assigned address prevents you from screwing up and setting multiple devices to the same ip). They both result in the device being at that ip all the time. And this is only an issue after reboots when you might get a new ip address depending on your routers reserved ip time for dhcp and how long your device was offline. I assume you have confirmed your isy and elk are both on the same subnet. ie, they both have the same first 3 sets of numbers (like 192.168.1.x) If both your Elk and ISY are getting dhcp assigned ip from the same router, and you don't have a fancy router with vlan's configured, then they will be. And the other big thing, you CAN NOT BE LOGGED INTO ELK RP2!! When the Elk panel is logged into by ElkRP2, it will not connect to anything else.

when your elk and isy are on the same lan, you use the non-secure port. Go into Elk m1xep setup under TCP/IP settings (in Elk RP2) page and enable the nonsecure port (2101). Then set the ISY to use port 2101 and also input the code you use to arm your system.

You probably didn't have it do a "run then" on the second program. The two program solution will work. Though you have another problem in that if you turn the light off while you are at home and between the hours of 11pm and sunrise, the program will turn the light back on again. In the end, simply removing the "status . . off" line is a very good and simple solution. The only reason it would not be to your liking is if the light were already on for some reason and you wanted it to stay on, it would shut off 5 minutes after geo-fence turns to 1. Like. . . . maybe. . . . your wife is having cocktails on the driveway with the light on (on purpose), you drive up, the light stays on, but 5 minutes later it shuts off. Your wife curses at your GD HA setup and you get no action.

I don't see much point in having automation of home thermostats, especially in homes with families. The lag time between changing a thermostat and the temp changing is just too long to be useful. If you live alone, and have a sizable commute, it would be reasonable to use automation with geo-fencing to, for example, trigger your system when you leave work. But with a family that is in and out of the house all day long, it is pointless. I have found it very helpful at my church. Again, this is a location that spends good chunks of time empty and everything doesn't happen on a regular schedule. So it is very helpful to be able to quickly (and remotely) change the schedule and be able to manually trigger things from afar when a usage that wasn't on the schedule comes up. I also have different algorithms that are triggered depending on the type of use and I have staged the system based on outside temp, inside temp, and humidity. For example, if you turn on the system and conditions are mild, only 2 units will come on. If conditions are nasty, 5 units come on. If 2 units trigger, but after 30 minutes things aren't coming around, my algorithm adds more units.

https://www.techhive.com/article/3327501/how-to-use-alexa-routines.html

Funny, I didn't know about Alexa routines. I'll have to look into that. Google routines are set from the "Google Home" app. From the home screen in google home app (the names they picked lend to confusion), just click the "routines" button, then "manage routines" at the bottom. You can have a routine do other things besides control devices, like tell you the days weather or your expected commute time.

Have you tried making "routines" instead. They don't require special words like "turn off" or "lights". They just follow the words you set. I very much like google home for that, especially when controlling things that aren't getting "turned on" nor are "lights". Also, I always have a google home in my pocket (my android phone of course).

@Scottmichaelj The lag has, in my testing, been at least one minute and no more than 2. I am not sure, but this looks like it runs on the pc, not in the cloud. So if the pc isn't on or logged off of gmail, I don't think it works, still have to confirm this. The one thing that it definitely does do that is not exactly kosher, is that if you are logged into two gmail accounts on the same pc, it will forward emails as texts regardless of which account the email came in on. For example, I logged into both my wife and my account on gmail on the same pc at the same time. I set the forwarding rule for both of our accounts. I sent an email to me, and it forwarded to both me and my wife via text. And vice-versa. Hard to complain for free. It looks like I'll need to keep two pc's running with gmail open for me and my wife.

You should consider getting away from opening all those ports for your cameras and whatnot. DDNS is nice, especially if your ISP changes up your IP, and it easier to remember than some random set of numbers. However, using DDNS or just your plain ip address to connect to your home requires opening ports. The more devices you have open to the internet via open ports, the more avenues of attack you open. If one of those devices has a security flaw, then someone could potentially crack open your whole network. This has happened with some popular IP cams in the past. The portal eliminates opening ports by maintaining a tunnel between your ISY and UD's server. This tunnel is initiated from your ISY, so there is no open port. When you want to access your ISY, you go to UD's server and open another tunnel between you and them (you log in via https). The session is then linked between your home and you through UD's server, all secure tunnels, no open ports. Alternatively, you can get a vpn router for your home and make a single connection to your router which then opens you whole network to you, again, with no open ports aside from the VPN port which the router manages (UDP 500 is the only open port detected from outside my network using Ubiquiti USG). This is going to be the only way to view your IP cameras without opening ports for all of them. Nobody does portals for video feeds, presumably because of the high bandwidth. I suppose you could live stream to youtube, which in essence is a video portal of sorts. But I don't think youtube just lets you live stream forever, but I could be wrong.

I have been using ISY to send email to text using the standard carrier texting. ie @vtext.com for verizon. But I use a google voice number, and you can't do that with google voice. I found a work-around. There is a plug in for gmail called CloudHQ. Cloud HQ automates the process of using your gmail to send texts, and it works for a google voice number. You don't need to know what carrier the person has, you just put in their phone number and CloudHQ does the rest. As far as I know there is no limit. CloudHQ has a feature to automatically forward any email to your phone as a text. So I set it up to forward all emails that come from my ISY to my Google Voice number. So far so good. You just set the rule for forwarding. I use my gmail smtp server for ISY sending, so I input the gmail address as for the "from" field, and in the subject field I put "ISY". So now, any text from my gmail address that includes the letters "ISY" in the subject get forwarded to my GV number as a text.

The portal, at least last I checked is like $12/year. So it is hard to not buy that considering how nicely it gives you access to your ISY without opening any ports. Alternatively, should you want to keep ports closed but have remote access and not use the portal, you can set up a vpn router. I have done both. The portal has many other advantages as well, particularly the integration with amazon alexa and google home. Ubiquiti sells a really nice router (usg) that makes vpn a snap for $129 (b and h).

I'm having the same problem. And it is doing screwing things, like I give the command for one light to turn on and it turns on a different one. I tried unlinking and relinking and it still has the issue. I can give some commands and it says "it looks like universal devices is unavailable right now". And I give a different command and it works, or maybe it works but turns the wrong thing on.

Just saw insteon 50% off lots of multipacks. Including the leak detector 7 pack. So you could do 14 of them for ~$250. If you have concerns about Insteon wireless signal, you could pick a a 7 pack of lamp modules and automate a bunch of lamps. That would make a nice lived in look when away and cover all your high risk leak areas.

@Ajax Your problem is you have too fancy of an ice machine. Seriously, though, I know someone who went out to dinner and came back to a destroyed house from a washing machine hose. My office had a washing machine hose break that took 10 minutes to shut down (people were there that didn't know how to turn the water off) which did $50k in damage. That is when I installed the shut off valve so all you have to do to shut off water is turn the alarm on. In short, if you are only going to shut down water from a leak detector, you will need to have lots of them. How PO'd would you be if you have 10 things covered and it is the 11th thing that busts a pipe?

There are water valves out there that have all of that built in to them. They supposedly have algorithms that detect slow leaks as well as major breaks. That probably works for a slow leak, but a 25gpm washing machine hose will make a serious mess in seconds, and the best you can expect a valve like this to do is maybe 10 minutes? Not sure what the algorithm is, but obviously it can's just shut the water off, you could easily be actually using water like that. Again, you should shut the water off if you our of town. You don't need ice machines or whatever to work. The only exception is irrigation, which I suggest splitting off prior to the house shut off valve. Also, ice machines work just fine shutting the water off for a few hours at a time. The pipes hold plenty of pressure to push out multiple refills of the ice tray. Especially, if like me, you have the ice machines on RO filters with pressurized holding tanks.

I agree, the easiest way to do it would be to use the exact setup that the SH picture demo's in the example. You only need the HUB if you want to be notified. But again, how many leak detectors are you going to have? Are you going to put one under every single appliance/faucet/toilet/etc? What about if you get a pin-hole in some random spot where you would never have a leak detector? If this is a vacation house that goes weeks or months un-occupied, you need to shut the water off, not rely on leak detectors. A pin hole left unchecked for a couple weeks can do amazing destruction.

@Ajax I don't know. If it is a drip drip kind of leak, probably OK. But if a washing machine hose breaks and you have 25 gpm blasting away, not sure you want to trust that method. Why don't you just shut the water off when you aren't there and not worry about leak detectors. Like I said, that is how I do my house and office. My house is fancier with a delay built in for the dishwasher and washing machine. But my house also has more than 20 hard wired leak detectors which also shut the water off without delay. My office shuts off immediately upon arming the alarm, no delays, no leak detectors. Most people with vacation homes will shut the water off manually when away, but that doesn't cover you when you go out to dinner or whatever.

I can't say for sure what valve he has, but the 3/4 inch one that pops up on SH website is a ball valve. It only needs power to actuate, it doesn't need 12v to stay open. It is not a solenoid, it is a little motor that turns the ball valve. @Ajax Just because you didn't like the Insteon, doesn't mean that you don't need/want an ISY. ISY has moved well away from Insteon dedication and is fully z-wave compatible and with the Nodeserver/Polyglot is quickly adding functionality to pretty much anything with an open API. Either way, if I were looking for a logic control solution, it is hard to go wrong with ISY, especially as cheap as they now are on SH website. And there is still a good chance that Insteon has things you want. Maybe for example, the outdoor on/off units, or fan controls, or who knows. The beauty is you can mix and match pretty easily with ISY at the center of it all. Now, to water valves, I use my alarm system to control the valves both at home and at my office. Even a basic DSC "dumb" alarm panel has outputs that can switch relays that actuate the valve. That is how it works at my office. The "dumb" DSC panel shuts the water off when armed. I have no need for water when not there. At home, I use my Elk to control it. Having said that, neither is compatible with a wireless tag (as far as I know). I don't have any wireless tags, but I understand they have an open API and can be integrated wtih ISY, so ISY would easily be handle that logic. This assumes you trust the wireless tag. If I were you, I would just turn the water off when the alarm is armed. This assumes no irrigation system or that you have the irrigation system split off prior to water entering the building.

It doesn't matter who makes the device (ISY, Indigo, whatever), they sell it. And if they sell you a device and then turn around and make it non-functional by withholding the PLM from you, they would be challenged. Probably would be forced to either make the part (plm) available or sell the rights to someone else to make it.

I don't think Insteon is in a position to discontinue the PLM until they haven't sold anything that uses the PLM for at least 5 years. With SH selling multiple software packages and ISY on their own website, they are obliged to continue to provide access to PLM's for a while. I'm sure there would be a lawsuit if they tried to stop providing what amounts to an essential "part" for products that they sell, especially considering the typical life span of that part. Now if SH only sold the PLM and none of the products that use the PLM, it would be different.

@Michel Kohanim Will polyglot support for RPi be discontinued? If so, when, if not, what will the difference be between the two?

Polyglot allows ISY to "natively" control/interact with ANY IP enabled device that has a published API. By "natively" I mean it shows up in your list of devices. All of this of course requires that someone write the code for the node server, where polyglot is the platform. It is not unlike the play store where there are a gazillion apps that people have written on the android platform that lets your phone do all sorts of things besides make phone calls. So far the "polyglot play store" is just a couple dozen "apps" and they are all free. Hopefully this will catch on and we could get hundreds or even thousands of options, and probably there will be a mechanism for people to get paid for them.

OK then, I guess they are doing a BT mesh that hops around the house like zwave or Insteon. I have to wonder what the range is. I was always under the impression that BT was a 20 foot kind of thing. After googling, I see that there are 3 classes and the high power one is 100m, though I don't believe I've ever seen a device that uses class 3. I'm assuming that is clear line of sight only. I can't find anywhere that lists the class for the Eaton lights or the Polisy BT. I'm assuming that since this is 2 way, both devices must be at high power for it to work at distance. I wonder when Eaton came out with this stuff, this is the first I've heard of it.