Skip to content
View in the app

A better way to browse. Learn more.

Universal Devices Forum

A full-screen app on your home screen with push notifications, badges and more.

To install this app on iOS and iPadOS
  1. Tap the Share icon in Safari
  2. Scroll the menu and tap Add to Home Screen.
  3. Tap Add in the top-right corner.
To install this app on Android
  1. Tap the 3-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner of the browser.
  2. Tap Add to Home screen or Install app.
  3. Confirm by tapping Install.

apostolakisl

Members
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by apostolakisl

  1. Options as I see it. 1) Get your hands on an Insteon PLM, use a voltage converter and see if it works. 2) Ditch Insteon and go with Z-wave along with ISY 3) Ditch ISY and stay with Insteon using some other non-plm interface. The HUB is listed as working with 50hz, however it only lists125v Personally, I suspect the PLM with a voltage adapter probably will work based on RF.
  2. That sounds like what my assumption was. Transmit on zero cross, accept at any time.
  3. @larryllix I was thinking about it and without the rf, there is just no way for the devices on the different 3 phase to be in sync. None of the 2 or 3 phase appliances (ie hot water heater) would be able to pass plc across since they won't share zero points. It has to be the rf. I suppose it could be that the rf transmission occurs on the zero cross, but receipt of the rf is independent of the AC zero point. I assume you could tune an rf receiver into the insteon frequency and plug that into an oscilloscope on one channel and on another channel watch the AC current for Insteon traffic.
  4. Did not know that. With all the newer Insteon stuff being 50 or 60hz, something has to give here. Of note, I use Insteon on 3 phase building and that works just fine with various devices all out of sync with each other on zero crossing points. I even have two separate 3 phase buildings linked together with a single rf device. To simplify the description, imagine a 200 foot extension cord with a dual band device at the end. I is is plugged into building A, stretches across the yard and ends next to building B, where another dual band device is located next to it and plugged into building B. This works perfectly and keeps the two buildings electrical systems isolated.
  5. Dual band would likely take care of that problem. All the other insteon stuff is designated as 50 or 60hz, so once it gets picked up by the first device it would go on the power line and rf even if the plm didn't. Just not positive if 120vac 50hz would be OK for the power supply in the PLM, assuming you used a 240 to 120 adapter.
  6. The PLM is 120vac 60hz . . . if you can get one. They are not currently being produced. The official reason is chip shortages. Not sure what would happen if you used a voltage adapter
  7. That is the sure fire way to do it. Or "hide" your plm. You could plug it into a signal blocker, Or use a UPS, unplug the UPS from the house and cover the PLM with a metal electrical box or some other metal enclosure to attenuate radio. Usually a UPS will block power line communications even if plugged in, but you might as well unplug it just to be sure. The radio attenuation is still going to be a question mark. Trouble with trying to just have your house be "quiet" by not using any insteon devices can be sabotaged by things like a program running or a motion detector. Possibly even a heartbeat from a battery device.
  8. Any Insteon traffic while doing a PLM links check will mess it up. You almost have to take the PLM to a location that has no Insteon devices. At this point, your pre-check is almost certainly wrong, so any comparison now is impossible. More importantly, are you able to link the devices that you were having issues with before?
  9. Might consider doing a factory reset on the PLM and then restore it. Reason being that orphan links are common. You could have dozens of them. I have done that to my PLM a couple times over the years.
  10. The first clue was it didn't dim the light despite my non-powered passive rheostat style dimmer working fine. I put a volt meter with nothing connected to the Insteon device and I read voltages between 0 and 10 depending on how I set the dim level. I called smarthome and read the literature and found no provision for changing the type of dimmer. You could change attributes of the other outputs on it, but not the dimmer. If you determine otherwise, please let me know.
  11. I believe I own one of these. Assuming Insteon ever only made one 10v dimmer, then I must. I would have to crawl into the attic to check the model. Anyway, it is a 10v sourcing dimmer. Which is not what I need. Currently I am just using it as on/off. It also has some other functions, I forget, perhaps it has some low voltage relays in it? Anyway, I have tried to see about adapting it to convert the 10v sourcing into sinking. There is a thread on here where we talk about that. I have not yet tried it.
  12. No. Most led ballasts output 10v and the dimmer is supposed to sink the voltage, not produce the voltage. The leviton device does convert your standard 120v dimmed output to 0-10v signal. But it is not creating the 10v, it is sinking the 10v through a potentiometer, infinite resistance =10v, closed circuit = 0v, and everything between.
  13. I wasn't aware of this Leviton device. Sadly it is $200. It appears to be a sinking 10v dimmer, which is what I need. I bought an Insteon 10v dimmer only to discover it is a 10v sourcing dimmer. Very few fixtures I have seen use 10v sourcing, including mine. I also looked at the qubino, but I'm not certain it would work.
  14. OK, well I don't really know how these bulbs work. I do know that some bulbs use a mixture of led's of different colors to make white light. The cree ceiling trophers I have at work, if you look at the top side of them you'll see little light beams of rgb popping through cracks and my cree ceiling cans at home, when you dim them, if you look directly at them you'll see hints of separate separate colored light sources glowing. I can't complain about those cree ceiling trophers, I have ones that are on 24/7 and are nearly 10 years old. You can't tell the difference between those and the ones right next to them that are only on 40 hours per week. Most of your "Edison" style led bulbs use uv leds and phosphorous coatings to produce "white" light. It works pretty well, especially for candelabra style bulbs and has a descent cri since it isn't an led that makes the light but rather phosphorous. Similar to a fluorescent light.
  15. color temperature ie "warm" and color rendering are different things. You can't appreciate cri from a photograph. A lot of people won't realize it until you alternate between a good cri and a bad cri and see how much different things look. For example, I had some poor cri bulbs in one hallway and good cri bulbs in a different hallway. Both hallways had the same paint, but the one hallway looked ghastly. I started to look into repainting, but later realized it was the same paint. So I changed the bulbs instead. And of course it depends on the exact wavelength "holes" that a particular bulb has and the color of the object you are illuminating. So two bulbs with a identical cri and temperature won't necessarily look the same. Or a particular bulb may look very nice in one situation, and bad in another. A CRI of 100 is a perfectly flat spectrum and accurately displays the color of any object.
  16. I assume they use some mix of the rgb leds to create white light, perhaps in combination with some white leds. I say this because I have seen some that will change the color temperature of their "white" light per your choice. That is almost certainly done by adding in some red or blue. Regardless, when in "white" light mode, they will have a cri but none seems to be listed. I must assume this lack of info is because the info is bad. Perhaps I am not finding the info, but if it were some really good number, I can't imagine it wouldn't be front and center. Cri really does make a difference when looking at people's faces (and lots of other things, but in the living room, it is faces that matter).
  17. I'm pretty hesitant about rgb bulbs and any bulb that does not specify cri. Personally, I don't really ever want to have anything but regular light and I like my light to not make people look sick. I looked up these bulbs and they don't say anything about cri, which perhaps is because the color isn't fixed. But probably the cri is not very good or they would brag on it. I have been to homes of people who have these, and they get all giddy when they show me how they can change the color, then, once the party trick is over, the lights get set back to "white" for the rest of the night. It has been my experience that straight up high quality led's with long life and good cri cost a bit more, so I'm thinking at this price and with all the other costs of the wifi and whatnot, the actual light part of the light isn't very good.
  18. Yes, I lost my favorites. I had to do them all over again. After it did sync, I clicked "test local network" and that was successful. I don't have time right now to mess with it anymore. EDIT: Also, I would suggest an option to have the app open into favorites directly.
  19. @Javi None of the issues you speak of exist. I did not have a / at the end of the IP. I have not changed the firmware since the last sync. In fact, I changed nothing between something like 4 attempts to sync and then finally it sync'd.
  20. @Javi after I added local network, it had to resync. Why? And now it is failing to sync saying I have an incomplete firmware upgrade. It syncs just fine using the portal. After several attempts, it finally finished the sync. But several times failed for various reasons.
  21. You need to understand how ISY works. The items in an "if" clause are triggers as well as conditions. Whenever any of the items in an "if" clause happen, the program "triggers". At that point, if the program is currently running, it terminates where it is and starts over from scratch. It will then evaluate the entirety of the "if" clause and the result will either be true or false. ISY programs only are running at the instant of a trigger, or, should the "then/else" clause contain waits or repeats, it will continue running while those are valid. IF time is 8am . . . .8am will be a trigger and will be true only at that instant. This program can never be true except at that instant. If status is 25% . . . any changes in status will be a trigger, true if it is 25%, otherwise false If control is switched on . . . pushing the "on" side of a paddle is the trigger, no other action on the paddle does anything. Similar to "if time is 8am", it is an instantaneous event that is only true at the instant ISY "hears" from the switch that someone hit the on paddle. A program can contain lots of items, when any one of those items triggers, the entire "if" clause is evaluated as either true or false based on the entirety of the conditions. IF time is 8am . . . . trigger is 8am, it will only be true at that instant If time is from 8am to 10am. . . . two triggers, 8am and 10am, but, It will be true if any other trigger happens between 8 and 10 If time is 8am and control x is switched on . .. .never works both a single time event and a control event are "instantaneously" true. So they would never happen at the exact same time. Your original question seemed to say you had outside bounds that you wanted your lights to turn on. So, you can set those outside bounds by saying From x time to y time. Now the program will never be true outside of those times. Now add, in other conditions, understand, these other conditions will also be triggers. and time is from sunrise minus 20 minutes to y time. Now you have 3 triggers, x time, y time and sunrise minus 20. All 3 will trigger the program. x time and sunrise minus 20 are "true" conditions, and y time is a "false" condition. For a program to be true, all conditions must be true at time of the trigger. The program is not constantly running. Only runs at trigger events. From 8am to 10am does not mean the program is running from 8am to 10am, it only runs at 8am and 10am. Realize that if something else turns the light off after it has been turned on (like you manually turn it off), it will stay off. This program only runs at those 3 trigger times. Similarly, if you turn the light on outside of those conditions, it will stay on.
  22. @Javi Enjoying the continued new features on UD Mobile. I am using the "command" function for favorites and very much like it. My concern is that it is easy to "butt dial" or "fat finger" a command. My suggestion would be to allow for "2 step" activation where you click once then it says "are you sure" and you click again. Perhaps this is an option when you set it up. I am also a bit confused on using this. To use a command favorite, I set up a regular favorite first, then add the command function. I am a little confused about this in that the original favorite and associated node doesn't seem to necessarily be tied to the ultimate command. Am I missing something?
  23. If your PC has eventghost running on it, you can use an ISY network command to trigger a macro on eventghost and that can run a python script that executes a shutdown. I would suggest having the PC on the same LAN as ISY to avoid any port forwarding/security concerns.
  24. @FarmerGeek It appears that your program doesn't work because the door that is violated is then restored prior to 10 minutes. This re-triggers the program and is now false and the "else" clause is empty. If you moved your "wait" and everything after it to the "else" clause it would probably work as you intend, though I'm not 100% sure on that since I don't fully understand the intent. It is easy to see what is happening by simply watching the status of the program in the program tree in ISY console while you violate and then restore the zone. You will see the program go from inactive (half red or half green . . . in your case half red), to solid green (running then) when the zone is violated. It will stay this way as long as the zone is violated or until 10 minutes expires (at which time it will turn half green if the zone is left violated). As soon as you restore the zone, the solid green (indicating the wait is running) will turn half red (indicating the program just evaluated to false and terminated. If you put the wait etc in the else, the wait won't start until you restore the zone, at which point it will turn solid red for 10 minutes and then half red (unless you violate the zone again prior to 10 minutes at which point the process starts over.
  25. I have found that searching the forum is very difficult. I have on several occasions tried to find my own posts where I knew I answered a question and struggled to find it using the forum's own search function. I often have better luck doing a google search to find something on this forum as opposed to using the forum's own search function.

Account

Navigation

Search

Search

Configure browser push notifications

Chrome (Android)
  1. Tap the lock icon next to the address bar.
  2. Tap Permissions → Notifications.
  3. Adjust your preference.
Chrome (Desktop)
  1. Click the padlock icon in the address bar.
  2. Select Site settings.
  3. Find Notifications and adjust your preference.