Xathros

This evening neither of my ISYs are showing online in the portal. On the one ISY that I can reach from here, the portal tab shows Offline, Registered. I have rebooted the ISY with no change. The portal shows both ISY's offline, last seen at 175:51:59 EST. Is anybody else seeing the same? I have PM'd Michel and will update this thread as I learn anything. -Xathros This has to be because of my "Cloud" comment earlier today...

The Ubiquity network stuff is good gear. I use them both at work and at home. I have installed them at numerous client locations as well. No issues on my Macs in terms of getting them running. They do use Java for their "Controller" but I have not had any trouble in that regard. The controller is not necessary beyond for configuration unless you want to monitor the network. Hope this helps. -Xathros PS: These are WAY better than any of the Airport gear in terms of signal propagation.

And retriggers your program running false because the mode was changed to off.... -Xathros Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hey Stu, Wouldn't both of those trigger upon opening or closing (Assuming he is sending Off commands from the sensor) the door making this designed to do exactly what he doesn't want? Maybe program #2 was supposed to be disabled? I'm still waiting for a reply from the OP re my questions. It may be an issue with how the TStat is handling the mode set command as well but need more info from the OP to make a good diagnosis. -Xathros

Is the Open/Close sensor configured to only send 'On' commands? Can you watch the program summary when closing the door and see if the program turns false? Post your findings. -Xathros

You don't run the program. Instead, you wait for it to run by being triggered via the sensor's heartbeat which should come sometime within the next 24 hr period. At that point, the program will attempt to write changes to the sensor while it is awake for the heartbeat transaction. -Xathros

Here are the key parameters I'm using for my smart plug: Parameter Size Value Comments ========= ==== ===== ================================================ 1 1 0 MultiSensor reports Power 90 1 1 Enable Params 91 & 92 91 2 25 Minimum Watts change to report. 92 2 5 Minimum % change in Watts to report. 101 4 8 Report KWH in Grp 1 102 4 2 Report Multisensor in Grp 2 103 4 0 Grp 3 no report 111 4 600 Group 1 report every 600 Seconds (You will want 300 here) 112 4 600 Group 2 report every 600 secs (10 min) I think thats all I set on mine. -Xathros

I have a few of those. I will check my settings when I get back to the office this afternoon. -Xathros Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No problem. Always happy to help. The parameters are different for each ZWave device type/manufacturer. These should be documented by the device manufacturer. If not, I have found many answers in this ZWave device library: http://www.pepper1.net/zwavedb/device?page=1 Click the device name on the left rather than the document icon on the right for a readable parameter listing. Once you know the parameter ID's, parameter size and values, you can edit them in the ISY Admin console by right clicking on the ZWave device in the tree and selecting "ZWave / Set Configuration Parameters" from the popup menu. Then enter the parameter ID, it's size and your desired value. If you try to query a device to retrieve an existing parameter value, you must properly set the parameter's size in the dialog before you query. Give the system a few (5 ish) seconds after hitting query for the ISY to chat with the device, receive and display the result. Hope this helps. -Xathros

My Energy capable ZWave devices all have parameters that define update intervals as well as update thresholds. Once configured, these devices send their data regularly and reliably. -Xathros

To add to what Jimbo provided above, the ISY Skill is available on the Echo once you get connected via the ISY Portal. That skill allows more control of things beyond On/Off/Brighten/Dim but the language is still fairly restricted. I understand that the Mobilinc Connect portal now also offers their own Alexa skill. I have no information on what the MLC skill is capable of but I would have to guess it is similar to the ISY skill. There is a fair amount of overlap between the ISY Portal and the MLC Portal. Each has a few capabilities that the other does not. I personally have never used the MLC portal but do use Mobilinc (The App) frequently. I'm quite satisfied with using Mobilinc and the ISY portal. Given your listed goals, an RPi is a necessity in my opinion. It will serve you well and the learning curve is not that bad with all of the support available here and across the internet. As for alarm integration, the Elk has direct ISY support once you purchase the Elk modiule on the ISY and the extra interface gear on the Elk side. That said, once you have the Pi, IO_guy has DSCLink and NodeLink programs that both can be used to integrate a DSC system with the ISY. In addition, IO_guy has EcoLink, VenLink and Nodelink that can be used for integrating Ecobee and Venstar WiFi thermostats and I have heard some rumors that there may even be Nest support in the works. So, as I said above, the Pi is really a necessity. Hope this helps. -Xathros PS: ISYHelper is next up on my todo list for one of my Pi's. The IFTTT piece of the Harmony puzzle is the weak link making integration iffy at best. I'll be very happy to have that whole transaction local once past the Echo voice command.

Hey Stu, Just curious... did you get this working? -Xathros

I think a TTS solution would be more flexible and allow us to custom code the responses to each use case. I expect Amazon will eventually get around to allowing this. In the meantime, I agree, the ability to set a different canned response for on and off actions would be helpful. -Xathros

Likewise with the Echo->IFTTT->ISY, Turn On/Off TV works fine for me (except for the IFTTT induced latency). As soon as I have a free weekend afternoon, I'm moving to ISYHelper and bringing this as "in-house" as I can make it. -Xathros

At the moment, Amazon is not providing the ability for us to send speech to the Echo. This is a feature a number of us are looking for and I'm hopeful that Amazon sees the light at some point. There is a thread going here on this subject: http://forum.universal-devices.com/topic/18000-can-isy-use-amazon-echo-as-an-alert-device/?do=findComment&comment=164292 Hope this helps. -Xathros

Excellent. I had to leave for the office before I could do any response time tests. I will follow up again after I get to play with it this evening. From the sounds of it I should see an improvement in response times. For what its worth, the response times for me prior to the server move were already quite acceptable. -Xathros EDIT: Response time does appear to be faster now. Both time to device response and time till Alexa says "Ok" have been reduced.

Just FYI... I had to power cycle my ISY before I could regain access via Alexa/Echo. Until I did that, I was unable to rediscover my devices this morning. ISY showed online in the portal. I tried a reboot via the portal but that didn't resolve the problem. Hard reboot did the trick. -Xathros

Hey guys, This has come up a few times before so I decided to do an overview for everyone. Under the hood, the ISY stores everything by ID#s rather than names. Devices, scenes, programs, variables, network resources etc all have ID numbers. In the case of Insteon devices, the ID is the Insteon address. When looking a a program in the admin console, the device ID is replaced by the pretty name that we assigned to the device when we added or renamed the device but what the program actually references is the ID. Here is a Device on my Testbed ISY: And the device referenced in a program: Now if I delete the device, the admin console will not be able to find the ID as referenced in the program and will instead display <not specified> in place of the device and "-unsupported ruleset" for any device function referenced. Now I re-add the device using start linking and just hit the set button. I didn't give the device a name so it will just use it's ID as the name. Now lets look at the program again: As you can see, the program now shows the device and the functions have returned. I have not edited the program at all. Since the device has the same ID and nothing actually changed in the program, everything will still work as it did before. Finally, I will rename the device (Slightly different than the original name - added "_" in place of the Space): And look at the program again: Again, the name flows right into the program without any editing. The same is true for references made to the device by substitution variables in custom notifications or network resources. Now, for ZWave, things are not so simple since removing and re-adding a ZWave device will result in a new ZWave device ID thus breaking references to the previous instance of the device. In that case, search and replace is your friend. Bottom line, if you remove and re-add something and it's ID does not change during that process, no additional editing should be required. If the ID DOES change then all references to the old ID need to be updated to point to the new ID. Hope this helps increase some understanding of how this works under the hood. -Xathros

@MWareman, Thanks for all of the knowledge that you impart to this community. I have learned quite a bit from your posts and really appreciate that education. -Xathros

Any idea when 5.0.3 will roll out? As a regular user of Mobilinc, this fix will be most welcome on my ISY. -Xathros

The Connected Home method works beautifully and does not require "Asking Izzy" for the majority of things. You will still need the Izzy skill for access to thermostats and door locks, but for lighting commands, "Alexa <whatever> On/Off" or "Alexa, set <whatever> to <some>%" works like a champ. -Xathros

Or, you could use shielded cable to make the runs to the door sensors and tie to a good ground at the Pi end. -Xathros

Stu- I was under the impression that the ONLY devices Alexa could control using the Connected Home are those specifically mapped to spoken names via the portal. Otherwise, the Skill could be used to access ANY device on the selected ISY whether mapped or not. -Xathros

Hi Ron, Glad I could provide some inspiration. I have had no such issues with my setup. I wonder if your picking up some noise on the wire between the sensor and the PiFace. What are you using for sensors? Mine are just some cheap miniature reed switch/magnet combos that I picked up on eBay a while back. -Xathros

I like the method described by MWareman. -Xathros Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk