MarkJames

like oberkc said... take a look at your access points too. I have some that have addresses on them and others that do not. I betcha he's right - it's probably an access point ID.

Yeah - I don't know why that happens - I've had it in some of my devices too. I think it's a bad write or something - one of the advanced guys around here will probably know. Are you sure it's not the address of your PLM or a motion sensor? The extra record only matters if you try to communicate with a device of that number. If it does then your system performance will degrade as insteon tries to talk to it but can't find it. Sort of like if you have a bunch of switches in your house and you airgap them to turn them off. Or if you remove devices and don't tell ISY and your PLM. You'll probably never notice this one. I wouldn't worry about it unless you notice odd behavior. mark

I believe the problem with the backup is that it restores your ISY database but I don't think it restores all your devices. Check in your ISY that your device has the proper managed by/manages links, then hard reset the device and restore it. That will clear all the unnecessary links and write all the proper links. You'll probably have to do this with all the devices that have responder or controller links now that shouldn't. The key to understanding it is that ISY keeps a table of what 'should' be there - what it has put there - but you can accidentally or intentionally change that in the devices. You also have to remember that everything insteon does requires both a controller record and a responder record. If you simply delete the controller record but not the responder record then the next time the controller sends a message the responder will still turn on. Conversely if you remove the responder record you can hit the controller all you like but the responder won't do anything. If ISY and the device don't have identical tables (and you can check using diagnostics->device links->compare then you won't get the result you expect. At that point it's easiest to do a 'restore device' mark

Thank you for the fix to my system, Michel. Things are working much more smoothly now. Brilliant bit of troubleshooting - finding that a bad signalinc was the problem - not the ISY. mark

deleted - just read the part you wrote above about mail errors

[deleted]

The links were all created prior to 2.7.9, though they were all rewritten as part of a restore WITH 2.7.9 - so I guess for your purposes the answer would be yes - they were written with 2.7.9 When I switched to 2.7.10 yes - I hard reset and performed a restore I've attached the entire event view of the attempt to restore with 2.7.10 that ends with 'fail to write device link' below. Sorry if there's extra information there - my lunch was burning and when I came back it had already finished so there may be some extra lines.

Something is up with the KPL link writing in this version. I have two KPL's that have not caused me any trouble so far. In this version I get 'failed to write device link' and 'failed to read device link' on them. I just finished removing all the scene memberships from one in the hope that it may be something was corrupt. But now with that one gone it's simply moved the issue to another one. I don't want to keep removing all my links. I've hard reset the KPL's several times and now I've removed one from ISY and am trying to add it back in but the add device routine runs way too long - as if it was having trouble finding the device - then it added a scene by the name that I gave the device and didn't add the device at all. The one that the problem 'moved to' now has 'writing' icons attached but it won't write. I've tried hitting 'write updates' but I get the 'failed to write device link' error which I didn't get yesterday. I've tried a restore on this one but all I get it a bunch of 1011 icons attached and when I try to write the updates I get the 'failed to write' error again. I suppose it could be these KPL's but it seems a bit suspect. mark

I love the little green icons telling me what's writing, what's written, and what's failed to write! I would, however, prefer the icons to be different colors rather than the numbers that are in the boxes - I can't read them very well. mark

How does ISY handle a scenario like this. Scenes have been created within ISY one of the devices in the scene is hard reset you then try to remove the device from the scene from ISY What I'm after is ISY will obviously have to delete the controller/responder records from the device and from the PLM when you try to remove the device from the scene - but what does it do if the record isn't there? Does it error out or does it carry on? Mark

Well, Michel, I've tried a couple of other KPLs and honestly I get a bit of a mixed bag of responses. The other ones all seem to do better than the one I posted about but I still get record mismatches. I've been hard-resetting the devices (all kpl's) and then restoring from ISY 2.7.10 followed immediately by a read device links and compare. I don't get a perfect correlation with any of them. Don't get me wrong - for the most part they write pretty well and the record mismatches don't seem to cause any particular problem (that I can see yet) I just find it odd that from a blank slate the restore shouldn't give me a perfect write and then read back. AFAIK the insteon device should ACK or NAK the write based on a checksum, no? Could it be there's a write retry limit that's too low and ISY is giving up before getting a proper write? I'm thinking I have to learn the ISY gibberish and follow it all in the event window. I don't think it's a signal issue as my install now has 3 hardwired signalincs, 2 plug-in signalincs, and 8 access points. mark

If you remove it in ISY then ISY will remove it from the device. If it's not in ISY but in the device then hard reset the device (power off 10 seconds, press in for 3) then do a restore to the device from ISY. The restore will write all the links that ISY has in its database to the device. If there are others there too the ISY will not remove them - that's why the reset first mark

If you want to do something simple you could use the trial version of powerhome. Download and install it then simply add the one device you're curious about into the database. Reinitialize it and then go to the insteon explorer window. It will show you all the links in it. You will have to do your own interpreting what the links are to by the insteon device addresses but that shouldn't be too hard. You'll also want to clear and restore your PLM afterwards as powerhome will make a PLM entry for the device when you add it. mark

Well, I'm sorry to say Michel that all is not flawless. I've installed 2.7.10 hard reset the kpl in question - 2486 v5.1 reconfigured it to 6 button operation restored it from ISY ran diagnostics->read device links->compare there are 2 record mismatches and 3 'missing this record' in the kpl It's better than 2.7.9a was but it's not all the way there yet. Any info I can send to help troubleshoot? mark

And using tools -> diagnostics -> read device links on the devices that are turning on/off that shouldn't and then using the compare feature to compare what's there to the ISY record is also helpful. I've found many links that I'd created manually or with other s/w that were still present when I switched to ISY. Once you know if there are some 'extra' links in the device you can hard reset it and then restore it from ISY. mark

If I may add my two bits to the email issue. In my case I had to be particularly careful with my mail server settings. I'm on Shaw in Canada and their mail server - which I assumed would be smtp.shaw.ca was actually gv.vi.shawcable.net. The other thing that is significant is that some ISP's will require a user id/password from within their own network in order to use their SMTP server - in other words you don't have to use their email address for incoming mail - but you have to HAVE an email address with them that you can use to authenticate for their SMTP server to allow you to use it for outgoing mail. For instance - in my case - being on Shaw I don't use their email service - I use gmail. But in order to have ISY send email I opted to just create a shaw email address and use that to authenticate. You can use the gmail SMTP server as well but it requires changing ports and setting up TLS - too much fuss for something so simple. If you're setting up your own static IP make sure you have the settings configured properly. The IP obviously must be right or you wouldn't be able to access your ISY. the subnet mask is usually 255.255.255.0 for most users. THe gateway should be the address of your wrt54gs - usually 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1. The DNS Server is key - as ntp.pool.org won't resolve unless your ISY can find a DNS server. You can usually put in the same port as your gateway here as your router will usually forward DNS requests outside of the internal network to the WAN DNS server it obtained by DHCP. If that doesn't work then simply go to one of your machines that got an IP by DHCP, run the command prompt and type ipconfig/all. It will give you both a primary and secondary DNS server address that was assigned to you by your ISP. You can use the primary DNS server address in the ISY and it should be fine. Anyways - long story short - you MUST fix your DNS issue first. If pool.ntp.org is not working then you have an issue with DNS - after all - pool.ntp.org IS there and there are no other settings required. Not seeing it is an indication that you are not resolving pool.ntp.org to its physical IP address. On the wrt54gs the status screen will tell you the IP of your DNS servers (usually 2 of them). Usually the router will be set up so that DHCP will assign all the correct settings for devices that are configured by them but not necessarily. To make life really simple just set up your ISY like this note the IP it's assigned to unclick automatic (dhcp) put in the IP it already had in the IP address put 255.255.255.0 in the subnet mask put the address of the wrt54gs in the gateway field (192.168.0.1?) put the DNS server address that you got from the status screen of the wrt54gs into the DNS field http port is 80 https port is 443 Once your ntp is working you know your DNS is working and THEN you can work on the potentially more complex issue of your mail - though it'll probably start to work too then. Oh.. and the wrt54gs is a great router but the firmware sucks. Check out the Tomato firmware for it - it's a WORLD better and it's free. http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato Hope this helps, mark

I upgraded to 2.7.10 as you suggested. It does seem to have made a significant difference. I have a couple of record mismatches but the long series of missing links is gone. I'll play with it tomorrow and make sure all is well. As usual, thanks for the absolutely first-rate service! I don't mind bugs in alpha versions one bit when I know the people behind the scenese are working on it to make a good product even better! mark

lol - I love cooking. We came back from Thailand recently and I went straight out and bought a 100,000BTU burner for outdoor use - it sits on my propane tank. That and a plain carbon steel wok. It's amazing the difference it makes having that much heat! Anyways - I confirmed it's not the number of links as I removed that large scene from the device, hard reset it, changed it back to kpl6, and hit restore but I still get all the missing links. I wasn't aware 2.7.10 was available - I'll go look for it. Thank you very much, Mark

Actually, as I was cooking dinner I was wondering if perhaps the problem is that there are simply too many links in this device - that perhaps I'm overflowing it. I have an 'every light in the house off' button on this KPL and that scene alone has 96 links. Could that be part of the problem? mark

Hi, Michel, The firmware is 2.7.9a This is what the links look like. There are quite a number more lines saying 'missing this record' - maybe 50 more. Mark

Sorry for the delayed reply. This is what I did Removed an older kpl6 that was controlled via ISY Replaced it with a 2486dwh8 v5.1 Added it to ISY Manually configured it to be a kpl6 Ran replace from ISY from the old device to the new It didn't work properly Ran diagnostics and compare - many missing links Ran restore Still not working right Ran diagnostics and compare - many missing links Hard reset the switch, put it back to 6 button mode and ran restore Still not working right Ran diagnostics and compare - many missing links I'm not sure which way to go now - try another kpl or manually configure it or remove it from all scenes then add it all back Thanks, Mark

To the best of my knowledge ISY doesn't configure 6 vs 8 - though I expect it will at some point as some other products do. In my case I did manually configure it to the correct number of buttons before doing the replace or the restore.

Well... I'm a bit confused. I have a KPL that was acting up. So I got a new one and used it to replace the old one. The new one is a 2486dwh8 version 5.1 I added the new one as a new insteon device. Then I moved the original device out of its folder (you can't replace a device in anything but the root folder in case you didn't know). Once it was in the root folder I did a replace device with the new one. The first time I tried this it gave me the prompt about the application closing after it was done and I hit OK. Nothing happened, though. I closed and reopened the browser and admin console and did it again. This time it went through the whole routine and supposedly restored the device. I closed my session and browser and restarted. The links are absolutely not correct. Nor is the button toggle mode settings. I did a tools->diagnostic->device links which ran successfully. The compare, however, has a boatload of missing records. I then did a restore device and ran the compare again - same result. I then hard-reset the KPL and ran a restore device followed by a compare - same result yet again. Any idea why I can't get this device to restore properly? Oh.. and while I'm at it, shouldn't the 'restore device' feature restore the button toggle mode and 6 vs 8 button mode - it doesn't seem to? mark

This isn't technically a bug and perhaps you want it this way. If you have a device in a folder and disable it then you can remove it from the folder in which case it will move to the root folder But you can't remove it from ISY when it's disabled. A disabled device cannot be removed - it must be enabled first. This may be by design. I had a device which I removed from a folder and then was able to remove from the root folder. This made the device disappear from the entire left pane though it remained in the right pane 'my lighting' screen. I can't reproduce this behavior, though. mark

hahahaha my personal favorite is the look on her face when yet another box arrives from smarthome!