MarkJames

This message has been driving me mental. It started about a month ago. My ISY is linked to my portal account fine. I've unlinked and relinked Universal Devices to my Google Home account any number of times. I've restarted my google home devices multiple times. I've confirmed that they're connected to the web just fine. Yet whenever I turn a device on or off it does, indeed, turn on/off but I also get the voice message 'Sorry, it looks like Universal Devices is unavailable right now' Any suggestions how to get rid of this?

I'm in Canada so unless you got it from Aartech then nope. I got a new M1XEP today that it turns out I didn't need. Gotta ship that back. Got a new switchlinc today to fix a failed one and when I went to do that I realized it was on a light I seldom use so I just put a regular switch on it. I'm looking at some $400 in parts I have no use for lol. Aartech is usually good to deal with but I'm gonna have to pay to ship it back. mark

That seems reasonable. I have a brand new switchlinc and it's number is 4118 - 41st week of 2018 I suppose. I looked and I have a brand new KPL I have yet to install from some time ago - still in the box labeled 4216 - so 42nd week of 2016. Thanks - that seems to fit. mark

As I replace some of my original switches that have failed I find myself wondering just how old they are. I've had Insteon in the house for some 15 or more years. I removed one today that is a Switchlinc V2 #2476D. There is a small number on the label that says 0713 under the 2476D designation. There's another sticker that says V3.1 00618 and the insteon address on it is 0A.54.08 Is there a way to determine how old this is? Thanks!

Interesting. I hope that works and that the failure isn't just poor design. Having had Insteon devices from day zero I have a box full of failed PLM's, Filters, KPLs, SwitchLinc relays, dimmers, outdoor switchlincs and on and on. They're definitely far more robust now than their early products. The dual band are a big improvement too. Good luck!

Sadly no love from my dead EZFlora. Ahh well - it was worth a try. Thanks much for all the help. mark

Thanks Brian, I'll give it a go in the morning and hopefully I'll see a green LED again Much appreciated, mark

Thanks Brian, I'll try that this evening and post back. Actually now that you mention soldering to C13 - I should ask about that because C13 - was a problem for me as well. It it appeared to me to be connected to one end of the surface mount component labeled C14 adjacent to it and so I jumped them together. Was I correct to do so? If not I have no C13 - connection either lol. I'm glad you explained why this happened (ground plane in the center). I've desoldered quite a few things over the years and have generally had a higher success rate than I had with this one lol. Mark

lol - ok - my bad. I didn't explain myself well. Thanks Teken, but what I meant was on the PCB what does the - side of each of those caps run to? I've lifted the trace on the PCB and so I can't solder it to the board anymore. I'm going to have to jumper the - leg on each of them to wherever it has to go next and I don't know where that is. Thanks! mark

A little late to the game but I just got my parts to re-cap an EZFlora. My soldering skills are good but my de-soldering skills are atrocious. I've lifted a couple of traces on the board. I have a second one that I tried to figure out the answer from but it eludes me. I need to confirm where the - side of C7 goes and the - side of C8 goes Thanks! mark

Thanks. I already went ahead and got the ecobee. I'm pretty happy with it - lots of functionality. I share my HA efforts between ISY and Homeseer HS3. HS3 has a plugin that fully controls the Ecobee so that's worked out really well. You can get status and control all functionality of the thermostat as well as read occupancy and temperature data from the room sensors. Doing so gives you the side benefit of adding 4 motion sensors and 4 room temperature sensors all at once! mark

Thanks Michel but no need. Moving my PLM has completely solved the problem mark

That's interesting. I have what I would consider to be a reasonably large installation. 140 or so devices scattered across 5 buildings and six electrical panels. The farthest building is some 300ft from the main house. Every single electrical switch and light is insteon controlled plus some outlets plus my 12 zone irrigation system through 2 EZ-Floras. I moved my GDO functions to my Elk system when the PLM all-on problem was an issue. To compound it even more I have a complicated electrical metering system in my home. Back in the '80s the electric company offered a system where you could do something like this power line ---> main meter ----> main panel ---> subfeed (100A) ----> second meter ----> sub panel for heating ------> feed all heating/cooling equipment. For billing they took the total electrical use, subtracted off the heating use, charged the non-heating use at the regular rate and charged the heating use at 50% The deal was that they had the right to turn off your heating use if there was a power shortage so you were required to have a secondary heating source (fireplaces). In the 35 year history of the program, though, they never once exercised that right. The program is over now but it's grandfathered till I sell the house. that means I get my heating power at about 5 cents/kwh. It's a great deal! The reason I mention this is because my HA stuff is on the heating side of the meter for convenience reasons. Early insteon (and X10 - I started with that and Stargate) had a very hard time with this situation. The powerline signals were severely degraded going back through the meter to the main panel and then out to the devices they controlled. Initially Insteon was quite flaky - way better than X10 which was borderline useless for me - but I've stuck with it and in the last few years the technology has matured to where I really don't have any issues with it whatsoever (save for PLM failures which seem to (I hope) be over). While older devices have failed - that's true - the new ones that replace them seem both more robust and have more features. At this point I seem to have enough dual band devices installed that I don't have a single access point, filter, repeater, etc. Just the devices themselves and a phase coupler. I'll probably venture a bit into some z-wave to see what it's all about but tbh I don't have many complaints with Insteon anymore.

I just looked at the cost of them. They're quite a bit more expensive than Insteon as well. At this moment I'm not in need of any new switches. But I'm gonna keep them in mind for the inevitable failure of some of my many insteon devices. mark

Nice! That's very interesting - thanks Mike. I don't have the Z-wave dongle for my 994IR yet - I'm considering it if only for the goofing around factor of Z-wave locks. I keep getting close to buying one but I have a few touchpad locks already so it's not really a big deal to just give whoever I want a disposable code then change it later (or not depending on who it is) My understanding is that Zwave takes a number of devices in order to solidify the mesh network that supports it. I imagine the larger the property the more devices that would be? mark

I wish I understood electrical issues. I know enough to be able to wire a house with no problem (yes, including 3-way and 4-way switches!) but that's as far as it goes.

lol - same same Second one for me. I had a surge destroy the first one. Better the protector than everything past it, though!

AFAIK z-wave doesn't have fast-on/fast-off. That's a deal killer for me. Plus there are just so many more types of devices available for Insteon. I'm not going to be filtering anything. I just moved my PLM and everything is back to hunky-dunky. While the older Insteon devices failed quite often and were slow to read/write I find that the new generation - particularly the dual band - are more or less bulletproof. They read/write much faster, react virtually instantly to group on/offs, and have the fast-on/fast-off capability that I use a lot of. mark

Actually working again with a caveat NOT working in the outlet that was the problem. That's pretty odd. The only thing I can think of is that I had a new heat pump wired in last week and perhaps something changed about the circuit it was on. I'll spend some time later checking out that outlet and see if it's lost neutral or ground or something. I'm pretty sure Insteon doesn't care about ground but maybe it's noise from the heatpump circuit or some other electrical reason that I'm not savvy enough to understand. Weird, weird, weird,

Yup - working again! I have NO idea what was wrong and, tbh, I don't care - I'm just glad it's a) working and I didn't have to buy yet another new PLM. mark

Yup - it's booting now and getting device status messages again. I'm gonna have to restore my PLM yet once it's queried all the devices but I think it's gonna be OK. Whew! That was very weird. My PLM, as it turns out, is fine. It seems to be something related to the outlet the PLM was plugged in to. Once all is working fine again I'm gonna move the PLM back to the original outlet and see if that is, indeed, the case. Again - thanks for helping out, Paul. It sucks being stuck with stuff like this. mark

May be some progress here. I've plugged the PLM in to a different outlet and now I can link from my blank ISY. So I reset my original PLM and plugged it into that outlet and I can link from the blank ISY with that too. At the moment I'm restoring my last backup and hopefully things will improve after that. The only concern I have is that my ISY is on 4.5.4 and my backup is 4.4.6. I hope that doesn't matter Thanks for the help, Paul. mark

Well - now I've factory reset the ISY, factory reset a brand new PLM, and replaced my network cable just for good measure. I put the blank ISY in linking mode but I cannot link anything to it. I tried entering the address of a known good device that's plugged in and powered up but it won't detect it. I'm completely stumped.

Well this is getting more and more confusing. So I restored my last backup and rebooted. I'm sitting here waiting (I think I'll go out for a bit) as it goes through every single device again Event viewer is nothing but ERR 1. I can't imagine that I have the same problem with a PLM that's less than a year old AND a brand new one out of the box. I've had half a dozen PLMs fail over the years and this isn't the way they've acted. ISY can't seem to communicate with any devices at all - not one. I'm not really sure what to try next. I already switched outlets for the PLM to see if something weird happened to that circuit and th at made no difference either. Do you know if there's a way to wipe the ISY clean and just try it out empty so I don't have to go through this each time?

Yeah - It's looking more and more like the ISY has somehow gotten corrupted. I got the PLM links to write but I still have no communication with any of my devices. I'll try restoring my last backup and see what's up. It'd sure be nice if there was a way to stop it from going through every single device when I reboot. Even now as I'm restoring it keeps coming up with 'failed to communicate' errors. mark