fwoitine

Just wanted to provide an update. The issue seemed to go away for awhile so it delayed me finding the problem and knowing that I found it. I did replace the PLM. First thing I noticed, when the old PLM was locked up the green LED was on bright. When I reset it the light would be dim and blink occasionally. The new plm came on and lit with the green LED on bright. This one has been in operation over a month and seems to have fixed the issues I had. Thanks Michael for all your help and support. This was a difficult problem for me to diagnose and none of the logs seemed to point me in the right direction.

My system with a isy99 and a plm has worked find for 6 or more months. In the last month, it appears to be locking up. Sometimes the plm will have its green light solid and other times it will lock up red or not at all. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the failures. When I start the admin screen, it starts up and says it can't communicate with anything. I've tried just unplugging the plm and I've tried just unplugging the isy99. I found that the plm always needs to be unplugged to get it back on line, and sometimes the isy99 needs to be rebooted or power cycled in order to get them talking again. I don't see anything in the logs that would seem to give me a hint as to the problem and the failures are too seldom to monitor (about every other day and sometimes 1 day). Its a real bummer since most of my house lights, motion sensors, and thermostats all require programs on the isy99 to function properly.

I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to dim the large On and Off buttons on the 2486 - 6 button switch. I can dim all the buttons using LED Brightness, but I can't seem to dim or cut off only the On and Off buttons. Even if I put button 6 in a scene, it doesn't seem to be isolated to 6, it effects 6a, 6b, 6c, 6d. Also, is there any way to make these brighter so they can be seen in daylight? It appears in some documentation for other devices that there are 32 levels of brightness, but isy 99 seems to only allow 16 levels for on and 7 for off. It also appears that you can't adjust them so that on and off look the same brightness - this would help if you just wanted back lighting and no difference for on and off. It also appears that using 0,0 led brightness you still get a dull light when on.

I think you are right, we've done the best we can. I'm going to remove the sunrise/sunset code from the program and let the sensors control the daytime/nighttime aspect. I think it is still undetermined what will happen if the wait (on) loop is shorter than the timer on the motion sensors, but I don't think I would ever want shorter than one minute anyway. I guess I also loose the benefit of the lights resetting the timer if the motion continues. The devices I used were because of recommendations from SmartHome which included insteon switches, however I may not have described what I wanted adequately. If I had it to do again, I would use stand alone sensors and insteon switches instead.

A little added information. After using the lights like I had set up in the previous message, it appears that it still might be a good idea to set the lights motion sensor switch to the 1 minute position. If you use the test position of the switch the individual light will come on if there is movement during the day hours even though the program is set to only work at night. This is due to the nature of the sense and the relay in a stand alone environment without the isy-99. This allows each light to work as designed if you ever loose control from your isy-99 or if you have your program turned off. You can still use the wait statement to keep them on more than 1 minute after any light senses movement. I'm open to any comments or refinements anyone comes up with.

Problem resolved ! Description below. Here is the program I ended up with, I will explain a little below. If ( Control 'Border Lights Outside / Rear - Joe's Side' is switched On Or Control 'Border Lights Outside / Rear - Dave's Side' is switched On Or Control 'Border Lights Outside / Front - Joe's Side' is switched On Or Control 'Border Lights Outside / Front - Dave's side' is switched On ) And ( From Sunset To Sunrise (next day) ) Then Set Scene 'Border Light Scene' Fast On Wait 1 minute and 15 seconds Set Scene 'Border Light Scene' Off Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') First using the sense for control instead of status was essential, thanks for that advice. Next using FastOn insures that all lights are locked in an On position until manually turned off by the program, this fixed numerous false on's and blinking issues - thanks for that advice also. Next, during testing especially I quickly became tired of waiting past the 1 minute minimum on the motion sensor. For accurate testing I wanted it to be shorter, so I put one of the motion sensors in test mode (switch setting) and it worked great. I could now shorten my stay on time to anything I wish but I would loose the ability to sense day/night. This also brought up another issue. If the light was set to 1 minute on time (the minimum you can select with the switch), and you wanted set your program on time to shorter than that, you could possibly get into an issue where you are turning the lights off with your program, but your sense from the motion sensor was still on. (did that make sense?). I know somebody's going to say, who would want to turn it on shorter than 1 minute on motion sense, but I'm just trying to make the device as flexible and most controllable as possible. So..... My suggestion would be leave it in test mode and control it not coming on in daytime with your program (sunrise/sunset). That way you have an infinite range of ON TIME under full program control. I'm certainly not an expert, so if someone sees and issue with that, let me know but it seems to be working fine. The program becomes very versatile since you can also just take out the sunrise/sunset test and use the lights during daytime hours if needed for your particular application or for testing. I like to have all the options possible - you never know what us geeks want to do next. In a post, someone stated it would be nice to have a catalog of sorts of programs of this type, this might be a good one to offer. Thanks to all that provided assistance and explanations along the way. I'm sure I'll be calling on you again as I grow my system.

No, its not a very modifiable device. no dimming, and no options that I can find.

Also, what forces a re-evaluation - any switch changing in the house, or just one that is associated with that program.

Great Idea! Why didn't I think of that. I won't be home again till the weekend so I'll give it a try then. My wife doesn't like it when I play from a remote location, it spooks her. LOL Couple of questions for my poor confused mind. If a program is running and a on or off command is sent to a switch that is in the control group, does the program re-evaluate or start over? Did it stop where it was at the time, or is another thread started and the old one still running?

OK, I'm starting to understand a little. It appears the light that originally senses the motion is plagued with the fact that when its motion sensor times out, it is going to shut that light off independently of what you really want it to do. So the question is, how do we make that something we can live with. I'm thinking I need to set a flag when there is a trip. Monitor all the lights against that flag to insure they stay on till the flag is cleared. If one turns off, re-evaluate against the flag, and turn all of them on again. Then when my wait timer in my program expires set the flag to false and turn the lights off. The only negative I see, is the actual light that sensed the motion is going to blink off then on after its motion sensor timer expires, then the evaluation against the flag will catch it and turn it back on. I'm not really sure what the code should look like to do this, but I'll give it a shot next weekend when I return home. Also could you explain how your idea of putting them all in one scene and having no program would control them all together. Maybe scene's have more power than I'm aware of.

Well, it appears that our solution may be working. I only say 'may' because there are still a few unusual occurrences, but it does appear to be working as I would have expected for the most part. I may have to play with the sensitivity to see if one corner light lighting up the area where another motion sensor is pointing could confuse it. When I tripped one sensor, it appeared that light came on and within a second the rest came on. At about 1 min or so, that light went out but the others stayed on perhaps because the motion sensor timed out before the program did and the sensor shut down because of the internal 1 min timer leaving the other 3 on till the 'wait time' then the other 3 went off. The other anomaly was once I tripped another light and it turned on the others, but it continued to cut off and turn on again in some sort of loop while the other 3 stayed on. I finally had to send an off signal to that relay then the other 3 timed out and it seemed to work correctly again. Still open for suggestions for improvement. This is the current program. If Control 'Border Lights Outside / Rear - Joe's Side' is switched On Or Control 'Border Lights Outside / Rear - Dave's Side' is switched On Or Control 'Border Lights Outside / Front - Joe's Side' is switched On Or Control 'Border Lights Outside / Front - Dave's side' is switched On Then Set Scene 'Border Light Scene' On Wait 1 minute and 30 seconds Set Scene 'Border Light Scene' Off Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') Wonder, would it be a good idea to put a 'set scene Border LIght Scene' OFF in my Else statement, just to insure the relay is set off on all units?

Thanks for the response. I think I was able to get all Rand's suggestions in place, I'm just waiting for dark to see if it works. Before when I was testing on Status, I could test by just setting one light on. Now that I'm waiting for an actual Control, I have to wait till dark unless I want to climb a ladder and switch to test mode. It's 6:48 pm, so I'll take the lazy way out and wait till dark. Thanks again for the tip.

Rand, Thanks for your suggestions. I couldn't wait to make the changes and now I'm waiting for dark so I can test the sensors and programs. I have the sensors all set for 1 minute, hoping I can use the isy to control how long I want and change it at will. While I'm waiting for dark, a couple of questions. Is there an easy way to cut and paste a program to here? Oberkc -- to answer your questions. The "light x" is a In-LincLinc Relay model 2475S2 which was sent with each light when I ordered it. The wiring uses the sense wire of the relay to sense a change caused by the motion detector then (this part I'm not 100% sure of) it appears to turn on the relay even if there is no other control on the circuit. So, from Rand's message there are two ways evidently to read the relay, either status or control which was not obvious to me from any of the documentation. I don't believe the 2494 by it self has any insteon capability, probably why they included the relay in the package. Which answers your last question, I'm actually using the motion sensor to be sensed by the relay and thereby using the relay to turn on the light. The Motion sensor for all practical purposes is separated from the lights themselves. Hope that makes sense, I'm a little new to all this, but got a big heart of desire to learn. I'm trying to read everything I can find but its a slow learning process. Maybe we need a Insteon for dummy's book.

I have In-LineLinc relays with sense (2475S2) wired like the 2nd diagram on the quick-Start Guide with Insteon Motion Sensor Floodlights model 2494MS. There are 4 of these, one at each corner of my house. Each one works as designed. My wife has asked that I program them so all lights come on when any one of the motion sensors are tripped. It would also be nice to be able to be able to change the time they stay on, then they all should shut off. Sense the relays are in the electrical boxes and are difficult to remove and program, I would like to do it all with my ISY-99 controller. I've tried several programs and can sometimes get two to work ok, I can't seem to get all 4. IF Status 'light 1' is On or Status 'light 2' is On or Status 'light 3' is On or Status 'light 4' is On Then Set 'light 1' ON Set 'light 2' ON Set 'light 3' ON Set 'light 4' ON Wait 1 minute Set 'light 1' Off Set 'light 2' Off Set 'light 3' Off Set 'light 4' Off Else - No Actions - This seems to work when a trigger is received on any light, all the lights turn on. After the wait time, they all cycle off, but then they turn on again and seem to get caught in a loop or something turning on and off and on and off forever. I've tried to read everything I can find on programming, but can't seem to figure what is happening, unless it starts running the program again before it gets all the lights off. Any ideas?