jrainey

I recently retired, and my lawn became a pet project, so water usage is up .. we don't get vry much rainfall her. On the positive side though, I added a google home. Now if I want some extra water on the lawn I just say "Hey Google turn on the full cycle" or "turn on zone 2" Jack

Thanks Paul, good to hear from you. Had not tried a factory reset. Waited until my wife finished the dishes, then removed from scene, did factory reset, and added back into scene. Now the device is controllable directly, but not with the scene. With the scene, it shows the light turning off and on in console, but the light itself is not turning off and on. Will keep testing,but it looks like I will be changing the switch. BTW, how is the Hydreon doing? Jack

****** Edit added by Jrainey on Jan 18, 2018 ****** ****** Please note that this problem and all of the symptoms were finally resolved by replacing a 7 year old PLM. ****** If you are reading this topic because you are experiencing similar strange behavior you may want to read more ****** of this topic and check out PLM issues in other topics in the forum ****** ****** Jack Hello forum, I have been trying (unsuccessfully) to troubleshoot a problem that appeared in my system a number of weeks ago. We have programmed our kitchen sink light to remain on through the night, acting in essence as a night light. It is programmed to shut off in the morning, at ten minutes after sunrise. A number of weeks ago (after years of running correctly), the light began to remain on after the program had run. I have observed the following conditions after the program has run: -The light is on, switch (a 2876SB Icon Relay Switch) is on (i.e the pilot light is off) -In admin console, the last run status is correct -In admin console, the status of the light shows OFF, until queried -In Mobilinc pro, the status of the light is OFF until the actual control page is brought up. -The other actions in the program have executed normally (the motion sensor programs are disabled for the day, and controlled lights get turned off) -when I run the then portion of the program manually, the light goes out -the associated scene works correctly every time from the admin console -when the program is forced to run by setting the time and observed in console the light goes out -the program that turns the light on works correctly every time. In my attempts to fix this I have tried the following: -Splitting what was a single program for Sunset/Sunrise into two -programming the action directly on the device and through a scene -modifying the position of the action in the program. This is the current version of the program: Sunrise - [iD 0044][Parent 0001] If Time is Sunrise + 10 minutes Then Set Scene 'Kitchen Area / Kitchen Sink Light' Off Set Scene 'BedAndbath / MotionSensorControl' Off Set Scene 'Outside / Lower Patio Light' Off Set Scene 'Outside / Back Patio Light' Off Set Scene 'Outside / Deck Light' Off Set Scene 'Outside / Front Porch Light' Off Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') My next step will be to replace the switch and try again. I am wondering if anyone has encountered and solved a similar issue. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions as to further steps I can take in trying to figure out what is happening here. Thanks in advance, Jack

Found a Mobilinc device in the Google Home app. It requires Mobilinc Connect, (cost of $29.99/month or $199.99 lifetime subscription) From the Google Home setup page: "Example: 'OK Google, turn on the lights.' Only the lights in the room with Google Home will turn on" Does anyone have any experience with this? I took a cursory look, and the setup mentions configuring spoken commands under "Notes" in devices and scenes.. Programs must be placed in a folder named "Voice". It may solve the multiple Google device issue, but I can't say that definitively from reading the documentation. I plan to experiment using the one month free subscription, but any info from anyone with experience will be appreciated. BTW - I noticed that I started this topic in the ISY Portal forum, when it should probably be in the Google Home forum. Can anyone help me to move it? Thanks Jack

Hi all, I just added 2 google home mini speakers to my system. This makes three devices, and, if my daughter comes through on her promise to get me another one for Christmas I will have four. My question is .. can I set up duplicate spoken commands either in ISY portal or Google Home that are dependant on which home device receives the command? For example, I would like to walk into any room with a home device and say "Hey Google Lights On", and have it turn on the lights in that room only. At the moment I can't see any way to do this. Wondering if it is possible, and if anyone has done this yet? Thanks Jack.

Looks like they did ... just added my 25th device. That was quick!

Thanks Lilyoyo1. I was under the mistaken impression that once the timer started it would continue to run regardless of subsequent events. (i.e. if the light was turned on after the fan, the fan turn off early). Wrong thinking on my part. The event based programming sometimes confuses me.

Comment from Google Support: "It seems that it is a possible limitation due to the location and the Google Home device if that is the case then. We really need to have the case reviewed by our technical specialist team."

hold on bit - chatting with google support as I type

Possibly a different aspect of the same problem. If it can be easily done I would suggest unlinking your Amazon devices and try to link the home with a single device. I am about to send in a support request ... maybe we can get to the bottom of it. It could be a limitation in google home in Canada, like multiple users not being supported. Jack

Hi Guys Got my Google Home yesterday (just released here in Canada), purchased the ISY Portal module and have been happily experimenting with it since. I seem to have run into a limit. I am able to link a configuration with up to 24 devices, but when I add the 25th the linking fails with a message "cannot update the setting check your connection". This is surprising to say the least. Has anyone seen this before? Thanks Jack

Here is a simple setup to put a flexible timer system on your bathroom exhaust fan. Hope someone finds it useful. The objective is to let the fan run for a period of time after use, but to ensure that it shuts off in in a reasonable amount of time regardless. The bathroom (in this case our man bathroom) has a fan and a light. They are separately switched with insteon devices. The light switch is pressed into the job of 'occupancy detector' i.e. if the light is on it is assumed that the bathroom is occupied. Goals of the program as as follows: 1) provide a single place to set the timeout value 2) start the timer when the fan is turned off 3) keep the fan running if the light is on 4) shut off the fan after the initial time out (with no light on) OR the full time ot time after the light has been switched off Four programs combine to implement this: 1) MBFanSwON - Executes the timer. Is initiated when the fa is switched on - passes control to a check program when te timeout is reached 2) MBFanCheck - Checks the status of the light and either keeps the fan running or shuts the system down 3) MBLightSwOFF - Resets the timer to allow full run time before shut down 4) MBFanSwOFF - Shuts down the fan and stops the timer. Program 1) MBFanSwON - Main Bathroom Fan Switch On If Control 'BedAndbath / ~Devices / Main Bathroom Fan SW' is switched On Then Wait 10 minutes Run Program 'MBFanCheck' (If) Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') A timer is started when the fan is turned on. When it times out control is passed to s check program to determine the next action. This program is the central location to change the length of the fan run time - in this case it is set to 10 minutes Program 2) MBFanCheck - Main Bathroom Fan Check - Please take note of the comment that the program must be disabled If Status 'BedAndbath / ~Devices / Main Bathroom Light SW' < 20% Then Run Program 'MBFanSwOFF' (Then Path) Else Run Program 'MBFanSwON' (Then Path) Note that this program must be set to DISABLED. if it isn't it will shut down the fan immediately when the light is turned off. When called by the timer program, the status of the light is checked. if the light is OFF the shut down program is called. If the light is ON the timer program is called again. Program 3) MBLightSwOFF - Main Bathroom Light Switch Off If Control 'BedAndbath / ~Devices / Main Bathroom Light SW' is switched Off And Status 'BedAndbath / ~Devices / Main Bathroom Fan SW' is On Then Stop program 'MBFanSwON' Run Program 'MBFanSwON' (Then Path) Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') Resets the timer if it is running. Only runs if the light is switched off while the fan is running This avoids starting the timer program if the fan is not running Program 4) MBFanSwOFF - Main Bathroom Fan Switch Off If Status 'BedAndbath / ~Devices / Main Bathroom Fan SW' is Off Then Stop program 'MBFanSwON' Set 'BedAndbath / ~Devices / Main Bathroom Fan SW' Off Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') The then action is to stop the timer program and shut down the fan. this action is called by turning the switch off or after a time out when the light is either not turned on or turned off when the fan is running. The goal of this is to ensure that the timer program is stopped whenever the fan is stopped.

Excellent write up Paul.

Paul, Sorry for the late response .. haven't been onlne for awhile. It's been a while, but your guess as to the wiring and settings appear to be correct, except for Momentary C. -For my setup, the tipping bucket mode was set to 0.2mm -wired to the Normally open contacts -IOLinc relay options are all blank, momentary hold time set to zero (i.e relay is independant of input) -'Latching' is set. In my system the output relay is being used to control the sprinkler main shutoff valve. Setting latching means that when an On command is sent by the ISY to the relay it will turn on and stay on until an Off command is received & vice versa. Momentary C sets the realy to respond to pulses received on the input. If you are not using the output relay, this setting doesn't really matter. During this past summer,I have noticed that when we have a real heavy downpour, the Hydreon may not registering as quickly as it should, but this is only a qualitative observation. Hope this helps Jack

Jerry, I transferred control of my six zone system to my ISY from a Rainbird controller late last year. The system is comprised of the following components: -an EZFlora (of course) -an 8 Button Keypad link (operator interface) -a Hydreon Optical Rain sensor (measures rainfall) -an IOLink (monitor the hydreon and control the main valve) The system is setup to meet specifications as follows: -auto mode: -a standard cycle (current setup: two runs zone 1 thru 5 - first run 25 minutes, second 10) -irrigate only on odd days -easily modified schedule (currently after 8 days elapsed) -monitor rainfall, modify schedule as required -provision to manually run the standard cycle -manual mode -individual control for each of th six valves -Operator interface (the Keypad linc) -Lights on buttons A thru F indicate status of the six valves (off = closed on = open) -Light on button G indicates standard cycle status (off = inactive on = active) -Light on button H indicates mode (off = manual on = auto) -Buttons A thru F enabled only in manual mode -Button G only enabled in auto mode -Button H always enabled -Buttons A thru F toggle zones 1 thru 6 when in manual -Button G initiates a cycle when system is in auto -Button H toggles between auto and manual. -dropping system to manual shuts down all irrigation and resets the cycle (if it is running) -The IOLinc monitors the rain snesor and controls the main shutoff valve. If the system is set to auto, an elapsed day counter is incremented every midnight. Every morning at 6:30 AM the counter is checked. If it is greater than or equal to the preset and today is an odd day an irrigation cycle is initiated. At approximately half way thru the cycle the day counter is reset. The system will not automatically irrigate again until the the preset number of days has elepsed. The Hydreon sensor is set to 'tipping bucket' mode, and emits a short pulse for each 0.2 mm of rainfall sensed. The pulses are detected by the IOLinc and counted in the ISY. For every five pulses counted the ISY increments a milliimeter counter for irrigation control, and annother for recording annual rainfall. Once a preset count is reached, the elapsed day counter for irrigation control is set to zero, and the irrigation control rainfall counters are reset as well. The annual rainfall counters can only be reset manually. I installed the system in the early fall last year, so this is the first season runnng completely on the new system. (This is also the first season that the city is metering our water, and charging for consumption - coincidence?) So far it has been working quite well. We have set the rain counter to postpone the next cycle whenever we get 8 millimeters. It has been counting effectively and we have conserved substantially. So far we have counted about 140 mm of rain - quie a lot for a semi arid climate. The Hydreon is working well. If you are interested you can check it out at www.rainsensors.com. Hope this helps you out. Jack

To those who may have be interested in this topic, I am pleased to say that I have successfully integrated a Hydreon sensor into my system. A little embarrassed though that I have waited so long to post. My apologies. The system components include the Hydreon sensor an EzFlora, and 8-button KeypadLinc an IOLinc and a 24 volt power supply. The Hydreon is set up to emit a pulse with each 0.2 mm of rainfall detected. The IOLinc detects each pulse and triggers a counter program. The pulse counter increments a millimeter counter by one on the fifth pulse, and resets to zero. Every midnight, a counter is incremented by 1. When tis counter exceeds a preset value, an irrigation cycle is run, and a program is run to reset the day counter and rainfall counter to zero. The reset program is also run whenever the rainfall counter reaches 10 (or 1 cm), postponing the next irrigation cycle. The Keypad linc provides a control interface. The first 6 buttons provide individual on/off control for each of the six zones in the system. The seventh button manually runs a cycle. The eighth button toggles the operating mode between auto and manual. Installation was completed and tested late last summer. The system has been running well so far in this, the first full season of operation. Timing is great, since this is also the first season that my water usage will be metered and I will be charged on consumption. So far we have received about 60 mm of rainfall, and the system has yet to run an irrigation cycle. The sensor is working well, and, as a result, so is the system. Thanks for the feedback. Jack Rainey

Not sure if this is the correct category for this, but will put it here anyway. Just wondering what effect, if any, the Microsoft/Insteon partnership announcement has had or will have on Universal Devices and the ISY series. Is UD included in the partnership? Will MS be developing interfaces for the ISY series? Would be interested in any info the moderators can talk about, and any thoughts from fellow Insteon acolytes. Thanks Jack Rainey

Michael has it correct. The router is the appropriate place to do this, and many of today's routers have this functionality already built-in. If your router doesn't support DDNS directly, most providers provide a cient that can be run on a machine behind the router that will inform the DDNS provider if your ISP changes your IP address. As can be expected, the free services are somewhat limited. In the case of no-ip, (the DDNS provider I am using) the free service allows for one domain name and up to three hosts. The domain name is limited to what the provider hosts. No-ip free domains include noip.me, hopto.org, sytes.net, zapto.org and servebeer.com. Hostnames can then be added as required, for example jacksISY99i - which when combined with the domain name will become jacksISY99i.noip.me for example. Once that is set up, a few more steps have to be completed to provide external access to your ISY. -set up the https port on the ISY (defaut 443 is fine) -set up port forwarding in the router. This will direct external ip traffic arriving at the router on the specified port to your ISY when properly set up. For example, if we use the above name, and the ISY ip is 192.168.0.5, the https port is 443 the port forwarding setup will look something like this: Service Name: ISYHTTPSAccess (or any convenient name) port range: 17564 (pick one between 1024 and 65,535) Local IP: 192.168.0.5 Local Port: 443 If everything is set up properly, then typing jacksISY99i.noip.me:17564 in a browser address field from any computer internet connected computer (except computers within your network) will connect you directly to the ISY secure web page, which will then prompt you for a user name and password. The process works something like this: The DDNS service (in this case no-ip) resolves the domain name to the ip currently assigned to your modem The router recognizes the port, and forwards the packets to port 443 on the ISY The ISY then responds, and opens the web page. If you are using Mobilinc or Conductor, enter this into the address field in setup. The other route is to register and purchase your own domain name, and pay an annual fee to a DDNS provider to resolve the address. The domain name cost is about $20 per year, and the DDNS service about $25 per year. Most of the DDNS providers will also provide domain name search and registering service combined with the DDNS at a cheaper price. Hope this is a help. If I have made any errors in this description please feel free to post corrections. Jack

Thanks for the suggestion ELA. I actually had to do exactly that in a previous job. That is what tweaked me to ask the question. A conveyor scale emitted a 50ms pulse for each ton that passed over the scale. This was adequate to increment the electromechanical totalizer mounted in the control panel, but would not reliably increment a counter in a control system that had a 250ms scan time. Interim solution was install a pulse extender to extend the pulses to 300ms. Unfortunately, the device was only good for about 10 million cycles - not so good when production was on the order of 16 millions tons per year. In the end, the solution was to replace the scale with a more modern version that had a programmable pulse width. So far, I am only researching the feasibility of what I would like to do, haven't bought anything as of yet. The main goal is to integrate the irrigation system into my home automation system. My current Rainbird controller does the job, but can't be integrated, and is nowhere near as flexible program wise as I would like it to be. Another issue is that weatherbug is not very useful to me. The nearest weather station is at our airport, which is located on the river, about 1800 ft lower in elevation than my home. So far, everything looks good if I can get on of the Hydreon sensors into Canada without a lot of hassle. Will keep the board posted on my progress should I decide to go ahead. Thanks Jack Rainey

Thanks for the info ELA. I waited until Monday to call Smartlabs. The answer I got was that none of the senior technicians available had any idea as to what the minimum detectable pulse width is. My comment on this is that in the area of control systems, these are engineering specifications that should be published. Hopefully this will be passed on to the engineering group.

I am looking into using an EZFLORA to control my lawn sprinklers. I would like to use a rain sensor to help conserve water, by recording rainfall, and delaying watering based on the amount of rainfall sensed. The particular sensor I am considering is the Hydreon Optical Sensor. According to its specs, it can be programmed to generate a 50 millisecond pulse for a given amount of rainfall detected. I am thinking of using this in conjunction with an IOlinc, counting the pulses in the isy99, and adjust the watering schedule accordingly. Two questions: 1) Has anyone used anything like this? 2) Can the IOLInc and ISY99 combo be depended on to detect every 50ms pulse without fail? Thanks in advance Jack Rainey

Added to the else portion of the above program. Jack

Kingwr, I would add to that a feedback to let you know that the MS program had been re-enabled: Else Set 'Garage Light' On Wait 1 Second Set 'Garage Light' Off Enable Program 'GarageMotion' This would flash the garage light for one second before enabling the MS program. One caveat - hopefully your switch is out of range of the motion sensor. If it is not, you will have to stand perfectly still for 5 minutes, until the light goes off, to re-enable the motion sensor program. (I think) Jack Rainey

You are correct again Oberkc, but how it is to be programmed really depends on what you want to do. In the example suggested, manual control during the day is fully available if the light is activated by a switch. No change is required if you want to swtich it on and off at will. Remove the set to off line, and it will remain in whatever state it was set to when sunrise occurs. Between sunset and sunrise is a different story. Any action taken with the switch would be over written by the motion sensor program. The easiest way to address this (to my mind) would be to provide an easy method to enable or disable the MS program. An example: ManualEnableBackyardMS If Status 'Backyard Light' is Fast On Then Enable Program BackyardMotion Else Do nothing And it's partner: ManualDisableBackyardMS If Status 'Backyard Light' is Fast Off Then Disable Program BackyardMotion Else Do nothing Both of these programs would be enabled and disabled with the SunsetSunrise routine along with the BackyardMotion program. If then, during the evening, you want to go out in the backyard with your telescope, or just enjoy the stars with your significant other, and not be annoyed by the back yard light going on and off, you would hit the appropriate off switch twice, and you are ready to go. When you are done, you can hit the on switch twice and the MS is back in business. (You could also program this into a bedtime routine that you trigger every night just before you go to bed, along with whatever else you want to set up before getting some shuteye). As you said, there are many variations. As I am getting more into the capabilities of this system, I am getting more impressed, and more excited about the possibilities. I am aware of the point limitations, but I am curious about the programming limits. Can I tell how much memory a given program will use, and how much programming memory remains available? What is the per scan execution time? Can this be monitored? Looks like a load of interesting work coming up. Jack Rainey

Thanks Oberkc You are correct. An oversight on my part. In the SunsetSunrise program an additional line needs to be added to the then and else to turn off the light. If From Sunset To Sunrise Then Set 'Backyard Light' Off Enable Program BackyardMotion Else Set 'Backyard Light' Off Disable Program BackyardMotion Assuming that you want the light off during the day, and assuming that you want to turn it off at the beginning of the eventing if someone inadvertently turned it on. The order of execution might have to be reversed... i.e the set off might have to be executed after the program is disabled or enabled - would have to test it to make sure. Thanks for the hint on the formatting - didn't notice that stuff up there Jack Rainey