Teken

Mike, A few people have done what you did to resolve COM issues. But, in my view the better solution is to identify any noise makers / signal suckers. Also using a point of use surge outlet in place of a UPS provides you with both power line and RF capabilities. Just something to consider moving forward.

I was simply stating the power output is different than z wave. It also runs on a different ISM band 908.42 and the stated distance (open air) is 100 feet vs insteons 150 feet. Regardless of all the hype a mesh network is the only method to ensure consistent, reliable, and far reaching devices in the home. Playing with a few z-wave homes in my personal opinion the win goes to Insteon in terms of over all distance and reliable COM's. With respect to the RF portion of the Insteon devices. If its installed into a metal junction box expect RF to be either nill or about 10-15% of the advertised spec of 150 feet. Does it help, sure . . . Can the end user rely solely on a RF portion of the Insteon device, no. The only caveat is the use of the AP unit.

This device indicates it can provide 2 amps continuous at 15 watts. I believe that is more than enough to power one SWE3 unit never mind four. I am always about over kill so worst case four of these will power the 4 SWE2 sensors externally and it costs me no more than $13.80 USD. That won't break the bank in this project!

Thanks guys for the quick follow up and insight. I believe I am going with a something like this for the external powering of the SWE3 device(s): http://www.ebay.com/itm/310670105406?ssPageName=STRK:MESINDXX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1436.l2649 This is just one example of PSU's I have been looking into. I will try one out and place it on the bench for a few weeks before I commit to anymore. For $3.45 can a guy really go wrong? Any other input is greatly appreciated!

From personal experience I can tell you from 90 plus installs. Once you have identified all noise makers / signal suckers that is the first step, coupled with using FilerLincs to aid in that solution. Next, it comes down to properly bridging both sides of the electrical feed with at least two dual band devices and confirming the coupling via the four tap method outlined in the users manual. Once that is done I always deploy a Access Point / Range Extender in all four corners of the home, or floor, zone, level. This ensures any RF only device is XX feet from a device capable of helping move the signal to its intended device. As the others have stated I would not rely on the RF portion as the primary mode of transmission. Insteon does not transmit its signal on the same power level as Z-Wave or similar counterparts.

Larryllix, How are you going to power the SWE3 to obtain the required 5 volts? Are you powering it externally or via the CAI board? I believe in my environment I will need to power the SWE3 board externally as the Autelis Bridge only outputs 3+ volts on the power line. If anyone has a suggestion or a link to the following it would be most helpful. Looking for a 9 volt to 5 volt converter so I can use a standard 9 volt battery (must be small form factor). Or a actual 5 volt battery pack power supply. The one I found on EBAY was a little expensive considering I need to power four of these once I am all done. Unless one of these can power all four then its all good. Looking for something small I can place all into one small project box and has long battery life. This whole temperature / humidity project is starting to go a little over budget!

At the end of the day the fridge should be on a dedicated circuit. I know in the USA a GFCI is a requirement but in Canada a fridge circuit is never placed on a GFCI outlet or GFCI breaker. Since its in the garage and is considered a wet location (technically not since its not actually outside) a GFCI is required per the NEC in the USA. In Canada the CEC does not require a GFCI within the garage only on the outside of the home / garage.

Hello Xathros, After reading your reply this makes a lot more sense to me. The one part I am unclear on is when I cleared the Java cache and only use the direct IP to the ISY. The UI still showed the 4.2.8 firmware version? Is this to be expected behaviour here? I was indeed seeing endless back up fails, restore fails and never ending socket this / java that errors. What made this whole process even harder was the system would not even let me login. I am uncertain whether the PLM had any relations to the problems I had. But, decided to make a proactive decision on replacing the PLM unit given it was either nearing the 2 year shelf life and wanted to eliminate that as a possible culprit in my troubles. I will be adding back in your programs once I have been able to monitor the three systems and the network health. Before I move forward to adding in the programs for HA activities. I thank you once again for your insight and guidance.

Hello Larryllix, Yes, that was something that caught my eye from the onset! It will be a perfect solution for the two bathrooms, basement, central home, and outside. Can you share with me what type of enclosure you placed the unit in? Also, which of the three package options did you buy and what was the total costs from shipping, exchange, duties / tax's to Ontario?

Hello io_guy, The Raspberry Pi was one of the first products that caught my attention from the onset. I may still purchase one as it offers lots of flexibility for me in the not too distant future. The vendor at the sheep walk electronics is actually where I intended to purchase the 1 wire humidity sensors! Once I am able to complete the remaining temperature sensor install that will be my next purchase and project goal. Just trying to figure out what is going on with my ISY / Autelis Bridge first before I commit to another task. I really do wish someone in North America sold the same 1 wire humidity sensor kit! The exchange rate is simply killing me and is out of this world, given the low dollar exchange.

The CAI board was one of the first devices I was going to use for my 1 wire expansion. From what I have seen and read on this forum and many others is this device is very powerful in its own right and has lots of capability in many areas. Unfortunately, as stated the CAI only supports eight 1 wire temperature sensors. Therefor I opted to go with the Autelis Bridge as it supports 32 channels and humidity. It is also a serial bridge adapter for any related 3rd party devices which allows ISY integration all in one box. After a marathon install this past week end, I ran another mile of CAT6 Ethernet cable through out my home to prep and ready all 32 sensors. The only saving grace was having the spare (pairs of CAT6) wires in place and this allowed me to measure the same areas / zones with out running duplicate wiring! Below is a quick (temporary) set up of the current system in place. The initial ten 1 wire sensors I received from China were simply perfect and accurate (all on a shoe string budget)! Testing all of the sensors at the same time showed the largest variance between any two sensors was 0.1 to 0.3 degrees. From -30'C all the way to 125'C all showed 0.1 to 0.3 variance which is simply stellar in any book! After receiving feed back from Autelis / Brultech I decided to go with duplicating the wire runs to avoid any possible damage to either systems. It took a lot of sweat equity during the last three days but it will pay off in spades once I am able to pump the data into the ISY and then control the Insteon network!. My five year dream of fully automating my home based on local environmental data is finally coming true, and have Autelis, Brultech, Insteon, and UDI, to thank! Many more updates in my install thread with lots of photos, video's, and trials and tribulations of success / failures in my install. Thank you all for your insight, feed back, and endless support in my endeavors!

Hello Xathros, After a grueling 48 hours! I was finally able to bring the ISY-994iZ controller from a complete bricked state. I had endless login issues, java pop up error messages, never ending upgrade failure messages saying XYZ, whether it be completed at 2% to 80+. The system literally indicated five separate back up versions were invalid?? I was basically about to throw this box out the window at the 30 hour mark. After cooler heads prevailed and taking a few moments to read threw some of the similar error pop up messages that other members have indicated in the past. I determined part of my problems could be a failing PLM. I replaced the almost two year old PLM with one of two brand new back up PLM's I had on hand. Loaded the ISY with a 4.1.X back up copy and worked my way up to 4.2.8 I think what was really troubling and frustrating at that time was that all versions of the restore would always indicate 4.2.8?? I have never personally experience this behaviour before and both the UI / System indicated the same even after selecting all three options of the Java App for deletion. There is a bug in 4.2.8 with that respect because it should never hold the value once a restore is installed in its place. The only way I knew the restore was valid is from screen shots of each back up and a marker I placed in a file indicating the version. Regardless, after my 48 hour marathon to bring the ISY from this state. I have observed a few things I believe are not related to the program you have crafted for me. For your reference I have not created any of the last three programs you have provided. I did this to see how the system behaves with a brand new PLM, 4,2,8 base, and existing programs in place. I have seen extremely slow web page loads, my existing GEM, Dash Box, show delay / lack of updating energy readings. I believe my problem lies with the Autelis Bridge and the fact it may be over loading my LAN with endless streams of data. I have wireshark running to measure the load / volume of packets being streamed over the LAN for review and analysis. Since moving the Autelis to another network things seem to be better but still see some lag in connectivity. After running almost a mile of CAT6 Ethernet this long week end and trying to bring the ISY from the brink of death. I am one tired puppy ! I shall report back once I can sit down and really monitor the network traffic and see the cause and effect of the Autelis Bridge on my LAN. I have since asked the vendor to upgrade the firmware so the end user can adjust the send interval (assuming this is the root cause) even if its not. That would be a very important feature to allow the Admin the ability to manage the send interval to balance the network traffic load. I thank you so very much for the follow up and your continued support in helping me craft such powerful and helpful programs for my energy monitoring efforts.

Well that didn't last very long. The system is completely gone down hill and is stalling out. I have removed the Ethernet cable from the Autelis device and this problem still persists? I have deleted the program and redone it from scratch and even bumped up the values to allow a larger buffer. Yet this program does not behave correctly? Am I missing something here? Below are the last two videos of this problem: http://vid941.photobucket.com/albums/ad254/EVIL_Teken/ISY%20Infinite%20Loop/secureroom_zpsf83f872d.mp4 http://vid941.photobucket.com/albums/ad254/EVIL_Teken/ISY%20Infinite%20Loop/secureroom2_zpsd54ccc2c.mp4

I don't really know based on the screen capture you have provided. This is just a WAG, but could there be a difference because I am reporting in Celsius?

That is what I thought! But, I am seeing a email and change of state when the sensor / room changes in .10 increments. That is very fine measurements at, at least 12 bits resolution. Could you post up what your 1 wire temperature looks like in the variable page for me. If I understand you correctly: Your system is programmed for example for 20 = 2 degrees? Not 200 to = 2 degrees?

I am monitoring it right this minute and will record what I see and find and share with the group. I replied back to the thread in question which has this program. So far it seems to be working fine. But, have modified it to be less sensitive and have a larger window for change / variance in hopes this buffer will be the solution to the data bombardment. I don't like to say its the data, opposed to the user programming (error) but time will tell.

I think I found one problem in my code which I hope will reduce any data bombardment. I had initially asked you if the value of 20 was two degrees opposed to twenty degrees. The Autelis bridge sends the data for example 19.0 or equals to 190 in the ISY. My program was set for 10 which I thought was one degree. That is actually for example if the room was 19 / 190, and based on my program of 10. It would come into the ISY as 191, or 19.10 in the Autelis Bridge. I have modified the program to 50, which is half a degree gradient instead of .10 which is great for fine monitoring but might cause lots of data to flow into the ISY. This is simply a guess right now to fine tune the program and time will tell.

I just checked the variable tabs and they are correct. Here is a screen capture of both sections in the ISY. I am going to recreate the program and see what happens now.

I have no clue how often the temperature is pushed into the ISY. But, I can certainly shut it down and see what happens.Please keep in mind I am also seeing similar *flicker* of programs that are not in a true / false state. They too are randomly (no predictable pattern) are doing this flicker but not like in the video you just saw. For those unsure, what you see is exactly what I see in front of the monitor. Now, whether or not those fast pules are faster / slower to the ISY I have no clue. I copied exactly what you provided and have since deleted the program. I will review the code and double check if the program is indeed a state vs integer in a few moments.

Thanks for the feed back and insight. Moments ago I started down the path to isolate what programs could be causing me so much grief. Below is video I just took of one program that was just created and have no clue why it would act this way. This gives you the over all feel about the strobing effect I spoke of. http://vid941.photobucket.com/albums/ad254/EVIL_Teken/ISY%20Infinite%20Loop/newfile2_zps4f32f305.mp4

During the last few months the ISY has become very unresponsive. The symptoms appear to be the following to the lay person. - The UI freezes, but the system clock functions and ticks away. - Programs appear to not execute. - Changes in the UI do not always take hold. - Reboots are common to recover from a stuck state. - The entire interface sometimes requires a CTRL ALT DEL to kill the process and allow the user to shut down. At this point the entire system is actually frozen and the system clock has stopped. - Login in sometimes requires 4-10 tries. - The Java console does not always fully populate. Meaning the user normally gets prompted to enter the user name / password but this doesn't happen. - I have seen programs flicker from true / false like a strobe light. Turning on / off yet the program is not in a true / false state to cause this? I am currently working with Michel at UDI and have been asked to turn off all programs from the master folder tree. I am going to login the next 999999999999 times and watch how the system is along with watching the energy module to see if my power readings stop being updated. This time 48 hours ago the system was in such a critical state. All of my programs literally just went poof and disappeared! I was in the middle of adding UDI to a program for an alert when I noticed the system was in some unknown state, Meaning there was no system busy flag, just that clicking on any area seemed to take minutes to hours to move along. The strange thing during that complete melt down was the fact all of the e-mail list people were gone? Existing programs that had email alias were replaced with numbers? Anyways I am looking for insight for things I should consider or keep in mind that may cause such an infinite loop / race condition. Up until two months ago my system has been rock solid and want to address anything on my end to restore the system to that same state. Your feed back and insight is greatly appreciated.

Could you share with me how and what you're using to generate that beautiful tracking chart?

I saw that device a few years ago but that is way too much for this little project. One of the attributes for this install has been to do it on a shoe string budget that anyone could follow. I never had a problem throwing money at a problem when its the only solution or is in fact the very best solution that offers great features / value. I will know more what to do once I receive information from Brultech (GEM) and Autelis (ISY Bridge) makers. I did not envision more than three years ago when the 1 wire network was deployed that there would be something like the Autelis ISY Bridge that would allow me to use sensors to help control and automate my home. I should have run a few more lines . . . Will reply back once I know more and hope this information proves helpful to the next person.

Hello Xathros, It appears this is still my problem with the ISY-994iZ freezing up and not showing me the current state of programs / variables. Upon closing out the UI and reentering the UI interface I do in fact see the counter incrementing in the variable sections. This ongoing freezing, is really making it hard to determine what I am doing and if the settings I have selected are correct! I once again thank you so very much for taking the time to craft, share, and bestow your programming skills. Thank You Sir

Hello Xathros, Yes the ISY does in fact see real time state of change in power values. I meant to ask you reference (mvars) is this unique and different than how I have been creating normal state / integer variables? If not great! If so, could you provide me a screen shot of what it looks in the ISY to ensure I am following your program logic correctly.