Teken

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.

Xathros, When the fridge is actually running in normal mode. Should I not be able to see the variable increment keeping track of the time?

Xathros, Could you post up what the actual custom notification syntax looks like for me to confirm.

Hello Xathros, I believe you're correct with respect to the problem at hand. Maybe I just wanted my cake and eat it too! On a very basic level their is only three wires that operate these sensors: Power, Ground, Data. The 1 wire network simply relies on the fact each sensor is embedded and burned in with a unique numbered identifier. Once a monitoring device has enrolled the 1 wire sensor probe into its data base. It really should not care how its being powered or grounded, so long as the data is flowing to them, no? I realized that some of the systems required the ground / data to be present. I am unsure if the problem lies with the fact one device maybe powering the 1 wire network with 3X power vs the other is using 5 volts, but don't see that being a problem. Since dozens of sensors can be powered by a host machine. All I am trying to do is intercept the data from the existing 8 sensor nodes and skip rewiring the entire house again! Perhaps I will use my fall back plan and simply use the spare CAT6 wires in the existing cable and attach the new sensors into place for the new monitoring device. That solution will be fine for six of the sensors but the other two I already used up the pairs for something else.

Hello Alan's I never really thought about it that way to be honest. But, I am unsure if I could get the two vendors to implement such a switching program behavior. Perhaps I was thinking about this problem the wrong way in that I thought I could simply tap into the sensors data line running both systems in parallel and thus capture the readings but with two separate monitoring devices. I will need to ask a few more questions from the vendor get their feed back as to if this is even doable vs doing any harm to the devices in question.

I wanted to provide a clearer picture of what I am trying to do and hope this information proves helpful to the next person. In the example we shall keep with the fridge. There are two charts listed below: The one graph shows you when the defrost mode kicked in and how much power it draws when on. A person and easily see by moving the mouse to see how long it runs for etc. In the same chart you can see that the fridge comes on approx every 40 minutes, and runs for about 30 minutes. The other chart you can clearly see the fridge was running for many hours and later on the defrost mode kicked in. Because the fridge at that point was probably nice and iced up etc. ROOT CAUSE: Too much frozen food stuff inside the freezer and the door crept open. Thus causing longer run time, potential food loss. So, the programs I would like to see and deploy is to first let me know how long something is running for. This will be applied to all devices in the home for reference, historic playback, and then ultimately, applied to a Insteon device to control its state. Now, the other program of (run time / duration) would need to be tied to my other program which I have already provided above. Which informed the ISY when something is actually ON vs OFF.

In my use case both of your suggestions would be required for various devices. Some just based on X minutes / hours of continuous use. Some of the devices would simply be left in a off state after meeting that duration. Shutdown after X min/hrs of accumulated operation and stay off... <- That would be the final goal. But for now this specific program would just notify me its still running. Are we reporting accumulated run time? <-- Yes, I would like to be able to see and track the run time. Then, tie it with another program that will react to a set / defined threshold based on the need of the user / appliance.

I am looking for a few new ideas with a different approach in programming. I would like to streamline the programs and if there are methods to do so this would be ideal. I have a very large project in the works that depends on being able to accomplish this goal.

Apologies, the Green Eye Monitor (GEM) with the Energy Module will let the ISY know when the device is ON, based on a ISY Program user settings. There are four programs that currently inform me when something is on / off. I will provide the screen capture below as I am now trying to expand on the ability to see how long something ran for and action it if it does not meet the set criteria.

Hello Xathros, Lets start by tracking the fridge which this can be applied to anything else later on. I would like to know when the fridge starts, how long it ran for, then when it stopped. I know roughly what the running power is, at rest / idle, defrost mode, etc. I can determine how long the fridge ran for using another device so the duration is a known value to me. But, there is no method from the other third party device to control an insteon appliance. Please let me know if there is more information that is required for you to craft a program to monitor the duration / run time of a device. Once again I thank you so very much in advance!

I have an existing 1 wire temperature network that is currently live and working great. I have a secondary 1 wire sensing unit that arrived last week. My question to those who have such devices is. Have you ever tried to connect the two system together to capture the same 1 wire temperature readings? I ask because my intent was to reduce the amount of time and wiring that essentially would be duplicated in this environment. I would really like to avoid running another 1000 feet of Ethernet CAT6 cable through out my home if I can. My initial experiment did not seem to work as I would expect. Essentially, I removed from the one unit the signal (data) cable and the ground, while leaving the power attached to the other. Upon trying to enroll the sensor it came on line but registered a value of 80 plus degree's and would not move. I have seen this problem on the other device but that is when you first apply power to the sensor and then it settles down. 1. What is the best method to share the data line between two devices? 2. Has anyone ever seen a problem tying in the ground wire to two different devices causing a issue?

OK, so I spent most of the day trying to recover from a complete system melt down. My entire ISY-994 iZ Controller lost all of its programs and settings. After multiple attempts of restoring the unit it finally worked on the 7th try. I had several programs that tracked how long something ran for. If that device ran more then the expected time I was sent an email alert. Later the same program shut down that device to avoid extra costs and unneeded run time. So, since I am starting from scratch can someone help me craft a program that will do the above. - Track how long something is running. In this case its power and not simply a on / off state.

One thing worth mentioning is that many of us are the 1%. There are millions of people all around the globe who still use (regular switches) and have no interest in HA in any form. It really comes down to the new buyer and if they are still old school vs new school. I always find it interesting and funny to know many of the people on this board are in fact NOT under 25! One would think all of the members who are so into technology, home automation, etc would all be in their early 20-30's. It just goes to show you age has no baring on what a buyer may want, like, dislike.

Xathros, I will let you know how this all shakes out once I can get the ISY in a good working state. I am currently working with UDI to determine why my system seems to freeze and stop operating. This makes it extremely hard to work on programs and test the logic for the environment in question. Because I never know if what I have done has been accepted by the system and then translated into the task at hand! As far as I can tell 99% of this program is there, the last percent is on my end to validate and confirm it works in my own personal environment. Once again, I thank you so very much for taking the time to craft, explain, and detail out a program that has so many use cases!

Xathros, That is most excellent and I thank you! I can see using both variations of this program in some existing applications. Where in one case I would want to know a state of change but not receive endless emails. While in some instances I would want (defined emails threshold) until that condition no longer existed. I am going to play with this for the next few hours and see what shakes out. I gather I will need to recreate 31 more Integer Variables / Programs for the other sensors now.

Also,I wanted to confirm the value of 20 for the delta is indeed 2 degree increments opposed to 20 degree increments. As the value being pushed from the Autelis bridge is a whole number of (currently) 185. So, I want to make sure the program shouldn't be Over Ride Suspend $i.Alert_Delta >= 20 When it should actually be $i.Alert_Delta >= 2

OK, I have set up the three programs to reflect what has been provided. It doesn't seem to operate as we intend it though? Because its not actually 22'C in my secure room. I changed the value to 180 (18'C). The current temperature in that room is 185 (18.5'C) and I changed the notification suspend to a reasonable 5 minutes to replicate a real world condition. My alert delta is set for degree 20 (2'C) change. Since the room is above 180, at its current state of 185 I would have expected e-mails every 5 minutes until it dropped back down to 180. Also, can you explain to me the logic of $i.Alert_Delta -= $i.Alert_Sent_At <-- What does the -= operator do and how is it supposed to work in this instance?