Teken

He indicated he didn’t know how to identify if a problem exists. I offered some simple and basic tools almost anyone has and can do. If he wants to confirm at some point - OK. If not that’s OK too! [emoji106]

Simple - turn on the lights. Go to another part of the home and turn things on and off. If things are slower or don’t react as you expect you have a problem. Open the AC and do a scene test while the level 3 error logs are running. If the system shows 0 hops left you need to identify where the noise maker / signal sucker is coming from. You can even go old school like me and grab a AM-FM radio and tune it to a empty channel and listen to any injected RFI noise. If you turn on the radio and hear just a steady background noise. Turn on the LED do you hear a pop or more hiss?!? If you do that’s RFI being emitted in the air. If you still have a fluorescent tube light do the same. If you see the bulb flicker that’s EMI being injected into the air. [emoji106]

Besides dimming to a low level the true test is if the same dims smoothly up and down! Many LED may offer one or the other but very few do both well! That’s why I always say once you find that solid product buy a whole stack from the same carton. Keep in mind none of that addresses if the LED bulb will have any impact to your Insteon network. Whether it be a signal sucker vs noise maker or both! Test, don’t guess . . .

When you ask the controller to repeat something in very short sequence / duration. If this condition exists for a very long time or (IF) other programs are taxing the system while this scenario is happening the end result is the controller can become unresponsive / bricked. As such it’s important to limit tight loop programs. [emoji106]

You’re playing with fire going this route. It’s best to use what Larry suggests or something like a strobe / reader board to call out a condition. The endless 1 second repeats will lock the controller up and your access will be limited if required. [emoji3516]

I’m not sure where you got that information but you absolutely can. As I have been using that alternative firmware since it’s first release and now too. I have two controllers that have Insteon and ZigBee both of which restore fine when needed. Just wanted to offer that insight and clarification for those reading this thread. [emoji106]

Before doing so what does the system indicate as the PLM connection state? Connected and displays the Insteon ID? If you also press on a switch (locally) does the status reflect the same in the AC and vs if you turn on / off via the AC? If you select query (right mouse click) and it turns back to normal you’re good. If it remains red dollars to donuts the PLM restore needs to be done for at least the new 2413S PLM. As you can’t just plug it in and hardware will operate as the PLM isn’t linked correctly to the Insteon hardware / ISY Series Controller.

Go find what ever firmware you’re using on the forum. One link will say without PLM / Z-Wave. That will tell the ISY (controller) to ignore a 2413S PLM connection.

If you have a card reader just connect it to a PC and select format. You can format the card in the ISY via SSH too. Just a reminder the maximum capacity is 32 GB.

Just as a FYI to others there are two versions of the ISY Firmware. One ignores the presence of the 2413S PLM and thus will not cry and display a safe mode state. I don’t believe that’s the solution to be honest but wanted to put that out there for more clarity. You could update your controller to see if that simple update offers any benefits. [emoji106]

This would be the time I’ll reaffirm the importance of having a layered SPD (surge protection) in the home. All of this starts with a direct path to a low resistance (below 25 ohms) earth ground. A SPD would not offer any protection for short cycling and thus a use of a UPS system is important. Of the four electrical voltage faults seen in the home short cycling is easily solved by using a UPS. Ideally one that is a pure sine wave vs PWM. More advanced versions incorporate AVR technology to boost / trim the voltage & frequency if required. It’s important to note one must review the specifications as to when said device will kick in vs not. This is why it’s imperative that as many devices in the home offer wide voltage range and frequency. Anything that says 80~277 VAC operations and 50/60 Hz will easily sustain short blips in line voltage. Keep in mind the most dangerous voltage condition is a voltage sag (under voltage). As many electronics that are either heavily regulated will increase current draw when voltage drops! This is counter to what Ohms law states which only applies to purely linear resistive loads and not reactive or ones that incorporate buck / boost power management. Good luck [emoji106]

Swap out the PSU to the ISY Series Controller in case it took a hit. If that doesn’t change anything could be the Micro SD Card is corrupt. You could replace it and restore the same from a backup. As a hell Merry Pass (Don’t believe this will work) is to complete the PLM Restore on the new 2413S PLM.

https://ebay.us/qlzkdK

The word is the hardware is on pause until chip supplies have been resolved. Your choices are to repair the same, buy either the USB Dongle or USB version of the PLM.

47 Week of 2018 production sure points to a failing 2413S PLM. Given it’s a revision 2.5 which Smartlabs indicated was fixed - Not! Cap & Go . . . [emoji106]

Speaking for myself only I’ve walked many paths as noted by lilyoyo and mike. Lots of things just happen over time and more often than not is driven by failures. As noted up above trouble shooting 2-6 controllers isn’t the norm much less practical when needed. It took me a very long time to come around to deprecating lots of so called backup systems. This was in large part due to energy consumption, maintenance, and to some extent space. I still have four of the controllers placed in secure military Pelican cases! [emoji1787][emoji2357] At some point once the Polyisy is officially the next generation controller I can see another box going away - I’m OK with that! [emoji106] I’m in the middle of spooling up a monster server that will allow me to virtualize many other systems and programs. This again will help me reduce hardware count, energy consumption, and long term maintenance. From a security stand point it’s one less attack surface available on the network assuming it had Internet access which none of them do!

You make lots of valid points which I also follow in some ways. But have to say I’ve spent a large part of my life in business as well as personal always having backups, redundancy, and resiliency. In some things like power generation you can never have enough backup / fail over systems. In network infrastructure I have the same mentality and run a 2N+2 topology along with power generation. In other areas like environmental the backup systems mostly came organically not because it was planned per say but wanting more features. I simply left the existing hardware in place and that by default provided backup, fail over, and more features. As it relates to HA the vast majority of people here can affirm the ISY Series Controller is one of the most reliable piece of hardware on the market. As such I don’t see the need to have the same backup (controller) systems even though in a round about way I do. That was in large part of wanting to manage Insteon vs Z-Wave while balancing the energy management portion that drives my entire objective of efficiency and consumption. Like many here I’ve probably tried all of the major controllers in hopes of finding that single unit that does everything well. The advent of free third party software taking off and their ability to connect to so much has made me consider going this route at some point once I’m satisfied that solution makes sense. As it relates to dongles it’s not lost on me as to the ease of use and integration especially via USB. More often than not these USB solutions offer better RF as they are not inhibited by the controllers case or placement as anyone can simply add an extension cable to increase the dongles RX / TX. Regardless, I can’t see myself going back to having six controllers in the server room as I did in the past.

A single box that can integrate various protocol consumes less energy, space, and hardware. I’m not a fan of so called dongles as they are ugly, prone to breaking, and stick out like a 3rd tit. The only benefit of these is having the ability to add on to an existing controller to extend its hardware support. Why would anyone want 4-10 boxes laying around vs one?!? [emoji2357] Regardless, as of this writing there isn’t a single hub that seems to do it all - well! I’m looking toward the future in a completely different way and probably in five years won’t have any so called smart switch / outlets. I’m going all in with industrial and won’t look back at these toy like protocols that simply are a endless money pit as it pertains to hardware failures. This will probably take another ten years to remove as I have a very solid Insteon network. Along with enough brand new spares to replace the entire home three times over! So will let Father Time dictate the removal process based on failures and won’t replace anything once I’ve used up my surplus.

Really appreciate that insight as having no radios is just ridiculous to say the least. Made worse as you stated is only supporting a limited amount of hardware to than insult you with a subscription fee?!? The final nail in that concept- Cloud only ?!? You got to be ten kinds of stupid! [emoji1787]

So essentially they built a hub to connect to other hubs to manage the different hardware vs natively supporting the same?!? It’s been a really long time since I reviewed this Wink offering so don’t know if what you’re saying is true. I suppose that’s a perfect example of doing something different to integrate! Loosely speaking it’s similar to using any cloud service like IFTTT to integrate to different things. There’s a use case for this but it doesn’t come close to being very practical in a serious HA installation.

Just to affirm you need to short cycle that Leviton smart plug to validate it actually does operate as you intend. [emoji106] Both states (On-Off) must be confirmed as being true.

I don’t follow what you’re saying?!?

Love to know this too!

Love to know this too!

On paper looks to be a real winner. I honestly don’t ever recall another hub offering clear connect protocol support. I have to believe lots of money was shoved their way to make that happen!