Teken

Hello Benoit, As I indicated above the system did in fact accept the entries and the scenes as I defined them. Along with the speaking phrase I wanted to use. The problem(s) may have very well occurred as I saw lots of http error 500 at some point when trying to add devices. I also saw the portal slow in launching the pop up option to select the devices, scenes at several points. As a lay person it appeared to me like the server was busy doing other tasks and later when resources were available the commands were accepted. Here is a snap shot of one of several 500 errors showing up.

Hello Charles, As far as I am aware the Echo in its current form can not be made to invoke phrases. This also interests me as I am looking for something similar like if weather conditions which I defined in the ISY have been met Alexa would speak and say. *Freezing rain warning is forecast* *Tornado Warning* *Girl friend is approaching GEO fence* etc.

Hello Michel, In the image capture you will note there is a Microwave and Office load defined. When I initially set it up the appropriate scenes that control the loads were selected. When I used the Echo to activate the scenes the Microwave scene did not operate and I was greeted by the Echo that the device was not found or similar. Later when I instructed Echo to turn on the office lights the microwave came on? When I looked in the Amazon App it was apparent the scenes were assigned to something else. The system also added in extra words as you can see the duplicate MicrowaveMicrowave in the App. Going into the UDI Portal showed the portal appended the scenes to the wrong loads and also added the above extra phrase of Microwave. The fix was quite simple as deleting the device from the App and also correcting the UDI Portal entry a second time.

So here is a perfect example of the system doing things it's not supposed to. Can anyone guess what is wrong with this set up? In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Specifically, in the Skill tab disable the ISY skill. Log out of the Amazon App all together then wait about ten seconds. Log back into the Amazon App. Go back to the Skill tab and enable the ISY skill. If the system is operating correctly it will move you to another web page where it will ask you for your Amazon account information. When I first did this literally 10 freaking times I was never asked to provide creds to my Amazon account. The system just showed it was connected but I already knew that was B.S. It goes with out saying there are lots of moving parts in this whole set up. The Amazon App is a little buggy too as it will sometimes log you out or flash its screen and show you random things? So if that portion doesn't work no matter what you're trying to do in the other related sections like the connected home or skill. You are just going to relive ground hog day over and over again until you pull the last thread of hair in your head. I wasn't going to let a stupid App stop me so went and smoked a big phatty LOL

Barry, As always your insight, contributions, and endless support is greatly appreciated! So glad I am not the only one seeing there is a difference in a soft / hard boot. Not take this thread too left field but the above booting was never an issue in 4.1.X releases but seems to be ever present in later firmware. The reason I call this out is because with service such as the UDI Portal the system doesn't seem to allow all network elements to operate fully. I will document this in another thread as its taking away from the main intention of this one.

No offence but I am so glad you're seeing the exact same things I saw and endured last night! This is what I did several times once I got the ISY to show up on the Connected Home via the smart App. You need to enable / disable the skill a few times and you will know its properly finalized when the App brings you to a new page to plugin your Amazon account information. Again, no one calls this out or even has any image captures of what to expect. Super frustrating to those literally in the dark but like I said with persistence I hung on until the whole thing finalized. Now, the next step is to have others explain why the following bugs appear or have been allowed to happen:

Yup, like I said that link Michel references must be used and not from any other source. Because the system will show you in a general nature most of the elements are present when in fact they are not. Also note if you some where started to add in devices, scenes, in the UDI portal and it discovered them in the Connected Home you best delete them because at some point the Echo will either gray them out or say over and over its not found. Don't ask me how I know . . .

I'm going to write out a huge step by step of what needs to be done to first get the Amazon Echo for those in Canada working. Next the steps to have a smoother experience connecting the Echo to the ISY Controller. At the moment I am documenting all the bugs and issues that are seen in doing the current set up. Its strange there must be a time lag from when certain steps or processes are complete. Its no great surprise this is seen in a cloud hosted service vs a local emulator that Barry G has created. Regardless, the fact it all works at all once the system has been set up is a testament of the Internet. To your question about the *Requested Service* up above I indicated the system would not respect the validation button press. It would just pop up a message like *Bad Response* or something like that. I should have captured it but was so frustrated at that point I decided to walk away fro a few moments. It goes with out saying that is one of many important steps that must be done in sequence because the portal seems to allow a person to do things out of step regardless of if the system is operational? I am sure lots of this will be ironed out as the service becomes more developed. Thus far this is another excellent stepping stone for the entire team who have worked so hard to make it public ready.

The connected home is under settings unless you mean something else? [emoji53] Also you really need to do this in order. After two hours of screwing around it just made sense to delete it all and start from the beginning. Now I have to figure out which key words operate fine because the system doesn't seem to do anything using the connected home vs the skill? [emoji35] In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Its interesting that some people have to go through so many hoops while others do absolutely nothing and it works? I still have the same network attributes as I had before and all port forwarding is present. I can connect with out issue at this point. The connected home really had me going for about an hour and just about gave up. As I stated if it wasn't for my partner in crime Xathros's comment about deleting amazon portal from the UDI Portal and disabling the iOS Alexa App. The *Connected Home* would have never found the ISY . . . Also, here is another nugget that for what ever reason must be done. In Michel's steps there is a link which for what ever reason seems to be the only thing that makes the stupid thing reference the ISY to Echo. Using the App will literally give you a false positive and you will think its all working when in fact it doesn't. With out someone actually showing a person what to look for. In this case the ISY should be listed as an option like you see for the Insteon HUB, SmartThings, etc. This option never appears unless you use the link Michel has in his instructions. Give it a whirl and I assure you it will be like X-MAS when it shows up!

Yeah, I have been tracking that very issue you and others have seen. In my case it has nothing to do with my network as the controller was already set to DHCP with a reserved IP via the router. The problem seems to me which has been a long time issue is that the controller does not react the same way when soft booted vs a hard boot of removal of power. Next, I went the extra step to remove the controller from the portal and the expected step was to go to the portal tab locally in the controller and enable the portals addition of the ISY. I was greeted with a pop up message that said something like *bad response* or what ever. After putzing around for another ten minutes I tried another soft reboot and the registration took hold. Lastly, if it wasn't for Xathros's comment about deleting all links and associations from the portal / app. I would have never been able to see these mythical device lists! That literally took an hour to get working because the App would tell you it disabled the skill when in fact it didn't! EDIT: Are people also seeing the *More Info* tab in the controller does absolutely nothing besides launching another web browser which has a blank page WTF?

What causes the portal to not see the ISY? After repeated soft / hard reboots the portal continues to show a gray status LED and the system indicates the controller is off line? Logging into the controller locally / remotely show its on line and obviously accessible . . .

+1 This, my friends is the long term solution as it avoids so many questions and support calls.

Thanks guys for the feed back and charting visuals as this helps out a lot. As a refresher which part of the system is cloud based vs local? Specifically, if there is no Internet access at the site can the tag manager continue to track the data and also send information? I assume all charting is hosted in this companies cloud portals service. Which I do recall they made a commitment to keep it free for life and also believe Michael indicated that should they ever go under they would release the API as open source. Are the statements made above still true and accurate? Larry, all in how much did this cost to get door to door?

Smokegrub, Could you offer a little more detail as to how you determined the the TSTAT was no longer reporting its status? Also, can you let us know what steps you took to remedy the current situation.

Hello Leon, The connection is via wireless ZigBee RF and as Stu noted. You simply need to purchase the hardware which includes the activation for the energy module. You may follow this link to see the upgrade pricing and purchase option: https://www.universal-devices.com/sales/

Nice, looks to me some reading is in store for me this week. I would still like to read from you what the real world experience is in your environment is. As I was asked about these devices from another friend who needs a wireless solution but must have high accuracy and RF distance. Bottom line looking for me is reading first bullet points of all the good, bad, and ugly. Then reading about what the limitations are with respect to local vs cloud etc. You offered some fantastic insight in a related thread and that was the TSTAT comparisons many of us were interested in. I believe you share like minds in offering *critical thinking* of what a product can and can't do. As you're probably aware I'm not after hearing about the fluff but want the facts with real world testing to prove it out. I've been burned too many times in offering suggestions to others about new tech or the next big cloud service(s). So would rather learn from others who have them before I even consider suggesting this device to my friend.

I would love a walk through and a simple step by step guide to the above. Along with real world experience about how it operates in a freezer environment.

You could - but realize what ever hair is on your head will quickly fall out once you realize half your home doesn't operate as you expect it to. Life's about measured response and making educated risks in hopes of a positive outcome. I will simply leave you with this to consider. Is doing this chore half aszzed now to save a little time or is it better to know you will be doing this 99999999 more times because nothing works? Life's about choices and speaking from personal experience - Just invest the time now and enjoy the system knowing it all works as designed and expected.

I will state the obvious things in case you were not aware of them. The last 99 Series Controller firmware does not support lots of the current Insteon hardware. So in this case you might run into a situation where you're trying for hours to add a device and the system comes up with a whole bunch of random errors. That is something you need to fully consider first . . . Next, you need a 2413S PLM to work with the 99 Series Controller so unless the $40.XX get you both. You're going to have to shell out more money for that portion. Next on a more positive note lets assume all of your current Insteon hardware is recognized and works off the bat. The 99 Series Controller is a fantastic little box to dip your toes into what the conditional logic will allow you to do and experience. I say baring the above *What Ifs* go to town and enjoy the system and learn more about what you can ultimately do with the 994 Series Controller. My personal view is you save up until such time as you're able to finance a 994 Series Controller. Keeping in mind you can simply purchased the base model and upgrade anything when your finances allow. That's my $0.00000000000000000000000001

Barry, From the bottom of my achy breaky heart. Thank you for taking the time to explain in detail the two service offerings. [emoji4] I don't know about anyone else. But his reply should be appended in a FAQ or pinned somewhere for all to see and read. [emoji106] In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

I wouldn't go that far at this point but have experienced the same thing you're going through now. In my case I simply killed the power to the ISY Series Controller and waited about 30 seconds. Once that was done I powered up the controller and did a restore from a good known back up. After that long process completed I hard reset the PLM and went through the whole PLM restore process. I absolutely disabled the battery write so it didn't slow down the PLM restore process. Given the number of devices you have this should take about 4-8 hours and this includes doing the single battery write one at a time. Don't even think about doing the auto write update option because you're going to lose more hair on your balding head and raise your stress level five bars. Go smoke a blunt and kick back a few cold ones . . .

Wait till you need to update all the battery only devices. Ha . . .

I can relate but 24 HR's seems a little out of place considering you have all the latest Insteon gear. I could understand if you had generation one devices which were not ics2. But 24 hours later wow . . .