Michel Kohanim

Hello All, Apologies for a tardy reply. Yes, this is indeed an issue due to our "simplification" methods which consider all "controllers" to be always on and able to respond. This issue has been logged as a bug and shall be fixed in the next release (if not sooner). Thank you so very much for all your feedback, With kind regards, Michel Michel has been emailing me, and has confirmed this is an issue that they will fix with their next update. Hopefully he'll post in this thread.

wjoel, I am so very sorry for the inconvenience. Would you please let me know whether or not you can access ISY using the icon in Network [Vista]/My Network Places [XP]? If you can access ISY using the icon, then the problem is that of port forwarding issue in your router. Do you have a UPnP enabled router? i.e. do you get the remote URL (http://##.###.###.###:#####/0/x'>http://##.###.###.###:#####/0/x) by performing File->Enable Internet or have you manually added port forwarding in your router? If manual, please make sure: a. You configure ISY with static IP address b. Forward all traffic [TCP] to ISY port (:#####) to ISY's static IP address c. Make sure your router does not block "Java" applet downloads from external URLs If you wish, you can send me an email (tech@universal-devices.com) with your phone number and the best time to call and we'll walk through it together. With kind regards, Michel

jbev, NO. No need to factory reset all of your devices. I just posted a reply to your last posting. Please let me know if it's clear. With kind regards, Michel

Rand and sfhutchi, Thanks again and we will surely try to keep it up. With kind regards, Michel

Rand, Thanks so very much for the feedback. You are 100% correct, we never do a poll except for the 3:00 AM schedule (which is simply there to make sure we are 100% in synch). As far as analysis, I think you are right. At the same time, we have a history of the number of failed operations per device, I think we can extrapolate some minimally useful information. Thanks again, With kind regards, Michel PowerHome does polling, the ISY does not, so these figures will probably not be as useful from the ISY. I guess you could do a Query every so often, but... Michel has promised a Copy Scene, AFAIR. Using a PLC and my Group Commander program it was not a problem to create links between another PLC and other devices. The ISY PLM has no problems communicating with the PLM in my EZIO with the limited testing I have done. I hope you find the ISY to be as useful as I do to program your Insteon devices, I think it is a fantastic Insteon tool! Thank you, Rand

jbev, Apologies for a tardy reply. Here's the situation: 1. If you bring existing links, then those links are copied unadultered and the "meaningful" ones are used to create scenes/relationships. But, the links remain specifically due to siutations such as those described by MikeB. 2. If you do NOT bring existing links (choosing options 1 and 2 during link), then ISY overwrites existing links and then when you do Restore Devices, all the devices will by in synch with ISY. I hope this answered your question. With kind regards, Michel I have a bunch oif links left in my system too and restore device seems to not do anything to them. I thought restore device was supposed to resync the device with the current link information in the ISY or did I miss something?

Mike, Thank you so very much for the quick reply. Please see my comments below. With kind regards, Michel I would love to check out these links but I wonder how David would feel about this. I will have to get his permission. I had a chat with our CTO and I was wrong: ISY does not delete existing links as long as they were brought in by the crawl function. I know this is too much to ask, but is there anyway for you to verify? Also, I have added your request vis-a-vis adding links to other PLMs and it will be reviewed in our next requirements meeting. Thanks again Michel!!!

MikeB, Thanks so very much for your thorough feedback. Here are my comments: 1. Color: you are 100% right. Initially, at least, we have changed the pink! 2. Java socket error: ISY is busy and didn't have enough time to respond to a status request. It's being fixed as we speak. 3. Statistics. I guess we can do the same; we already have the log file in Excel (under tools). We could possibly create some Excel macros to extrapolate the number of successful vs. failed communications for the same device. Do you have an example of the statistics you would like to see? 4. A device to be controller for two scenes: unfortunately, early on, we had to make a design decision which precluded this scenario. The reason: less complex code for 95% of the functionality. If we do get a lot of requests, we will surely put the time and effort to implement it 5. Timed events shall be there as you described in 2.5 6. Wall mounting: you are 100% correct. It shall be done 7. KPL button not showing up: this is related to our client (GUI) code suppressing the "same" error for the same "device" within 2 seconds (considers it duplicate) ... we are working on a "predictive" solution 8. Fast on/Fast off triggers ... in 2.5 9. PLM stopping is a known PLM bug especially when confronted with a lot of operations ... working with SmartLabs for a solution 10. Creating links to other PLMs: quite feasilbe; the only problem is that they have no limitation: they can respond to 255 groups and control 255 groups. But, surely doable ... can't guarantee that we'll actually implement this functionality since we prioritize based on the the number of feedback for the same functionality 11. Floorplan: experimental, rather toy-like, and mostly cosmetic; it's slated to be completely removed. Thanks again for your feedback, With kind regards, Michel

Thank YOU very much. It could've never been possible without all the help, feedback, and suggestions from you and others who've done the same throughout. Thanks again and with kind regards, Michel

MikeB, My pleasure. I am going to start a topic to address this bug. With kind regards, Michel

Mark, Yes, thanks to outstanding feedback from our customers and users! THANK YOU ALL, With kind regards, Michel

Yes, Lutron has a patent on receiving status back from devices when controlled by a controller. With regards, Michel I'm puzzled by that, as well.

HAS, As you may already know, INSTEON - including others except Lutron - does not respond back with the status of the command that was issued; it simply acknowledges the receipt of the command (like echo). [Lutron is suing anyone who does]. As such, the only way to retrieve the current status of a device is by explict request for status which is a very expensive operation (2-3 seconds per command). Therefore, and in order to make ISY more responsive, the state of all the devcies in ISY is determined by algorithmic "predictions" of what the outcome of any command should be (regardless of where/how it was issued) and not by explicit status requests. These predictive alogrithms are accurate 99% of the time with a deviation of +/- 1%. The scheduled query is there to do: 1. Address that 1% of the time where the device does not acknowledge the command but it actually performs the operation or vice versa 2. The +/- 1% deviation 3. Allow you to note if any of the devices have stopped responding (red exclamation marks) If you are not running any "level" sensitive triggers and do not actively seek the most accurate state of all your devices, then you may safely remove this schedule with no impact to anything else. You can then manually run a query in case you think ISY is out of synch with the devices. I hope this answered your question, With kind regards, Michel

Rand, Yes, mid October unless there's an urgent fix which should be released before then in which case we'll put all the tested features in that release. So far, finally, things are looking much better. Thanks so very much, With kind regards, Michel

Thank you so very much. HAS, any news on remote access? With kind regards, Michel

George, This is intended for informational purposes only and has no impact on anything else except the topology. With kind regards, Michel

MikeB, You should've received ISY by now. Please let us know if we can be of any assistance. With kind regards, Michel

Hello All, Here's a high level content of release 2.5: Additional Features 1. Combinesd scheduler/trigger functionality 2. EZSnSRF Support -- out 3. Minimal support for X10 devices 4. ELK Security System Support 5. Vista Media Center Plugin - allows you to control your INSTEON lights through your TV (if you have a Media Center Extender such as XBox) Improvements 1. No longer is there a need for AutoUpdate userid/password 2. Local URL is shown on Help->About Bug Fixes 1. EZRain scene and ISY/PLM hangup 2. Linux mouse handling Additional features are planned but not guaranteed. As such, I will keep this post up to date with information as they become available. With kind regards, Michel

MikeB, The following will not work: a. On the box itself, notifications (sending email/sms notifications) b. On the Admin Console, AutoUpdate notification: you will not know when an update is available With regards, Michel

shearness5150, Apologies for the inconvenience. Please make sure your PLM is connected to Port A and then please try http://www.universal-devices.com/MyInsteonISY . I will also follow up by calling you today (Sunday) if that's OK. With kind regards, Michel

bradsjm and MikeB, Thanks so very much for the feedback. We would certainly entertain supporting any protocol that enables our customers to have an "inexpensive" but feature rich home automation solution. Usually, the only problem is that "standard"/"popular" are not always universal; example: we consider our web services to be quite popular and standardized (UPnP) but apparently not to CQC! Furthermore, Microsoft (alongside many others) has already published its own device communications protocol called Web Services on Devices (WSD). Given the finite amount of resources in our controller, thus, it would be quite impractical to support "all" standards/popular protocols. All this said, however, I would be delighted to have a 3 way call and discuss the possibilities; there might be a simple solution out there which does not require the full support for xAP! With kind regards, Michel

MikeB, Yes, they have been available for a while but not maintained nor have they been kept up-to-date due to shortage of demand! Multiple ISYs can infact coexist on the same network and we even "used to" have the capability of acting upon events from different ISYs. We have gotten rid of most of this functionality since. As far as the JSDK, all the concepts are the same but we are missing the device specific packages. We would gladly start working on them as soon as we get more demand which, at the moment, is limited to 1 or 2 per year! With kind regards, Michel

MikeB, I am so very sorry for the late reply. This is our philosophy: One ISY - one protocol - make it as comprehensive as possible (as you can see from the INSTEON ISY). So, with the exception of ELK, an INSTEON ISY can only communicate with INSTEON devices. A UPB ISY, can only communicate with UPB devices. An Aprilaire ISY, can only communicate with Aprilaire thermostats and so on and so forth. So, the short answer to your question is ISY-26 only supports INSTEON devices + ELK. I hope this answers your question. Please don't hesitate to contact us with your questions/comments/suggestions/feedback. With kind regards, Michel

Could you clarify this a bit? Why would this be better if I start with a clean system? When we do a crawl, we do simply find links and not local device variables such as those that maintain the state of toggle buttons in KPL. We do, however, query the device (afterwards) to get the local on level and ramp rate. So, it simply means that during a crawl, ISY will not bring in your KPL's toggle states. If you start with a clean system, then, you have, by implication, agreed that there are NO toggle modes nor are there any Mutual Exclusive relationship between the buttons. We do have an easier alternative: 1. Choose "Overwrite existing links" when you link your devices 2. Restore Devices after you've linked all your devices into ISY. This should be quite fast since, at this point, you don't have any relationships between devices. By mid October (if not sooner). My pleasure. Yes, it's accurate. Thanks again.

MikeB, Please find my comments below. Resetting does leave you with a cleaner system especially when it comes to reading the toggle/non-toggle/ states of KPLs. This said, however, you can start with the crawl function which brings all the links (including broken ones), scenes (groups), and relationships. Then, you can use ISY to tailor your configuration to your heart's content. At the end, you can do a File->Restore Devices which simply goes through the whole network and makes sure all the Insteon devices are in synch with what is in ISY (kind of like defrag). This in effect, cleans up your whole system and guarantees that what's out there is equal to what you have in ISY (unless it fails in the process). YES. You have 3 options: a. Rewrite existing links b. Rewrite existing links but simply bring any new device found in the links c. Spider the whole network, find new devices in links, and bring in all the links (which includes remote ramp rates/on levels for each scene). This, however, does not bring in the KPL toggle mode settings. It can do either. The choice is yours. Yes, it creates a scene out of them with one member. Simply delete the scene. If you want 100% clean network, follow up your installation/import with Restore Devices. Make sure you have an Access Point plugged into your PLM + you do not have any X10 devices (including KPLs with X10 addresses) on when you do a Restore Devices operation. No. ISY can sense whether a KPL is configured as 6 or 8 but we do not allow reconfiguration from within ISY Yes, as well as Mutual Exclusive buttons (when one is on make sure the others are all off) Absolutely. Absolutely without which ISY would not be privy to physical button presses Currently (release 2.4), no. Release 2.5, yes. Absolutely and, for your information, the following additional functionality: 1. Restore Modem (PLM) - if you ever have a defective modem, use this function to replace your modem. ISY will reprogram all your devices to the new PLM's address and reprograms the new modem PLM with a modified copy (different address) of the old one 2. Replace Device - if you have a defective device, ISY can replace it for you, including adjustments to all the scenes, schedules, triggers My pleausre. With kind regards, Michel