eitheta

Thanks to LeeG and oberkc for the replies. Both were helpful.

I found some info about this in the wiki: http://www.universal-devices.com/mwiki/ ... _vs_Status No mention of the continuous polling issue I was wondering about. Does the ISY maintain a table of current status for all linked devices? And it only updates the table when it receives an indication of a change in the device. And it just uses the value from the table, for deciding program conditions? In which case, do I need to worry about the potential for the table to get outdated or otherwise out of sync with reality? Perhaps the ISY occasionally queries devices to ensure its status table hasn't gotten out of sync? I gather that the INSTEON protocol requires a form of ACK packet, and provides for retries if that goes awry. But I also gather that when I set up a simple scene (e.g. one KPL button controlling one ApplianceLinc), then the KPL and the ApplianceLinc can do their thing even if the ISY goes down. Which suggests that those two devices wouldn't be requiring an ACK from the ISY, and leaves the possibility that KPL's signal is acted on and ACKed by the ApplianceLinc, but the ISY might miss the transaction. So it's device-state table is not guaranteed to be up to date. In the motion sensor or TriggerLinc cases, I've not set those up as part of scenes, so I would presume that when they send a signal indicating detection of motion or switching, then they retry the signal until they get an ACK from the ISY (which is the only device I've linked them with). So the state-table incorrectness worry would seem inapplicable to these. Sorry if these seem like pointless (and not very precisely formed) questions - I'm just new to the whole Insteon thing, and trying to get a handle on what's actually going on when I use the "programming" tool in the ISY Admin Console. Thanks!

What's the difference between these two program conditions, for a 2420M INSTEON Motion sensor? If Status 'Motion1-Sensor' is On Then Foo Bar Else versus If Control 'Motion1-Sensor' is switched On Then Foo Bar Else Is maybe the first version a polling test, with the ISY continuously sending queries to the motion sensor and the motion sensor responding to each query? And maybe the second version is a silent listener, which does nothing until the motion sensor sends a notification (unsolicited by the ISY) that it has detected motion? If this guess is correct, then the first version results in continuous network traffic, while the second version does not? In which case I should probably avoid the first, unless there's some specific reason to use it? Or maybe the two conditions result in exactly the same communications and results? This question also applies to e.g. TriggerLinc-Opened. Thanks!

Well, I thought everything else was working okay. Turns out there are lots of things that weren't working but I didn't know they were supposed to work. Being fairly new to the whole ISY thing - and they'd never done anything, so I had mentally filed them under "no function in my context" rather than "not functioning correctly." LeeG, you were right on track with that. Unfortunately my brain saw you write "the firewall" and thought only of the firewall in my router machine the stands between my private LAN and the internet. Thank you for your help. And sorry that I too-quickly ruled it out as not-applicable, when it clearly was. The issues seem all to do with Kaspersky. I think. I disabled Kaspersky, and all sorts of buttons/indicators/etc in the UDI Admin Console do stuff that they never did before. I've added the IP of my ISY to the trusted URLs list in Kaspersky's Web Anti-Virus settings, and the effect appears (on cursory inspection, at least) equivalent to killing Kaspersky entirely. So many thanks to both Lee and Michel. 2.8.9, by the way, exhibited all the same weirdnesses as 2.7.15. But that was certainly worth a try. And it was disabling KAV to do that ISY update that led me to the real issue. Now I have lots of "new" functionality that I need time to figure out.

All other functions of the Admin Console seem to work fine... Developing & managing programs. Creating, managing, and controlling devices & scenes, etc etc. Actually, I suppose there are a few odd behaviours... 1.) When linking to new devices. At least some of the time, when I add a New Insteon Device, or a new scene, the new device or scene doesn't immediately show up under the Network > My Lighting tree view. I've had to clear the Java cache and re-launch the Admin Console, at which point the new item/s appear and can be managed as expected. 2.) Sometimes, when I launch the admin console, device/s appear with exclamation-point icon/s, instead of lightbulb/s. But it doesn't prevent them responding correctly when I select them and click an 'On', 'Off', or other control button. Just the icon is not updated correctly. 3.) And I wrestled for some while trying to get the ISY to use my ISP's SMTP server (DSL=Qwest, and ISP=MSN/Live.com). I eventually gave up, since others on this forum have had troubles getting certain ISPs (live.com among them) to play nice with the ISY. I switched to a third-party SMTP server which I also have an account with, and that works fine. I've been assuming that these effects were merely bugs in the interface etc. I don't see any obvious connection between my Event Viewer issue and any of the weirdnesses that 1, 2, or 3. I just mention them in case there's some not-so-obvious connection. The ISY and my WinXP box are both static private IPs (192.168.168.xxx) on my LAN, so there's no router or firewall to traverse in between them. Both plug into the same ethernet switch. I've not observed any (other) connectivity issues on the LAN. Since the Event Viewer does not display ANY events in its window (not ever), it doesn't suggest to me a sporadic flaky network issue. But, to be fair, I have no alternate theories to explain the behaviour, so I'm not ruling anything out.

I agree that I should. But I don't. I borrowed my wife's MacBookPro. I do the exact same steps on that machine, and I see events in the Event Viewer. So the trouble is clearly in my PC. Just no idea what's up with it.

Forgot to mention: Running the Admin Console on WinXP-SP3. Java 6 SE build 1.6.0_20-b02

But the ISY is clearly responding to events. It turns on the lights when I hit the switches (all the scenes are setup using the ISY - there is no direct/manual linking of switches to ApplianceLincs). And when I open the door with the TriggerLinc, the ISY runs my program and sends me an email. My IR-remote causes the ISY to switch lights on/off. I do Tools > Diagnostics > Event Viewer ... I Hit the "Change Level: 0" button, and choose "3", and it now says "Change Level: 3". I close and reopen the admin console, clear my Java cache, reboot my computer, etc etc. I've never seen *anything* appear in the Event Viewer window. Ever. Tools > Log results in a *.txt file containing 6178 lines (and counting) of events etc. But nothing in the Event Viewer. Admin Console's About box says Insteon_UD99 v.2.7.15 ISY 99i/IR Pro (1050) ---Open Auto-DR (21010) Internet Access: Disabled What am I doing wrong? Thanks in advance.