intellihome

Thank You! The wipe of old firmware and write with the new gives me a much better confidence that my ISY is trouble free. I completely agree with your comments on the PLM and signal suckers. I cannot thank you guys enough for all your help over the years.

Thanks Teken. I will complete the 4.6.2 firmware upgrade before I start the rebuild. In yours or others experience, have you ever seen an ISY cause the symptoms I mentioned? Other then a hard failure, can it cause problems due to a corrupted up upgrade? I don't expect my ISY to have an issue. I only ask because the devices will be factory reset, the PLM will be new but the ISY will retain the current firmware so I'm unsure what a factory reset actually does other then remove all devices.. If I upgrade the firmware does that patch the existing firmware or write all new firmware to the eprom?

Due to many communication and stability problems over the last couple of years, I want to factory reset every device including ISY and rebuild from scratch. PLM appears deaf Intermittent sluggish response to scenes and programs At times, scene(s) have to be triggered twice to complete all actions All I my experience with X10 and Insteon tells me it's a Insteon communication issue. The forum and technical support agree...however it used to be rock solid for a decade with no major changes in the house other then a handful of new devices. Wired a second dedicated circuit for the PLM and ISY Installed filters on most electronic devices Added more Dual Band devices Replaced PLM several times Replaced devices that seem to have issues more then others Bottom line the system is still not Robust so I want to start from scratch I have a brand new 2413S as part of the rebuild. My Question is, after the ISY Factory reset, What version firmware will it come back on? If it comes back on the latest version I upgraded to, how do I know some of the issues I have are not related to a corrupt upgrade somewhere along the line? I also do not trust my backups. I figure the best plan is to take the time and rebuild the entire system to remove all doubt. Factory reset all Insteon devices Factory reset the ISY Install the new PLM - Power the ISY Start adding devices a handful at a time Verify performance for a few days, build a few scenes and programs for the devices. Continue adding devices in increments over a couple of weeks, if an issue occurs delete the last device(s) and see if system recovers Model: ISY 994i 1024 Platform: ISY-C-994 Version: 4.5.4 Build Timestamp: 2016-09-30-16:12:25 About 60 insteon devices (10 Dual band 2413S PLM/ISY on dedicated circuit from panel box

Welcome back to ISY I also had issues with my ISY seeing any insteon traffic from my devices. However I was using a 2413S. I reloaded an older backup and had the same issues. A manual tap of a switch or motion detection did not show up in my event viewer level 3. I factory reset one of my switches and restored the device with no luck. I removed the device with ISY and reinstalled and the switch traffic was restored. I did this to many of the devices and was successful about 80% of the time. Over the next 6 months I noticed I lost the incoming communication again on most of my devices. I bought a new 2413S but that did not help.

Follow up to my issue. I was unsuccessful with replacing my PLM and restoring my ISY with a backup and restoring devices. I had the same problem with the new PLM. It did not "see" any device status changes. Perhaps my "known good" backup was not so good. I deleted each device one at a time over the course of a week and reinstalled the devices and rebuilt all my scenes. I also updated each device in programs. I made back ups as I progressed so I would not have to start over if something happened. Finally my system was back and running strong for about a month.

Hi Michel, Thanks very much. Yes, I do have a a good backup although it was before my upgrade to 4.5.4. (I have backups with 4.5.4 but that was after the PLM change so I probably would not want to use them). After I install a new PLM and perform a restore, could I then make a backup, reinstall the questionable PLM and try a restore on it. The reason I ask this is I think I may have screwed up the original replacement and if so, there may be nothing wrong with this PLM. If I still see problems, then go back to the "New" PLM following the instructions on the Wiki and do a another restore on that?

Thanks for all the information. I really appreciate it. The PLM is about 7 months old. Somehow I think I messed up on the installation of this new PLM 7 months ago. When I replaced it and then booted the ISY, my browser was hung up so I never saw the ISY boot, so I started unplugging things and can't recall what sequence I ended up with. So I'm suspecting the PLM is OK and I just need to get the links back in sync with the ISY

I do have a brand new backup PLM. Is it worth trying a PLM replacement? That would be easier then deleting and adding every device and rebuilding all scenes and (programs?).

Restore PLM completed. no change. Only the device I deleted and added back shows communication in the Event Viewer level 3.

Thanks, I tried to restore the PLM without good results. But as I mentioned earlier, the restore PLM did not seem to "take". I just did a restore PLM and I now have a dialog box indicating something is happening. We might have something here..I'll report back.

OK, if that's what it takes. Thank you. I did do a restore on the single device with no luck so I guess that should have ruled out the restore all. But hey, I will try whatever help from the great people on this forum offer. Always thankful for those who take the time to help. I'll report back on the results of rebuilding my database.

Both

Restore Devices completed. Did not work. The only switch that shows communication is the one I deleted and restored. Any other things to try?

Stu, Thanks, File -- Restore Devices is in progress...looks like this may take quite awhile. It's been going for about 10 minutes now and it says it's 2% complete. I'll report back when complete. Thank you.

Teken, Thank You! Deleting and reinstalling worked. Does this mean I have to do this to all my devices and rebuild all my scenes?

I was hoping for some ideas on why I do not see any activity in Event Viewer level 3 when I press buttons on SwitchLincs, ToggleLincs and Keypadlincs. I have an ISY994i Pro with version 4.5.4. 2413S PLM version 2.2 I do see activity from motion sensors and door switches. I also see activity in level 3 if I turn one of the switches on from the admin console (INST-TX, INST-ACK and INST-SRX). If I query these devices I also see the communication. Just nothing with manual operation. I have no communication issues. All my scenes and programs run without issue. All the devices (approximately 50 devices) were added with ISY. All links were done through ISY. The only reason I noticed the issue is because I wanted to start working with variables. So I defined a State variable and wrote the counter programs (from the video tutorial) and noticed the count never increased with the switch presses. That's when I opened up the Event Viewer level 3 and noticed no activity. I made copies of my programs to use a wireless door sensor instead of the ToggleLinc (because as I mentioned, I do see the activity with door switches). Then the variable counter worked fine. I did a restore on a handful of devices with no success. I also did a restore on the PLM with no success, however I'm not sure if the PLM restore actually worked. I tried it twice but saw nothing in the event viewer and no dialog boxes saying anything was happening. Not sure if this is worth mentioning but... I replaced my PLM about 6 months ago and had a little trouble getting it installed (none of my devices were communicating) I think I may have screwed up the procedure while troubleshooting my original and installing the new one. To my surprise the next day, all my devices were communicating and everything has worked flawlessly since.

I decided to change my intent from "Tell Me" to "Give Me" because I can no longer use the intent Tell Me for normal Amazon Alexa interfacing. Such as, Tell me a joke or more importantly from things like Wikipedia answers, Alexa will give a short answer and then suggests if I want to hear more details say "Tell Me more". Of course I can not because if I say Tell Me more, it no longer works (development skill has priority). Changing the intent did not work so well. My Amazon developer account shows the change and now calls the skill Give Me but it still responded to Tell Me. I wrote a program and in the Then section said to execute the network resources but nothing changed. A few days later while trying to figure it out I noticed my skill ID was different then the original. Not sure why, I never deleted the Tell Me skill, I only changed the intent Tell Me to Give Me. So anyway, I changed the ID in my network resources saved and tested the resources with no faults. It still responded to Tell Me and not Give Me. I executed the network resources from a program and tried again. No luck. Deleted the Skill from my Amazon developer account completely and now everything is back to normal. I figured I'd just get myself into trouble (Post 1).

Somewhat related to this topic... I bought a Echo for the main room (Dots are in the other rooms). I bought the echo for the main room because this is where we like to listen to music, so I figured the dots sound ok but the full unit will sound much better. No surprise, it sounds great...however when the volume is turned up to 8 or higher, the echo can not hear me at all. I scream "Alexa" from about 8 feet away and she will not here me. I have to go over to it and press the button to get her to stop playing music. The reason for this post is warn others about this issue. Go with a Bluetooth speaker from a dot, keep them separated and you'll be better off.

Yep, everything Stusviews posted. I have one in the garage, one in the kitchen, one in the great room and one in the master bedroom. All on one account (therefore all capable of the full library) and they all play nice together. The kitchen and Great room are both within earshot of each other but only the closest one responds.

Well I followed the instructions and everything worked first try. Thank you blueman2 and 3po-labs.

This is something I'd really like to have. I can follow instructions and cut / paste code but I don't know much about programming. Is this something I should even try? I guess I have nothing to lose, the instructions in post #1 appear very detailed. Does anyone have an opinion as to whether or not someone with virtually no programming background should give this a try?

Mine were French, I has to forget everything and re-discover.

So far my favorites are 1. HA 2. Music (Amazon unlimited) 3. Timer (wife uses in kitchen often) 4. Alarms (so far so good, but I have a better trust with my iphone alarm) 5. Shopping list 6. Wikipedia things that come up in random conversation.

Update on my setup (as it may help others). With the info I learned on this thread in regards to the echo's only responding from the nearest one, I changed all four echos to "Alexa". Wow! this really works excellent. I moved around the dots and tested them over and over, sure enough only one responds (the nearest). If I'm right in the middle of them, still only one responds. Now they are set up in the four parts of the house. My wife started a Christmas mix in the kitchen and I asked Alexa for classic rock in the living room. Each one plays their own music. I told Alexa to stop, my classic rock stopped and her Christmas music kept on playing. She asked Alexa to turn off the kitchen main at the same time I asked Alexa to turn off the great room fans. Both worked independently and perfectly. For me. A single account works perfect! Thanks for the help in this thread.

Alrighty then, all is good. It's Friday cheers.