dbwarner5

I recently had an issue with the portal/polyglot/Isy communication whereas I had to delete my ISY from the Portal and re-add it. As a result in this whole process I lost close to 100 verbal Alexa commands from the portal.NOT A GOOD DAY. This has led me to the discovery that there is no decent way to export and reimport your “Alexa file”, putting at risk the key interface I now use with Isy. My ISY is the BACKBONE of my home automation, however Alexa has become the daily user interface for it. I have seriously not touched a light switch, fan switch, stereo switch, fireplace switch etc, in months. To not be able to back up this part of my automation system is a serious hole, that I just learned the hard way to deal with. I cant stress the importance that Alexa has become to my successful ISY interface and therefore why backup of this link is SO CRITICAL to have. Likewise, I also use a large amount of “Routines” in the Alexa app. When the Isy/Alexa interface went away, any Isy related calls from these routines also went away and had to be redone. This is yet another but different hole in my whole automation process that is Amazon based. **UDI, @Michel Kohanimcan you add to your improvement list, a way to export a users Alexa / google home / etc settings from the portal, in a way that they can be re-imported? You currently have a CSV export which I have done now to at least have a manual list to reference. For others who may find themselves in this land of purgatory of a lost Isy on the portal, this was the process I finally figured out to recover my Alexa commands. Starting from zero would have been weeks of “remembering” all the things I had done. Process for recovery: 1)open the Alexa web page interface on a browser and do a copy from Alexa web page and paste into a spreadsheet. Do this for both scenes and devices. This will give you the total list of “devices” and spoken commands that Alexa has, of which any Isy related ones wont work. 2) use this list to reenter them into portal. The list has Isy addresses so confirmation of the same scene / switch is easy. 3)once the new ones are in the portal, delete the old ones from Alexa’s web page via web browser BEFORE doing any discovery. This makes it easy as ALL the Isy related items need to be deleted 4) After all the old ones are deleted, then ask Alex to re-discover and all the “new” commands from the Portal will go back into the Alexa. 5) lastly, any routines in the Alexa app on your mobile device will need to be revisited. Ones that relied on an Isy variable need to be redefined, as wil any calling an old Isy device. The routines will all be there, but often with blank fields after the above delete. Current best back up process is to export the CSV file, but ALSO, do another copy paste from the Alexa web page for both devices and switch, as their format is a bit easier for reading and re-entering manual per above. Let me know anyone if you have a different / better experience or suggestions for future. Thanks,

last update: was able to go to the Alexa web page and copy and paste into a spreadsheet the list of Devices and Scenes. Reentering them in the portal became manageable with this list as it has the spoken name and the isy address of the scene or program. Variable a bit trickier but doable. had to go and repopulate any routines that called old scenes variable and devices. Process for recover: 1)copy from Alexa web page and paste into spreadsheet 2) reenter them into portal 3) delete the old ones from Alex via web browser 4)re-discover..

continued saga.... all of my commands are still in the Alexa app, but they of course are not mapped to the ISY properly anymore,. So the dilemma is do I delete all of these and redo them or is there a way to backward populate the portal? hours of work ahead....

RESOLVED.... I deleted my isy from the portal and re-added it. Had to reboot it to get the approval to go through, but once I rebooted, and approved, I am back on line at the portal and polyglot... whew. UPDATE--> NOT RESOLVED : its showing green on line, but nothing is connecting again.. polyglot worked for about 5 minutes. If I try to access Amazon, I get error message that ISY is not online... SORTA RESOLVED --> I repeated the above action, but this time went and immediately deleted the dark sky server and things are now stable, however I lost ~100 amazon commands... never downloaded a copy.. this is a very very bad day...

I can log into the portal.. but for example if I select tools / isy web portal, I get the error, isy is not online. I am going to go ahead and open a ticket.. something seems to have gone haywire on UD end I think.

I have been successfully using the portal for a long time, and more recently the polyglot cloud. In trying to solve a Dark sky node issue, I decided to try and reinstall it. Somehow, I wonder if broke something in this process such that now BOTH the Portal and polyglot cant find my ISY.. Says ISY is offline. All I did was delete the profile in the isy node server config file and then try to delete the dark sky node server on the polyglot cloud. However, I have no problems running the Admin Council locally, or using mobilinc over the cell network (not my lan), They connect just fine. So its something to do with the portal? Is it down? or did I do something? thanks...

Also applaud Wes for all his work on this and past versions, but will also stay with Pro as the dashboard is also my first go to look at things in my house for that macro view with ability to drill down as noted. Also the whole portal thing has me a bit confused. I am using universal devices portal for their items (Alexa, polyglot etc), and my mobil linc goes directly through a dns service to my ISY, so why would I want to change all of that to add a third annual fee / portal to manage? I still need my dns for other access points when not at home so I cant give that up, for now. thanks,

right click on the link and chose "Download linked file" and the zip stays together.

Understand your point. Shut the garage doors on this example is pretty much the only natural thing to say. For other situations where there are multiple natural words I will add several voice options in the portal for the Alexa command or in some cases 2 or 3 routines with different but similar voice commands My wife is my natural tester. And as you would guess I hear about anything annoying pretty quickly lol. And currently she loves what we have done with Alexa and has good enough luck with it that she not only doesn’t complain but even shows it off. Lol But again I understand your point Lots of time and patience to get to the level of use that I have with it But I wouldn’t do with out it Cheers Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Resolved as usual by Michael. Thanks! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have had great success with Alexa. But have found you crate have similar names across groups and scenes and devices and routines. Try renaming your office group to something like upstairs office. I generally don’t use Alexa groups for this reason An example of my crazy naming sequences. Alexa routine : “shut the garage doors” initiates an ISY Portal voice command called garage doors shut alll which is linked through the ISY portal to the program or scene that initiates my garage door sequence If I had used the portal voice command of shut the garage doors I get error message of “I don’t understand “ since shut is an Alexa verb that can’t be applied to this situation but also part of the voice command I want to give. This is an example of the workaround So yes it’s a bit convoluted for sure but once you get it set up (I use voice activated routines in Alexa for a very large number of Alexa actions) it is fabulous Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

@ISY Newbie Bottom line, there is a TON of ways to automate your life. You will need to decide the balance of complexity of setup / programming vs how much you want to exactly meet every situation. By reading all of the posts and accepting your newbie experience, I would suggest simplifying and growing as follows: -Use the MS to initially turn on the lights upon entering. -Add a 6 button keypad to a light switch somewhere handy. -upon entering, decide which "scene" you want from the keypad, and press that button. -This would then initiate a series of programs: 1)disable the MS until either a certain time expires ie 3 hours, or the main light switch is turned on again 2) depending on which button was pressed, adjust the lighting scene inside the room for the way you want it... movies probably darker than sports etc. 3) program that resets everything when the main light switch is turned on with a slow brighten affect. this is a pretty simple and straitforward approach that gives you a pretty good start for what you are looking to do....control the lights in your movie room. Or you can achieve all of the above without a keypad by using an Alexa and simple voice commands as the initiator vs the keypad (my preferred route) you can always grow from here with polyglot, node servers, multiple MS, door sensors etc... but that starts to get pretty involved if you haven't mastered the basics of isy programming such as I have explained above. If you choose to do something simple like this, feel free to reach out and I can explain in more detail if you need it. good luck and WELCOME to the ISY.. you won't ever look back once you get the hang of it...

@Michel Kohanim I have submitted a ticket. In trying to get the IP address changed so that the dashboard would work, the polyisy is now nowhere to be found on my network. Pushing the reset button does NOT create any beeps fyi.

Larry. Lol. And that is only the tip of the iceberg.... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

bob.. go to universals devices website and you can see the ISY... there is definitely a learning curve with it, but it is well worth it if you would like to really control things, both automatically, and via Alexa or your phone etc. For example, I have three garage doors. I have programs that if any of the garage doors are open, several keypad buttons light up around the house. If after dark, they will start to blink to attract my attention. I can then either press any of them, or ask Alexa to "close the garage doors". The Isy will then determine which doors are open, blink lights in the garage as a warning, then make two attempts to close them. If any of them fail to close after 2 attempts, then the house announces the problem (could be through Alexa) that one of the doors is still open. If they all close successfully, the same keypad lights will blink slowly and an announcement will be made if my rear access door is also left open (often done in the summertime). Meanwhile, I can at anytime, open or close any of the doors simply by asking Alexa ("Alexa, open the north garage door") or pushing a "dashboard" button on my cell phone mobillinc app. All very easy. The point is, that with ISY, there really is no limit to what you can do; it just takes time, patience and a little experimenting to figure it all out. This forum is an excellent resource, but at times, some of the answers you may get may be a bit more complicated than often is needed for a beginner, so just keep asking.

I did not use a secondary z-wave controller when I updated from 4 to 5. But did do a z-wave backup before and a restore after. No problems. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

yes glowing hair.. easy enough to do, but you still need to check once in a while, and having the LD is a really quick way to scan down your program list to see if if indeed they are set they way you intend them. Will do your suggestion in conjunction! thanks.

Have been waiting for less trouble and finally updated last week from 4.7.3 to 5.16a.... followed hart2hart's check list below. Upgrade went flawlessly with exception of leak sensors. Just upgrades to 5.16b. Again no issues. Waiting 24 hours for heartbeat to know for sure. One additional tip / idea to the list below: - I have historically had issues with certain programs that should be disabled, becoming enabled due to power outages etc. and have always had a challenge going through my hundreds of programs to sort them out. -So a while ago, I adopted the nomenclature rule for my system where if a program is meant to be disabled, then I end the name of the program with LD for Leave Disabled. See below for an example -This is a one time effort to rename, but it made it super easy during the upgrade to reset everything as it should be w/o the need to compare two lists as recommended by hart2hart Thanks UDI and everyone who actively contributes to this forum.... you all are great! Merry Christmas.

Hi Wes, I am long time Mobilelinc customer, and currently have HD set up on several devices. I also use the ISY portal. What is the advantage of switching to X? Currently I don't have any issues with HD. All is working just fine. thanks. Doug

DualBandAid and others.......Update to efforts above: Success but with some trials and learnings about the Phillips bulbs 1) for some reason my Hub user name would not appear no matter what combination / effort i made. When I was about to give up, i tried it in a new browser window exactly as in the directions and voila, it worked.. don't know why. 2) found i couldn't get the lights to the right color. It appears i have two downward bulb that use an additional or in place of(?) parameter of "xy" for the color. Once I added that to my resource body, the color changed correctly. -New Resource looks like this: {"on":true, "bri":39, "sat":65202, "hue":254, "xy": [0.6817,0.3036], "transitiontime":5} After running the above resource via TEST, the GET command from debugger shows the following and the light shows the right color. Interesting to note that the numbers don't match exactly. "state": { "on": true, "bri": 39, "hue": 65203, "sat": 254, "effect": "none", "xy": [ 0.6818, 0.3036 ], "ct": 153, "alert": "select", "colormode": "xy", "mode": "homeautomation", "reachable": true }, Notice it says in the GET --> "colormode": "xy". The Does anyone know what "ct" is? On a different bulb, the GET info says "color mode": "hs", which i assume means Hue, Saturation and therefore the original directions would have worked. This may be worth an add to the original directions. For those interested, here is the rest of the GET info from first bulb: "swupdate": { "state": "noupdates", "lastinstall": "2018-12-07T19:04:07" }, "type": "Extended color light", "name": "Dougs reading light", "modelid": "LCT011", "manufacturername": "Philips", "productname": "Hue color downlight", "capabilities": { "certified": true, "control": { "mindimlevel": 2000, "maxlumen": 650, "colorgamuttype": "C", "colorgamut": [ [ 0.6915, 0.3083 ], [ 0.17, 0.7 ], [ 0.1532, 0.0475 ] ], "ct": { "min": 153, "max": 500 } }, "streaming": { "renderer": true, "proxy": true } }, "config": { "archetype": "floodbulb", "function": "mixed", "direction": "downwards", "startup": { "mode": "safety", "configured": true } }, "uniqueid": "00:17:88:01:02:aa:ba:5f-0b", "swversion": "1.46.13_r26312", "swconfigid": "E6785CC3", "productid": "Philips-LCT011-1-BR30ECLv1" Here is the complete GET Info from a standard Phillips bulb where the colormode is "hs". and where the original directions in this forum work. { "state": { "on": true, "bri": 254, "hue": 255, "sat": 254, "effect": "none", "xy": [ 0.6863, 0.3122 ], "ct": 153, "alert": "none", "colormode": "hs", "mode": "homeautomation", "reachable": true }, "swupdate": { "state": "noupdates", "lastinstall": "2018-12-07T19:04:12" }, "type": "Extended color light", "name": "Great room lamp", "modelid": "LCT016", "manufacturername": "Philips", "productname": "Hue color lamp", "capabilities": { "certified": true, "control": { "mindimlevel": 1000, "maxlumen": 800, "colorgamuttype": "C", "colorgamut": [ [ 0.6915, 0.3083 ], [ 0.17, 0.7 ], [ 0.1532, 0.0475 ] ], "ct": { "min": 153, "max": 500 } }, "streaming": { "renderer": true, "proxy": true } }, "config": { "archetype": "sultanbulb", "function": "mixed", "direction": "omnidirectional", "startup": { "mode": "safety", "configured": true } }, "uniqueid": "00:17:88:01:03:b3:76:d6-0b", "swversion": "1.46.13_r26312", "swconfigid": "9DC82D22", "productid": "Philips-LCT016-1-A19ECLv5" TH' or ANKS EVERYONE! 'hs **UPDATE: It seems that for the regular bulbs, the method of color choice, "hs" or "xy", changes depending on what ios app or Alexa I last used to adjust the light.One of the apps I use has animations. These seem to put all the bulbs into "xy" mode. So the simple solution is to ensure both data is included in each resource so that when ISY invokes it, the color is correct in either case of which the bulb reads the data.

DualBandAid…… this is amazing. I have had the network module for over 4 years and have not had the time/guts/energy to figure it out. I see now that I will be able to do so and using this as a stepping ground to learn to do other things like control my russound. In the meantime, for those that like me are a bit intimidated by NR, with the new features that ISY has with Alexa, there is a simple way to do basic things, albeit it can get a bit convoluted with programs / routines calling each other from different systems--> ISY program calling on an Alexa routine which then calls the Hue Hub to change lights. -Use a variable from ISY to initiate a routine in Alexa per this wiki page: https://wiki.universal-devices.com/index.php?title=ISY_Portal_Amazon_Echo_Integration_V3 -This variable can be integrated into any ISY programming / logic desired. -The Alexa routine can set most basic parameters of the HUE light or rooms etc. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this topic. I just installed 5 hue lights yesterday and will look forward to tackling NR next. but in the meantime

On to p of things as usual! thanks Michel.

thanks! it wouldnt hurt to add a note to that affect in the Wiki. https://wiki.universal-devices.com/index.php?title=ISY_Portal_Amazon_Echo_Integration_V3#ISY_Can_Talk_To_You.21_.28Alexa_Routines.29

First off, using Alexa has been the missing link to make my ISY/ Elk installation useful for EVERYONE in the house.. GREAT JOB UNIVERSAL DEVICES.. works really well. Cant wait to start integrating voice responses per the newer capability. Simple question: I have both of the above skills enabled on my Alexa account. Nowhere do I find much about the ISY app VS. the ISY Optimized for Samrt Home V3 app.. Do I still need the ISY one? Is it redundant and possibly causing conflicts? If anyone could clarify that would be great! Thanks!

Hi Sanders.. a somewhat "unrelated" question for you... i have an ELK / ISY system as well, plus a Russound MCA88-8. I have the Network Resources module installed in my ISY with the hopes of integrating my ISY with the Russound for wake up music etc. I noticed you mentioned the Russound Serial interface. Can you help me get started in my goal above in terms of how do i start using the networking resources and how do i set up a serial interface? I have downloaded the MC66 serial commands and binary codes but am not sure what to do with them. also, my inputs to the MCA88 are Apple Expresses and Apple TV's so I am looking for some sort of input that i can queue up to play in the morning through the ISY interface to play what i want in the morning, but can't think of anything yet. Any suggestions here? thanks!