barrygordon

Larry, That sounds like a good suggestion. Could you point me to the page that covers the installation of the Z-wave board as I have not done that in a while and my memory is not that good. I am sure that with the installation instructions I can figure out how to proceed.

I have no programs with run at startup enabled. All my programs run due to some event. This issue, requiring a double reboot, has always been with me as long as I can remember. It is rare I require a reboot (software quality very high), or a reboot occurs due to a power failure as the system is on a UPS with a fully automatic backup generator. I am having Z-Wave issues and that is why I thought a reboot might help. I have 4 Z-wave devices, two thermostats and two sensors. I believe the thermostats are communicating but not the sensors. The sensors were working reliably up until a few days ago. I am running ISY 4.6.2. , Z-Wave 4.55. I have tried to exclude Z-wave devices. A listening for Z-wave devices status box appears but it never sees any devices to exclude. I am good with Insteon, but not that familiar with Z-wave. I believe I have a valid backup, perhaps I should reload it? What do you suggest.

My ISY is on a UPS and runs very reliably. However I just lost all Z-Wave communications. Insteon Communications works fine. I decided to try a reboot. Whenever I reboot the system (power Cycle, as that is the only way I know how) the system restarts but is very sluggish. simple operations take seconds. I then do a second re-boot and when the system comes back up all is normal (Z-Wave is not fixed but that is probably a separate issue and I have started a thread in the z-wave section) This boot behavior is very regular. Whenever I do it, normally on a firmware change, the same thing happens. Two re-boots to get things back to normal. Can someone advise me as to what might be wrong, or is this normal? The only problem I normally have with the ISY is that it is so reliable that I forget how to do things like troubleshooting and repairing a problem.

No need. It is working now. Thankws. (Just take credit or fixing it )

Thanks Michel please post when you believe it to be working. Thanks Barry.

Feb 16 2018 11:22 Alexa has stopped responding to UDI related (ISY Portal) commands. Alexa works for strictly amazon things. Anyone else seeing this

Initially I had multiple RPi;'s in my system, now I have only one RPi in my system. It handles all my Central Home Automation requirements. It replaced a homeseer system running on a PC. It runs a single NodeJS program that I wrote which consists of independent functional modules

The only thing I will add is to throw something like a Raspberry Pi into the loop. The strings needed to deal with a Global Cache are not trivial and a royal PIA to enter into the ISY. My RPi handles (among many other things) the communications to the Global cache. The Pi maintains a library of the proper IR strings for my IR controlled devices. The interface to the RPi from the ISY is very simple. A JSON formatted payload specifying the end device to receive the IR (using a nice symbolic name like KTV (for kitchen TV)) and the command, once again a nice symbolic name like "PowerOn" for the obvious. The PI keeps in its library the port used for the device (KTV) on the Global Cache, The name of the IR file that contains the strings for that device, and the name of the specific string to send. the JSON looks like {"RPI_command":"Do_IR", "Device":"KTV", "cmnd":"VolUp"}. This makes the ISY side much easier. The RPi also obeys the protocol for the Global Cache and doesn't blindly just send a command

I do exactly what it is you want to do and it works fine; I use the RPi as the central Home Automation system running NodeJS and doing all development and testing using a Windows 10 system running Visual Studio 2015. For IR the RPi talks to a Global Cache unit over TCP with 6 IR ports and handles all IR except for those devices in the Home Theater. Some of the IR devices are an Electric faux fireplace, and all the TV's in the house. I have several Pronto PRO 9600's which also talk to The RPi to control local TV's over IR. I use Network resources with Alexa to control things like the fireplace, my pool system (through an Autelis Jandy control). A command to the RPi to control a device over IR is high level stating the device name and the command. The RPi's program then computes exactly which IR stream from its IR Library to send over which IR port. I do not control the TV's using Alexa as I am more comfortable using the Pronto 9600's. The RPi also handles all sorts of announcements through speakers in every room. All communications to the RPI is through either TCP/IP ur UDP/IP. The RPi also subscribes to the ISY 994 so it knows everything that is going on and can issue commands to and device the ISY controls using the ISY REST interface. The RPi implements full text to speech (TTS) using Amazons TTS service. The RPI controls speakers i(one in each room of the house) through individual relays. To send an audio announcement involves sending a TCP stream with a JSON payload providing the room names, volume setting and the text to be spoken. CallerID works via this paradigm starting with a "Way2Call" CallerId unit. I went the RPi route because I wanted the flexibility that it provides (assuming you are a competent Javascript or Python programmer), and its reliability. My RPi does not go down and the only time it has been unavailable is for the few seconds it takes to restart the application when I change something. It does this automatically. Anytime I want to do something new and different I just add the code to do it in the RPI. the RPi can be reached by the ISY, the house iPads, and the Pronto remotes. It was well worth the time to develop the code for the RPi. If any one is interested drop me a PM. I will answer all questions, butI will provide the code only to experienced Javsacript programmers otherwise the load on my time (of which I do not have that much left) gets to high.

I just discovered Alexa Routines. I use them in a slightly different manner. Basically I run an ISY program as the action for the routine. The ISY program just references a Network resource to send a raw text message to a raspberry Pi on my LAN. The Pi sits at a port watching for text messages from the ISY. The text message tells the Pi which script to run from the script library. A script is just a block of Node.JS code. This allows me to do much more than what the ISY is capable of doing in a program and control things not under the control of the ISY. Naturally the ISY program can be made much more complicated. The Pi Knows about everything in my house. Controls a set of 16 relays and responds to a set of 16 digital (contact closure) inputs. It uses the relays for such things as the Garage Door openers, the sliding pocket doors for the theater. The relays and digital inputs are on reasonably priced, well constructed boards from Denkovi Ltd. which are Ethernet/TCP devices. Since the Pi is on the LAN it controls a Global Cache for IR when needed and send REST messages to the ISY. The Pi subscribes to the ISY so it gets messages as to status when anything under the control of the ISY changes. The Pi uses Amazon text to speech (TTS) to put messages out throughout the house. Each room has a ceiling speaker (controlled by a relay) so messages can be specific to a room or a set of rooms. The Pi's up time is measured in months/years and really only goes down when I change something in a sloppy manner. All development and most testing for the Pi is done in Visual Studio 2015 on a windows 10 system. The Pi has replaced Homeseer as the "Central Control" for my house. As much as possible all things in my house are controlled by things that have TCP or HTTP capability. If there is interest in what I have done with the Pi drop me a line or PM. I am willing to share the code but will only deal with those with Javascript programming experience, Ideally Node.js.

I am using it on ISY994 4.6.2 to control an automated pocket door at the entrance to my theater. The only thing I use is the motion sensing. I do not care about the other features. When I get the time I will switch it over to run from a USB power unit so I don't have to be concerned with the battery. My Automation controller is a RPi 3 running my own Javascript code. It subscribes to the ISY so it gets notified when the 2842 senses motion. It appears to be working reliably in that limited mode. The program (script) in the RPi checks to see if the doors are open and if so disregards the notification. If the doors are closed it opens the doors and sets a 15 second timer to close the doors again.

Not to well. but I will give her credit for trying

There is a Dot in every room of the house including the Theater. I am a big Jeopardy fan and always watch it. As most of you probably know a contestant must start their response with "Who is" or "What is". Well tonight they had a contestant named "Alyssia". The Dot in the theater thought she was being spoken to and tried to answer the question most of the time when that contestant was called upon. I just found in humorous.

Kevin, Thanks for the reply. Activate is better than turn on / turn off but I would really like to see Amazon allow open / close. I understand the issue with open and the usage for opening a skill, but they could get around that. The could check to see if there is a skill with the name being used with open/close and if not revert to the connected home (CoHo). Activate is working for me with "Activate the Theater Door", and "Activate the Theater door opener". It does not seem to like "Activate the Theater Door Closer". That seems strange. The Gentleman door product I am using is the AutoSlide which is an Australian product. I am using both the sensing contacts (door closed) and a contact closure to activate the door. The activation contacts I handle in parallel with a single relay since the pocket doors are of the converging type (two doors in a single opening). I will probably wire the sense contacts in series so the state is true when both doors are closed. The AutoSlide Accessory cables for contact closure activation and position sensing were a bit prices so I located them in an electronics supplier catalog (Vetco) for $1.29 for the 2 pin cable and $1.39 for the 3 pin cable. The cables are short (6 and 11 inches respectively) but are easily extended. I am looking for a PIR sensor with a very controllable field of view so I can open the doors when someone approaches them. The ones from Insteon look a bit pricey, but I will probably investigate them.

I am using the AutoSlider. I bought my units from Gentleman Door Automationy carry both pneumatic and motor driven units. The AutoSlider is motor driven. The motor is quite powerful.

I am just finishing up the automation of the converging pocket doors that are the entry way to my home theater. Since the theater is fully controlled by a PC taking commands from a Pronto 9800 i will have no issues sending a request to the R-Pi that runs the house using either a UDP or TCP command. The system I am using takes commands to activate a door (open/close) from wireless sensors, or contact closures and provides status as opened or closed. If there is interest in doing this I will start a thread on the subject. The basic control system costs $399 for each door. My expense/time was in re-engineering the framing to drop a fascia and trim such that the mechanisms are not seen, and the fact that the doors will open with 2 inches showing on each side. Not in my world. The question I have is regarding a Dot and telling it to Open or close the doors. I will only need to have the Dot start a UDI network sequence as I already do that for many other functions (turn on the theater, turn on the fireplace, . . . ). The question is can a Say "Alexa, Open the theater doors" or "Alexa, close the theater doors". TIA, Barry

I am sure it is something I did, as I was cleaning up things. If I look at the portal with the ISY admin console under Portal it shows; Portal integration onLine - not registered Active Services BGordon Registered I suspect it is the not registered but I can not see how to register Never mind I figured it out. Had to delete and reenter the ISY. Unfortunately that erased all the spokens but I have a copy from the download feature. I wish there was a corresponding upload feature. No checking desired just put it back

No VPN client in use. The mikrotik logs show no abnormal issues. I wil l check the TIk forums. Thanks for the reply

The positioning of the dot vis-a-vis the router and a WAP should be irrelevant in my case. My router does not do Wi-fi, only the WAPs. The router handles DHCP and all the Dots use a reserved DHCP address. I will be changing that to static IP's this weekend to see if that improves things. Thanks for the reply. Also the Dots are in fixed locations so they should not be switching to different WAp'S. I always use Google DNS Servers for my static IP addresses. Thanks for the reply

Periodically a Dot ends up in a hung state. The blue light is circling, no commands will be accepted. The Dot must be reset by pressing the action button (works sometimes) or power cycling the Dot (always works). I have 5 Dot's some gen 1 some gen 2 and this has happened to all of them. Frequency is low happening once every couple of weeks. One customer rep told me to hold down the volume - and mute buttons for 10 seconds. That forced a reset to factory defaults and required the Dot to be re-setup as all info (wi-fi password) was lost. Her boss was not happy that she told me to do that with no prior explanation as to what it would do. In fact her boss offered to refund the purchase price of all 5 Dots, and my not having to return them. I did not take him up on the offer, perhaps I should have. Is anyone else seeing the above issue? Have you been able to resolve it? The LAN is Gigabit in speed, the ISP rate is 60 mbs,, I own my own modems and router. The router is Mikrotik, commercial grade, there are WAPs in the ceiling of each major room. As I explained to a senior tech rep from the Amazon Alexa world: lets assume it is an infrequently occurring wi-fi or LAN or ISP glitch, I don't care. The solution is fixing the code not telling the customer to reboot their device. I am waiting for self driving cars and a mechanic telling me to reboot my car. As an aside: I have determined that when dealing with customer service of almost all large companies in the digital world, what you are offered depends on whom you are speaking to. I had Brighthouse as my ISP, now Spectrum. I was annoyed with my bill being increased by $40/month the explanation being that I was on a special promotional offer (for 5 years). I asked if I could switch to Spectrum and was told, The price will be the same higher price, there would be a service call ($40.00), and the Tivo devices might not work. I kept calling getting different reps. Finally I got a rep that said what I was told was all wrong. A service call was not needed, It is just a billing change, everything would work as before, my bill will come down $40 / month. He made the change and I received a new billing invoice which was lower by $40 than what I was previously paying.

The issue with my theater are as follows and I am interested how others are overcoming them. The theater is a large space and I play it quite loud being a widower with no one in the house to complain. If I try and implement commands other than turning on the theater Alexa has difficulty in understanding the command with the intensity of the background noise. Any advice?

I do not believe so. That is the same problem I am having. We are both probably doing the same wrong thing

I am curious if anyone else is seeing this, First the configuration: Five Dots, two first gen, three second gen All dots at their latest software releases. All dots running with DHCP, router has reserved IP addresses so each dot always gets the same IP address. Issue 1: Periodically when I speak a command the light ring turns red and the dot states it is having internet issues, I think it states the internet connection is missing. I just wait a second and re-speak the exact same command and it works fine. Issue 2: Periodically I find the light ring sitting at blue and the dot will not respond to any command. The Alexa app states that dot is off line. It never recovers and I need to kill power to effect a recovery. I have been dealing lately with an Amazon Fire TV and was getting "Network issues" I changed it from DHCP to static IP and the problem never occurred again. I am thinking of setting all the Dots to static IP addresses. Thoughts? For those interested I can control the Fire TV from a PC using ADB (Android DeBug tool) which means I can have a program that will handle requests from an Alexa intermediary (e.g. a Raspberry Pi) working in conjunction with the UDI networking module to control the Fire TV. I Have not been successful in being able to control a Fire TV with direct TCP/IP. If any one knows how to do that I would be interested in discussing that with them.

Check the Wikki http://wiki.universal-devices.com/index.php?title=ISY_Portal_Amazon_Echo_Integration I have not yet gotten it to work properly but I have dropped looking at it for a while. My issue is as documented in this thread. I had it working properly for a short time. There is an issue with more than two accounts and Prime. I may just leave it with all the Dot's in one account. What I wanted was three separate accounts, the Master bedroom, the Guest bedroom and "The House". The guest bedroom and master bedroom would each have one echo, and the house the other three.

I was going a little crazy until I found out that Amazon had a major east coast outage. Now at least the Alexa app is running correctly I have two accounts set up for the Portal. Four of the five Dots are registered to the main account. One is registered to the sub account. If I log into the main account with the Alexa app, I see all my Dots (5 of them). four show as registered to the main account and one to the sub account. If I look at Smart Home I see 108 devices with their spokens and all is correct. If I log into the sub-account with the Alexa app, I see all my Dots (5 of them). four show as registered to the main account and one to the sub-account. If I look at Smart Home I see 22 devices with their spokens and all is correct. If I look into the portal I see the correct devices and spokens with the correct sub-account. When I entered the spokens for the sub account I was logged into the sub account The Problem is when I am talking to the single DOT registered to the sub-account. That Dot will not recognize any spokens that are only in the sub-account. It will recognize any spokens that are in the main account. I do not know what to try next. It all looks correct, however it is not working for me as it should, and as it works for you. I am thinking about filling a "Bug" report with Micheal.