SteveKlos

I'll try to give a short summary, but I'm wondering how to efficiently utilize a motion sensor with outdoor lights, when the lights can be in a variety of states... We use our backyard for various activities - there are 4 primary scenes that we'll turn on and off when we're doing something. The four scenes can be: 1) landscape lights on 2) Party scene on 3) Clean up time 4) Dog's gotta go out We also have a motion sensor setup. When the motion sensor is activated, it sends a restful command to the video surveillance system that takes a picture and sends it via text to my phone. All of the above works great. Now, I want to add in a program where the motion sensor will turn the lights in the backyard on (to a specified level) if there is motion *and* if it's dark and the lights aren't currently on. It seems overly complex to do this... What I have done is the following: I have a variable that indicates if it's after sunset and if the landscape lights in the front are on, or if it's after hours and they're off. Basically, Dark will be 1 or 2 if it's after sunset. I have another variable that's set to true if any of the lights in the back are set to a level > 10% I've had to set the "off" trigger for the motion sensor to 6 minutes so that it does turn off again, so the ISY will again set the event management for the motion sensor to be active. Finally, because a program will not continue to execute when a state variable (or the trigger itself) has changed, I've had to include a timer variable that enables the program to stay active while the timer is in the wait state. My program looks as shown in the image below. This seems overly complex. But it also seems as if I use the else command, that another extraneous event could trigger the program to turn the backyard lights scene off. Is there a more efficient method folks use when you have numerous scenes that can be turned on and off manually, but you also want to be able to have something automatically done if the manual scenes aren't active? Thanks for any and all suggestions!

I can confirm - if I set the lights to on using a scene, it works fine. If I attempt to send an Insteon instruction directly to the device, the ISY appears to go into a scene configuration mode and it never sends the Insteon instruction (or at least, what I see on the screen with the various devices being written to). I'm using Beta version 5.0.15A and this appears to be a defect in that version. At least I can use the Motion Sensor II, so I'll work around the defects. I think using the scene is a better approach anyway, so it's not going to hamper me - my initial effort at this was simply to test quickly without waiting for all that scene setup work. It certainly wasn't quicker - should have just started by using scenes :-)!

Points me in the right direction - didn't think about looking at what the ID's were... It appears that when the instruction is fired off - and the ISY is sending an on/off to one of the devices - if that device is part of a scene, it's appears to go through the typical scene processing that occurs when you drop a device into a scene. Unsure why that would be - I'm simply sending an on/off command to the device, but when I do, it appears to process it as if I'm changing a scene. The odd part - the lights never turned on. It may be a bug, it may be expected behaviour, it may be I'm just doing it wrong, but when I use the admin interface of the ISY to set one of the lights to a % on, the device reacts properly and doesn't go through the processing phase. Very bizarre! I was trialing this approach as a test, but I'm now going to setup a scene that'll allow me to simply trigger the scene on or off and see if that works. It seems like I should be able to send an on/off/on% instruction to a device (regardless if it's part of a scene, or not) and have that instruction change the state of that device (and if that device is a controller, the scene should kick in), but maybe I'm not thinking about the ISY interactions with Insteon scenes properly.

OK - I have two ISY's in two different locations. Once upgraded to 5.0.15A cleanly, the other - I've had a few more issues with. I've been having intermittent issues with not being able to communicate with various devices - will work through that - it may be the PLM, may be some comms interruption issues, may be an upgrade issue... The reason I upgraded, I wanted to add an Insteon Motion Sensor II to my environment. Seems I'm now struggling with the motion sensor. Here's what's happening. I've setup a new instruction that will turn the outside lights on if they aren't already on. The variables are all working as expected (I have a Dark variable that indicates if it's after sunset and before I turn the front lights off (1) or after I've turned the front lights off for the night (2). I also have a variable that indicates if any lights are on in the backyard area. So here's the issue. I setup the program (shown below). The problem is every time the motion sensor indicates motion - "is switched on" (and Dark > 0 and BackyardLightOn = 0) I get a "System Busy" message - two in fact. Why? If I disable this program, I don't get the system busy dialogs showing up. I don't understand why I'm seeing the "System Busy" - any idea from the wider community?

Thanks folks - that clarifies the issue for me. I figured the system had to be event based, but was having some struggle wrapping my head around time based events - especially the from-to condition... Now, I just need to understand why my State variables are updating for some programs, but not for others. I think I have more than enough to work with based on the replies provided!

Folks, Having a few hiccups when it comes to programming the ISY (mostly to do with Variables not being set in Firmware V 5.0.15A), but I have a fundamental question on the programming. If I have a program that says: If: From Sunset to 10:25:00 PM (same day) Then wait 10 minutes (random) .... does the then clause get executed multiple times between sunset and 10:25 PM, or only once when sunset occurs (and then again, possibly if the ISY is rebooted due to a power outage)? My old programming style used to be something more like: If 10:25 PM Then wait 10 minutes (random) .... I didn't find that to be as robust as providing a bracketed time. I do recognize that there may be some overlap (the 10 minute random period), but that's the reason I'm asking the question - does the if statement get evaluated on every "loop" of the ISY, or is it only once (presumably once the clock hits 10:25). Cheers, SK

It seems that I regularly have the response of "Universal Devices is unavailable right now" - I regularly get frustrated that Google doesn't have a decent interface for their Assistant app (the manage accounts is sufficiently well hidden that I now have a reminder on how to find it. Is there a clear reason why this keeps happening and where do we go to upvote a fix for this? I recognize that there will, from time to time, be issues when you have multiple companies working on something this complicated, but just about every time I've actually wanted to use voice commands to turn lights on or off, it appears that I need to unlink and re-link the ISY Portal. (edited to ensure I'm notified of replies).

I'm having a similar problem and I'm finally trying to track down what's going on. I regularly have to unlink and re-link the ISY Portal in Google Home. Unfortunately, Google's updated the app and the linking unlinking is more difficult to discover in the current version. I'm also kinda tired of having to setup the rooms in Google Home. I have spokens on all modules that are used regularly, so I don't think this necessarily helps resolve the problem. By spokens, I'm assuming you mean the words that are included in the my.isy.io portal... It appears that you're working on this (which is awesome) - is there anything we can do to provide additional information on what's happening?

Didn't think about the fact that the browser would cache credentials. I would not use http on the Interenet, was just doing it for trying out the interface. I should have considered caching - thanks for the repsonse! Now, I need to figure out how to trigger a program - last night, I did try to execute a command and it appeared to run 20 minutes later - quite odd. Will be giving it another shot later tonight.

I'm just digging into the rest interface... I want to have my Android phone initiate some home automation actions when it gets within 30 M of he house (using Tasker). The Rest Interface for ISY is a bit more than what I've dealt with in the past, but as I'm starting to use it, it seems reasonable, but there seems to be a security issue that I'm surprised at. As I worked through the interface, my first port of call was to make calls for information (like what nodes are configured). This is pretty straight-forward - all you need to do is use the following REST request: <IP Address>:<port>/rest/nodes. All good, but I require credentials to access my ISY, so I would need to use the user/pass to access the system - and I'd expect that this would be required for any access. That said, I used the following query - http://<userid>:<password>@<ipaddress>:<port>/rest/nodes. This worked great - I received a list of the nodes listed in ISY. Next, I tried to use http://<userid>:<incorrect_password>@<ipaddress>:<port>/rest/nodes - I still received all the nodes listed in ISY. Finally, I tried using http://<ipaddress>:<port>/rest/nodes - I still recieved all nodes from ISY. I don't know if I'm using the rest interface properly (I've been able to get the node list, but have not been able to run a program as yet). Since the UID/Pass doesn't seem to be working as I'd expect. I'm not particularly concerned about the access of data from my system (it's not at ALL good that this data doesn't require a password to access, but I could live with that if I had to - in this case). What I'm struggling with is validating the UID:Pass mathod for sending credentials and having a program execute when I can't use queries to validate that I'm doing things properly is driving me bat sh1t crazy. Programs aren't executing, queries don't need credentials and I'm now lost!

I may have missed it, but I had to go into My Profile and set "My preferred ISY" before Google Home would download the various devices and rooms that had been defined. Once I set this up, it worked great! Thanks! Cheers, SK

LeeG, Thanks for that - I didn't expect there to be a difference between an Integer and a State variable in the folders... You are correct, the variable is an integer. I will update my firmware and change the variable to a state variable, then will report back on the outcome. Many thanks!

I'm new to programming the ISY-994i, but I've dealt with state based, event-driven programming a fair amount and thought I'd had this system worked out... However, it's not to be. One thing has eluded me - I've tried to search through the forums to no avail, perhaps I'm not using the right search terms. Basically, I have a variable called "Vacation". When this integer variable is set to 1, I want the programs that are in the Vacation Folder to execute. Seems rather straight-forward, so here's what I've done: - Folder created with the name Vacation - Conditional on Folder: if $Vacation is 1 then Allow the programs in this folder to run - I tested the various programs in the folder - they all execute properly and as expected when outside of the folder So the system is running, all the various programs for the lights in the house are working properly. I want to head out of the house for a few days... - I change the Vacation Variable (both the init, and value) to 1 and I apply these changes. - I check on the vacation folder in Programs, Summary, Looking at the folder Vacation, the Status is still False. - I highlight the vacation folder and save the program - thinking that maybe it only reads the variables when it's saved - no change Basically, I can't get the folder to recognize that there has been a change in the variable so that the programs inside the folder are added into the event loop. Anyone have any idea on why this may be happening? Am I using the conditional in the folder the wrong way? By the way, the reason I'm using folders is simply for organizational cleanliness. I have multiple states I want to use variables for - Christmas, Vacation, Party, etc. These programs are targeted to be running only during those times when the variable is set to a value. Variables can be set to a value either pragmatically, or via the UI. So far, I've only been setting the variables via the UI, but the next step will be do setup conditionals like, Christmas programming goes from Dec 1 - Jan 6th... Need to figure out what's going on with the variables before I add these new functions to the system... Any help is greatly appreciated! Cheers, SK