bpwwer

From yesterday (9/2) Most recent update:

I don't seem to be getting data from my backyard station either. But, the weatherbug web page isn't showing me any data, it says "No current observations available at this time Please try again later or Select a different station" But the weatherbug backyard station test page for my station is showing that they're getting the data and it's up-to-date. i.e. this page: http://data.backyard2.weatherbug.com/data/ecv.aspx works but this page: http://weather.weatherbug.com doesn't when both pages reference the same station id. So I'm thinking it's a weatherbug issue. Edit: I just logged into the weatherbug developer's site and it appears that this is a sitewide issue.

Hi sorka, From the main HS web interface you can set the current setpoint by finding the device and scrolling to the right. There's up and down buttons that will bump the current set point up or down. Near the top of the main web interface, there's a button labeled "ISY Insteon Thermostats" If you click on that, it will bring up a screen that has information for each thermostat including the heat and cool setpoints. Each of those setpoints is a drop down box that you can use to set the corresponding set point. The plugin also supports the HomeSeer thermostat API so you can use scripts to set the heat or cool setpoint via that API. There are also ISY Insteon Thermostat specific actions that can be used in events to set the heat or cool setpoint.

The "reset variables" worked and it is now reporting valid looking numbers. Thanks Michel

No one else has reported it so I don't think it's widespread and maybe just me. I have changed the station a couple of times with no change. The only thing I haven't tried yet is to reboot the ISY. I'll try a reboot and save off the log before and after. Ok I rebooted and looked through the logs. Nothing in them that indicates any problems, but the the same "--214748.352" value is still there in Irrigation Requirements. I tried changing all the various irrigation settings (tried all regions, tried setting allowable depletion to zero, etc.) the value hasn't changed. Seems to be stuck at that one value. All the incoming weatherbug data seems valid and correct. What can I do to reset this value? Is there a config file I should delete?

No one else has reported it so I don't think it's widespread and maybe just me. I have changed the station a couple of times with no change. The only thing I haven't tried yet is to reboot the ISY. I'll try a reboot and save off the log before and after.

Nope, I think it started after updating to 3.2.1. I noticed because the plug-in for HomeSeer started crashing (unhandled exception trying to parse the value) after that update. Same value via rest too. All methods to report the climate values report that value. It doesn't look like it's changing either. I've changed some of the irrigation module values, enabled, disabled, changed the weatherbug station. None of those has had any effect. I have not tried re-booting the ISY. I can leave it like this and experiment with it. I don't need the value to be right for anything.

Since installing 3.2.1 I'm seeing invalid information in the Irrigation module's "Irrigation Requirement" output. Light 12.6 % Light Rate 2.2 %/h Evapotranspiration 0.1356 inches/day Irrigation Requirement --214748.352 inches Yesterday's Water Deficit 0.1163 inches Wouldn't be too bad if the number was just wrong, but the "--" causes my software to throw an exception when trying to parse it.

Hi Mark, I don't make a lot of changes to the ISY since my configuration is fairly stable at this point so I don't test a lot of scene modifications scenarios. I do hear of occasional problems with the the ISY Plugin getting out sync with the ISY when doing a lot of administration tasks on the ISY. Restarting the plug-in/HomeSeer will correct that. In this case, shutting down HomeSeer while making the changes can help prevent the out-of-sync problems. No one has reported problems with the plug-in causing (or being suspected of causing) the ISY to crash. When changing scenes like that, the ISY could be sending a lot of data to the plug-in, but it should be mostly ISY->plugin so I wouldn't think data flowing in that direction would cause problems for the ISY. The plug-in does queue up incoming messages from the ISY so it won't cause the ISY to block if it gets behind in processing the messages. You can try turning on the debug log output on the plug-in. This will generate a large amount of log output to the HomeSeer log while you are making the changes. It may help to know what the last message sent by the ISY was before it crashed, but if you're not seeing errors in the log, there's probably not anything else that the additional logging will reveal. Bob

There's a lot of overlap between what a program like HomeSeer can do and what the ISY can do when you look at just Insteon device management/control. However, when you start wanting to do more and interact with other types of devices, that's when HA software becomes the way to go. Your question comes up every now and then on the HomeSeer ISY Plug-in forum. Typical responses are things like voice response, control of other types of equipment like audio/visual (home theater) type stuff. For one or two deadbolts, it's probably hard to justify the expense of HomeSeer, especially if you already have an ISY. There are less expensive alternatives. One option might be Elve from Codecore Technologies. I think the base package is reasonable, but post something on the forums first, while it does have some ZWave support, I'm not sure it supports the deadbolts yet. Also Premise is a free system with some open source type development actively supporting it. You can find more on the Cocoontech forms. Elve does have some support for the ISY (I wrote a basic driver but it's still considered an alpha release). I don't think Premise can work with the ISY, but I believe it can work with Insteon.

I've seen a couple of threads about the Kwikset deadbolts on Cocoontech forums, but it seems that most people are using some type of HA software to control them. I just bought a Kwikset zwave deadbolt but was sent one with the wrong finish so I'm waiting for the right one. I already have HomeSeer so that's probably what I'll use, at least at first.

Well I'm still not seeing any variable events. I have a variable set up to increment as part of repeat program so it increments every 2 minutes. I see the program events, but nothing for the variable. I also set a variable via the REST interface and see no events generated. The screen shot clearly shows that the variable changed at 6:41:27 but the event viewer shows nothing variable related anywhere around that time. My own program that subscribes to the ISY is showing the same thing as the admin console event viewer. Everything else variable related seems to work fine so what am I missing?

Thanks Brad and Chris, I'll spend some more time playing with it. My initial check was not showing any variable related messages. However, most of the changes were being made from the admin console screen. I did set up a program to increment a variable and I did see the program messages but no variable change message (could be I'm filtering those out though). Also, I was looking for updates in the udiws20.ws and didn't realize there was a new udiws30.ws Doh!

Some of these variable related questions might be more appropriate in the Developers forum but since we're talking about them Will changes to variables eventually send messages? Right now I'm not seeing any messages from the ISY when variables are created, removed, or when the value changes. Also, will variables be accessible though the WSDL interface or just REST?

Steve, Did you restart the HomeSeer or the plug-in after the swap? If not, I'd recommend at least doing a re-sync of the plug-in from the plug-in's status page. Restarting HomeSeer would be better to make sure it syncs properly with the ISY. Also, what version of the plug-in and what version of the ISY firmware? If at some point in this your ISY got upgraded to the latest firmware but you're still using an older version of the plug-in, you'll need to update the plug-in to the latest release candidate available on the HomeSeer Forums. http://board.homeseer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=919

I think you need to put the "/setoutps.cgi?0000W11=TTL1+ON" up in the Path text box. It needs to be sent as part of the URL instead of as the HTTP body.

If you are seeing a pause of 5 seconds between when the ISY starts to query the ECM-1240 and when it gets a response from the ECM-1240, that seems excessive. I'm able to query my ECM-1240 every 2 seconds without a problem. I don't have any MS and my ECM-1240 is hardwired to the EP-1 but even so the EP-1 should respond almost instantly when it's queried for data. Michel, Is it possible that the ISY is blocked while a TCP connection is trying to be established and that the serial buffer for the PCM connection overflows, losing any messages that were sent at that time?

Same result here. I had to do the update twice to get it take. The first attempt showed no errors or failures. I suggest performing the upgrade a couple more times (without re-downloading the file) and see if that works.

The ISY plug-in in HomeSeer doesn't create separate devices for the weatherbug values. It currently just creates 1 device for the module. The device string contains the current temperature value and unit so mine currently has "60.8 F" in the device string. The individual weatherbug values are accessible to HomeSeer scripts and can be used in conditions/triggers. There is also a plug-in status page that shows all the individual values, you can see an example of that on my web page for the plug-in http://www.bobsplace.com/ISYInsteon/ You're the second person to ask about individual HomeSeer devices for the weatherbug data. So it will very likely end up as a feature of a future version.

Hi nickoonce, I have a sample Visual Studio C# application that subscribes to events and just displays them in a window. If you'd like the source send me an email or PM. bob@universal-devices.com

but seriously, what does "code freeze" mean? Typically, it means that the source code is locked and developers are not allowed to make unapproved changes to it. This is used to prevent minor changes going in and generating new bugs right before a release. Only fixes to critical bugs would normally be allowed during this time. Those would have to be well understood so that risk to other parts of the code are known. Basically, now that it's been tested for a couple of weeks, don't break it right before release

I do have a couple of controlincs so I can try to reproduce this, but I'm not very optimistic. What I can do is create a special build of the plug-in for you with just the controlinc triggers instrumented to display some detailed log entries. I can either instrument all controlinc button press events, or if you want to send me a specific insteon address, I could just instrument events from that device only. What version of the plug-in are you currently using? Send me a email at isyinsteon at bobsplace.com and I'll let you know when I ave a special build for you.

upstatemike, About the only thing I can suggest is to turn up the logging on the plug-in. It will generate a lot of log information and being intermittent, it will be hard to track down the problem in the log, but you will be able to see what the plug-in is getting from the ISY. When button 2 causes HomeSeer to do the speak action, I assume it also isn't causing the same result on the linked devices as button 1, correct? If so then that probably means something is wrong in the plug-in. Can you get it to happen in a reasonable amount of time if you repeatedly press the 2 On button? What are buttons 1 and 2 linked to? Is it a small enough set of devices that you could post the details? What trigger are you using in the plug-in?

Mark, I wasn't really recommending a virtual machine for HomeSeer. Mostly I just wanted to give another example of what works well from the processing/memory requirement standpoint. No worries. When we first got boards with Atom processors, we used them a bit for large compilations and they were really slow compared to our regular development machines. However, it was pretty amazing that there was no fan and no heat sink on the processor. You could touch the processor without getting burned! Don't try that with you Celeron system

I suspect that memory is probably the bottle neck. But unless you have some laying around, it may not be worth the effort to try and upgrade it. I'm probably a bit biased since I work for Intel and currently work on software for Atom based platforms so I figure I should disclose that up front. I have something that's similar to the Revo, a 1.6GH Atom based system, but with 2GB of ram. I use this system to run MainLobby and it works fine. I don't have any performance issues with it. I suspect HomeSeer would run fine on it too. I replaced a Pentium 4 based machine and don't notice any real difference performance wise (given the limited interactive use it gets). The primary reason for the Atom based system was to reduce the power being used since the system is always on. I have HomeSeer running on a virtual machine (hosted on a Mac mini). I give the virtual machine 1GB of ram and it's fine. I also use the virtual machine for a lot of other things. Both machines are running Windows XP.