ellesshoo

After power cycling the ISY I can connect to it for maybe 5 minutes but after that it can no longer be accessed via the web or admin console. Sometimes I think it's still working on the Insteon side of things because programs seem to be running even though it can't be accessed (this isn't always the case, maybe 50% of the time). This has just started happening this past week for no apparant reason. I'm considering nuking the whole thing to see if it's just something deep down that's all jacked up. I have a few questions about this: 1) How do I completely nuke the ISY back to factory settings, no programs, devices, etc? 2) If I restore a recent backup should I expect to have problems because the backup was done while I had problems? 3) Will restoring a backup restore all my device nodes, scenes, programs, PLM, etc or are there some things that are not captured in the backup that I should know about? 4) Has anyone else had this issue and found a way to resolve it?

I have iMeters that I query at regular intervals. I do it like this: If: (nothing) Then: Repeat every 15 minutes query iMeter Else: Nothing Set to run at startup. That simple.

No photos or videos of this but whenever we use the feeders, like if we are gone for a day or two, the bowl is usually separated from the feeder and both have been relocated by at least a few feet, it probably is quite comical if we could see what they do to make it that way.

I have a hungry cat in the morning problem... Actually 2 cats. They go bonkers at ungodly hours of the morning when they're hungry, locking them out of the bedroom is pretty useless and requires me/wife to get out of bed to do it. My wife bought 2 auto feeders a few years ago but the smallest serving size is 1/4 cup which is half of what they eat in a day and having only two meal servings just doesn't calm these beasts. Basically, I'm looking for an auto feeder that has more serving size granularity and can be controlled via insteon in some way. Bonus if it doesn't give away free meals when the cats knock it around (something the current ones do).

After reading all the responses I think I would consider leaving it behind but severely dumb things down to avoid any and all "lights going off on people" or other non-braindead intuitive functions. I would also limit everything to insteon scenes and take the central controller out of the equation. The guy who said if it sells a month or two earlier makes it worth it is right, one ore even 2 extra months on the market can easily cost me/you more than the cost of the HA hardware. Of course if a buyer just doesn't want it as part of the sale then I'd gladly take it with me. I definitely wouldn't want a buyer thinking they deserve a lower sale price in that event though, I certainly wouldn't base themy sale price on the fact that there is automation in the house so I wouldn't want them using the removal of it as a bargaining point.

Tech support for 2 years?! That's definitely a deal breaker for me. I'm at the point where I basically wouldn't even buy an electronic gadget to give anyone at Christmas/birthday because I'm so sick of being their tech support.

What have you done or plan to do with all your HA/Insteon stuff when you sell a house or move? As cool as it may look when your house is being shown I imagine all the Insteon stuff wouldn't do much to increase the selling price and unless the buyer is already into this sort of thing would end up getting really annoyed with things that may have suited your lifestyle but they can't quite figure out why lights keep turning off behind them. Am I wrong on this? While part of me thinks "I don't want to re-buy a bunch of stuff, I'm ripping it out and taking it with me!" the other part says "if it makes up for it in sell price why not get all new stuff w/ latest rev firmware etc". Was wondering what others have done in this situation. I'm not selling a home right now but I'm starting to realize the substantial $$ I've put into things and wondering what I will do when faced with this.

ISY/PLM are in a closet with A/V equipment, the iMeter is really there to monitor the A/V equipment but it's the first thing on the power source for the whole closet thus it is also in-line with the PLM. I think I'll try the iMeter such that it's only measuring the AV equipment and the PLM bypasses it like you suggest. Probably not until tomorrow, if I cut power to the cable box/dvr right now I'll be sleeping somewhere other than my bed tonight.

Is there any consequence to having another Insteon device in-line with my PLM. It's not piggy backed in the sense that their plugged into each other (they're separated by a 3ft cord) but whatever the PLM sends out over the powerline must "go through" an iMeter Solo before reaching the main elec panel. Would I get better/same/worse communication in a different configuration?

I've seen this numerous times with my new 994iz units. My older 99i's never did this. Perchance are you on the newer hardware as well? This has been happening with my 994iZ/IR PRO.

Not home now so I can't look at level 3 diagnostics right now but I can assure you all that all boxes are plastic, all face plates are plastic, and all switches are controlling normal incandescent loads. Only one switch is a dimmer, all others are just relay switch lincs.

I've got 3 dual band switchlincs on one side of a room and a single dual band device on the other and I've been having intermittent issues among all of them and especially the one opposite the other 3. Sometimes I can't communicate with a switch in the same double gang box as another switch. I can't help but think smarthome is run like a mom & pop cottage industry b/c it's almost impossible to believe that between powerline and rf these things can't reliably communicate. Do they have the engineering chops of a big time or even up and coming consumer electronics company? What could possibly be wrong with my setup? Even if there is something wrong how can they expect to break through the enthusiast only market and into mainstream if it's this finicky?

Is this just an organizational feature or does it have some implication with programs, scenes, or other insteon controlling of the devices? I've seen the term "group" used a lot on the forums and in the wiki some times interchangeably with scene but also different from scene but used in context as if it had implications on actual device control. I'm not sure if this is being used referring to the "group devices" context option when you right click on a KPL/motion sensor/etc in the admin console. Is it just an organizational feature in the admin console or does grouping a device have implications, sort of like a scene?

I don't know if this would help with your intentions and certainly isn't a fix for your query issues but I use an imeter on my AV closet (closet is next to TV and TV power comes from the closet). With everything except the DVR & a network switch turned off it usually pulls about 30-40W. Its very easy to determine if someone is watching anything because with the AV Receiver and TV on it pulls >400W (63" plasma will do it). Pretty simple to make a program based on that. Anyway, just mentioning one more way to skin the proverbial cat.

Let's say I have two scenes, each containing the same dimmer switch and nothing else (so the ISY is the controller). Can the ramp rate in one of them be 0.3sec and in the other 30 seconds? Basically there are times when I want the light to be turned off with a long ramp rate but turned on with a short one but with this setup I seem to be getting unpredictable results. Do I need to make it one scene only and use adjust scene commands to swap between the on/off ramp rates? To be clear, I'm talking about the light being controlled via programs, not the physical switch. Basically, I have some motion sensors that are used in programs where after a certain period of inactivity I want the program to turn off the light with a long ramp rate but when there is activity I want the light to go on with the much shorter ramp rate. I have the motion sensing part all right my issue is sometimes the light will turn off fast or turn on slowly and I'm not sure I'm implementing scenes correctly. I always want short on/off when using the physical switch.