Similar issue here and rebooting PLM solved it immediately.

Hi All,

I have an Insteon question and thought the experienced folks here could assist.  I have successfully upgraded my ISY to the Polisy, now running just the Polisy.

1.  The question relates to the Insteon MS II.  I have the MS II successfully turning on a Insteon Light Bulb, by linking the MS II directly to the Bulb.  It won't turn off then the MS II stops detecting motion.  I believe I have read that in order to do both, turn on and off, it will require a scene.  Is this correct or am I missing something thru the direct linking process?

Thanks for the support.

I received the error on MacOS BETA, had to go to using direct IP address instead of DNS name. Seemed to clear up on latest build of MacOS. Same with Polisy.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Holy crap!  What a difference between my Verizon SMS and Pushover.  With Pushover it's basically immediate to my iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch, whereas SMS via Verizon takes on average 12-15 secs.

Thanks everyone, what a world of difference...

Will be installing pushover soon.  Thanks all...

Thanks MrBill, I'll have to give it a try.  I have a few alerts coming from programs attached to motion sensors and would like to get the alerts as fast as I can.  Right now with Verizon SMS it can take 10-15 secs.

Thanks asbril, I was looking for faster, but if it's not that much faster I can get by with my normal SMS.

I'm looking for a quicker way to send SMS alerts from ISY and came across this thread / Pushover.  Looking for any additional recommendations / issues I may run into.  I run the BETA versions of MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, in addition to released versions so wondering if anyone else is using Pushover in a BETA environment as well as any other recs / issues.

 

Thanks!

On 7/4/2020 at 4:08 PM, Teken said:

One other thing is (IF) its possible when the unit is powered via USB it seems to operate a little differently. As some of the sensors can be queried for status and also seem to update more frequently which makes sense as power isn't an issue. Let us know how it turns out and what solution you decide upon as I am sure it will help the next person.

The MS II has so much potential but Smartlabs continues to drop the ball on a product that could make them millions?!?  

NOTE: Some have reported querying the sensor can lock up the controller so use this feature with caution . . . 

Teken,

Powering the MS II with USB definitely makes a difference.  As soon as I hooked up power to USB instead of battery, updates from ISY to the MS II were executed the "waiting to write changes icon" changed, I'm able to update even the temperature calibration.  Changes are almost immediate where before it would take a minute and appear not to take the changes.  The MS II even beeps now to indicate changes were made to it. 

Thanks everyone, especially Teken and larryllix.

Jeff...

All,

I have two (2) scenes (Office and Family Room Light) both of which have one (1) LIFX Color Bulb and one (1) Insteon Bulb.  The Office scene works with both the Insteon bulb and LIFX bulb coming on via MobiLinc and Alexa.  The other scene Family Room Light  scene is just a single bulb light with a LIFX Color Bulb in it.

1. The Office scene controls a two bulb lamp, one LIFX Color Bulb and the other a Insteon bulb works just fine.

2. The Family Room light scene controls a one bulb lamp with LIFX Color Bulb and another Insteon bulb.

3. The Office scene works great, the Family Room Light scene turns on the Insteon Light, BUT NOT the LIFX.

4. Any suggestions as to how to fix this.

Jeff...

UPDATE 1 =========================

I deleted the scene Family Room Light and recreated it, but the issue remains.

UPDATE 2 =========================

Restarting Polisy fixed this issue.

 

 

1 minute ago, larryllix said:

IIRC  just factory reset, set your DHCP, time zone, and location lat/long, and restore a good backup. Done.

But if you loaded up your caches before, you need to disable those caching functions or it will just  happen again. I have many older MSes and apparently they don't support the "open linking window period" after sending events.

Thanks larryllix,

1. Can you point me in the right direction for how to “disable those caching functions”?

Verification of the following?

Just wanted to verify based on others experiences.

1. A factory reset is safe with the backup and restore capability?

My ISY has experienced a couple slow downs / freezes and if it continues I may try a reset. This might also clear up my “empty slots” on my Polisy also, which UDI is looking into.


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8 minutes ago, jec6613 said:

I just turn off writes to battery powered devices, it doesn't seem to care that I'm not writing to the MSII most of the time.  For USB powered ones, after I make the changes I execute the pending writes via a program.

Out of curiosity, how do you “turn off writes” and “execute the pending writes via a program”?  Always trying to learn.

17 minutes ago, jec6613 said:

I've had three solutions to this, depending on my response time:

1) Set the MSII to on only, with a short timeout, and add it to a scene with the light.  Then use a program to come along and turn off the lights after, say, 5 minutes.  With a 30 second MSII timeout and a 5 minute program timeout, the MSII will re-fire if any movement is seen after 30 seconds, and re-start the countdown timer.  Response to light on is instant, so I use it for bathrooms and similar.

2) Set the MSII to not be in a scene, firing off and on.  This then is handled by the ISY to turn on the lights, and the MSII stays active so long as it senses motion.  I use this for longer term occupancy sensing and when the instant response doesn't matter, such as when the lights are on dimly anyway and just brighten.

3) Have the MSII in a scene, firing on and off.  Its own internal timer resets if there's any motion, though I've found this less reliable, it works for a few outdoor lights.

KISS - Looking good for the following approach.

1. 1st, like others, I had the binary icon associated with my MS II for the longest time indicating that the ISY was having trouble communicating to the MS II.  I believe the MS II options were getting updated, but the icon associated with it was indicating that changes were still to be written to the MS II.  Well, when I added the 2nd node for both On / Off signals coming from the MS II, the icon changed from binary to communicating or written.  Hmmmmm.

2. Then I took a very simple approach, and have a separate program for On and another one for Off.  The MS II is configured for a 90 sec timeout and as long as the MS II is sensing motion, it doesn't send a Off signal and I believe the internal 90 sec timeout gets reset every time it senses motion.

3. I'm stress testing now, but so far so good.

12 minutes ago, Teken said:

One other thing is (IF) its possible when the unit is powered via USB it seems to operate a little differently. As some of the sensors can be queried for status and also seem to update more frequently which makes sense as power isn't an issue. Let us know how it turns out and what solution you decide upon as I am sure it will help the next person.

The MS II has so much potential but Smartlabs continues to drop the ball on a product that could make them millions?!?  

NOTE: Some have reported querying the sensor can lock up the controller so use this feature with caution . . . 

So I know see the restriction, thanks to you.  When the MS II senses motion, it kicks off its own internal timer, like you said, so nothing is reported or sent to the ISY.  If no motion during this MS II internal timer, ISY get's notified of additional motion, but if it's within the MS II timer interval, nothing gets reported to ISY. 

So, I'm going to try and work with both on / off coming from the MS II and use it's internal timeout.  I will set for two nodes, one for on and one for off and work with that.

I have seen where this might not reliable, but I'll try anyway.  That way, the MS II will do what it's suppose to do and as long as there is motion, it won't report off to the ISY.  We shall see.

 

9 minutes ago, Teken said:

Hi Jeff,

Yes, the MS II has a on board timer that needs to turn off before it allows it to cycle again. This behavior is completely different when compared to the legacy MS where if you set it to always ON. Anytime the MS saw movement it would let the ISY restart the countdown timer. A quick work around is to have another program where you tap on the light switch which will over ride the count down timer.

Some use a double tap vs others a single tap . . .

So the theory of operations is MS II sees *Human* and turns lights on. Human is tired of the light constantly turning off so *Human* needs only tap up on the switch and stop the countdown timer.

Now, *Human* must remember to turn off said light switch . . . ?

Or have a third program monitor the second program and turn it off after say 30, 60, 120 minutes.

Hi Teken,

Thanks for the reply, support, and experience.  So, here is where I'm at;

UPDATE:  Just for kicks I took the battery out of the Sensor II and back in to reboot it.  I don't think this really did the trick, I thought perhaps a reboot would allow ISY to update the timeout parm of the Sensor II. 

In addition, I increased my counter and now I seem to be getting updates every so many seconds that resets my timer to the timeout duration.  Still playing with it, will update again, but I may be close.

The MS II has a 15 second timer like you stated. 

I'm thinking about a similar function as the "tap up on the switch", but with a Alexa voice command that will disable the timer like you recommended.  I already have another program that executes every 15 mins to see if it can turn things off after a certain period of time when no motion is detected.

 

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to work with the Sensor II and write a program that will continuously monitor the sensor so that as long as there is motion in the room, the lights stay on.

The issue is that the Sensor II will not continuously "report" it's status.  I have / or think of I have set the Sensor II to "Never" timeout, thinking that as long as it detects motion it will trigger my program and a counter variable will get reset so that the counter gets reset to the timeout value as long as there is motion.

What happens is that the Sensor II reports it's initial motion, the program kicks off, but the Sensor II will not report any additional motion.  Seems like it's still on a timeout because when it finishes what I think is it's timeout then it reports motion or no motion again.  So the counter gets updated, after a No Motion is reported and so the lights go back on because of the "delayed" motion detection.

Make sense?  Any ideas how to fix or work around this?

 

Jeff

Hi,

Back to work on some mods on my ISY/Polisy/Insteon infrastructure.

In working with my Insteon Motion II sensors there are many option that can be controlled via ISY. 

1) I was wondering if anyone has put together a list of the options and what they control on the Motion II sensor?

2) In addition, anyone experimented with the options for longer battery life?

 

Thanks.

38 minutes ago, larryllix said:

Unfortunately our argument about two types of users, makes it even more likely Insteon could bite the dust.  Before the remote control crowd became a division, the select few of us were all lumped into one basket, called HA. Many of us turned to Insteon as one of the best working systems out there. Some stayed with X10, some entered brave new worlds, where no man has gone before.

Now with much of the crowd just wanting "Plug'n Pray" it pulls more of the crowd (percentage wise) away from the niche market that wants a smart control centre to do logic and cooler things. We already hear the occasional cry here about ISY being too complicated and antiquated with it's complicated programming techniques. Geeesh, even Win 10 went back to the old 80's Dos ascii graphics look with it's all black and white, square cornered boxes again. How simple can a programmable box system get where you can never get a syntax error, or a device that isn't capable of what you attempted? Obviously some have never worked in any programming environment, and tried to debug a complex system.

Alas! They don't want complex systems. A simple off delay timer is the extend of their thinking past remote control. How does a timer improve the cool look of an app? (sarc).

I finalise this rant with a product I just saw in Staples today. A wall switch which appeared to control the Hue coloured (US='colored') bulbs  for about $40 CAD!. Cheap enough but the part that made me chuckle, with this thread going on, in big letters, was:
        "WORKS RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX"

I look at this way...

1. 1st Insteon is not going away.  Will it morph, be merged, bought, maybe.  Out of business, I don't think so, but of course one cannot say for sure what the future holds.  I see Insteon investing in the future (which for some might be a sign of weakness or strength)

• https://www.insteon.com/press-releases-blog/2017/6/13/richmond-capital-partners-acquires-smartlabs-and-fortifies-company-with-73-million-in-funding-to-accelerate-the-companys-push-in-the-iot-industry
• https://www.insteon.com/press-releases-blog/2018/1/23/insteon-support-for-tesla-with-eveconnect
• https://www.insteon.com/press-releases-blog/2018/1/8/insteon-announces-alliance-with-the-google-assistant
• https://www.insteon.com/press-releases-blog/2017/1/18/new-motion-sensor-from-insteon-enhances-motion-activated-lighting
• ect...

2. Insteon has a mature IoT infrastructure, broad user base, proven technology

3. Yeah, does it need a some enhancements in the area of a fresh user experience, I guess, I haven't used the Insteon Hub in years, so I cannot say what that experience is like.  Are they marketing well against some of the newcomers, no, but perhaps the $73m funding from Richmond Capital will improve that.

4. Based on the participation in this forum, Insteon has a mature platform that can relatively easily be built upon with a fresh user experience and capabilities that are present in some of the competition.

5. Bottom line with me, I don't see Insteon going away anytime soon.  The battle for IoT has just begun and we have not even begun to enter a shake out phase.  When that comes, I have to believe that Insteon will be standing and standing much stronger.

With all that, one of the reasons I continue to invest in ISY is that it's hub approach and now Polyglot will do a great job in ensuring that my investment and time in it will be well serviced no matter what the technology.   In a hub and spoke world, ISY can be both, a hub for Insteon, Z-Wave, who knows what else down the road and a spoke for Amazon Echo which in turn is a hub for pretty much everything.

 

CJVann,  I have had a few of these with my devices, very few and after a couple retries by changing an attribute the communication is restored and the error goes away.  I've been thinking that its just interference, or just a network error or the Insteon device finally establish a connection.

So, what I guess I'm getting to is have you tried bringing the light inside and seeing if you can connect.  Communication distance error that might be solved by bringing it closer, letting it establish a link and then taking it back outside.   Just a thought  trying to assist.

 

Hi All,

Couple questions on iBeacon and Mobilinc so I thought this existing thread might be appropriate.

1. Anyone have any experience with MobiLinc on the iOS and iBeacons (from Estimote)?  As an experiment I am thinking of purchasing a couple to check out their use for a proximity based trigger to my ISY through MobiLinc HD on iOS.

2. If I understand iBeacons, they sense every n seconds / minutes and this would impact their battery life, so wondering how long an iBeacon from Estimate would last in a house that would unlock a door, turn lights on, open garage based on pulling into the driveway?  I have a geofence enabled that performs these actions, but wanted to see if an iBeacon would be more accurate.

3. To understand the flow of data from an iBeacon, is the following correct?

1. iBeacon is sensing every n seconds / minutes, iOS device with MobiLinc HD crosses the proximity fence.
2. MobiLinc senses the iBeacon and via MobiLinc Connect and in turn through the cloud to a ISY triggers a program.
3. ISY program takes the actions defined in it, such as unlocking the door, turning lights on, opening garage door, ect.
4. Optionally, ISY program sends out a push notification to the iOS device with MobiLinc HD
5. Do I have the steps above correct?

 

Thanks for any experience, thoughts, comments.

 

Thanks Michel.

Your support past, present, and future is greatly appreciated!

Hi All,

1st apologies for this comment / questions, but over the years, for whatever reason I have gone back and forth / switching between the ISY Port and Mobilinc either because of support / functionality that was present in one and not the other, or at least I thought that.  So, now I'm back updating ISY, doing a bit of additional programming and preparing for Polisy.  I have the following questions:  If you can respond / educate or point me to the threads that will I'll appreciate it greatly.

1. To my knowledge, Polisy will require the ISY Portal.  Is this correct?

2. It appears that the ISY Portal is equivalent to the Mobilinc Portal in functionality and features. Is this correct? (Alexa, Alerts, Mobilinc HD Support, Insteon and more importantly Polisy, which I don't see that Mobilinc will support)

3. Anything else I should be aware of before I request to be switched back to the ISY Portal from my existing Mobilinc?

 

Thanks again.

Hi All,

A day spent working with the MS II and I have a question for the group.

1. I have 2, actually 3 MS II that I'm linking and working with some programs.  I'm on my 2nd round of factory reset and starting over with the entire process and I've noticed that when I link the 2nd MS II the 1st MS II is updated also.

2. My question, is what is ISY doing?  I would think that linking the 2nd MS II a separate ID wouldn't have anything to do with the 1st.

3. During my 1st round of linking and programming, I noticed that when I changed options on 1 MS II the other was also updated.  It almost seemed like they got lost in a loop when one was updated the other updated itself and vice versa.  So the process of changing options on one was painful because of the updating of the other.

4. This update of the 1st also happens when I change the name of the 2nd, seems like any changes to one updates the other.

Any ideas?

 

43 minutes ago, JacktheRipper said:

Boomerang... I just installed 5.0.16, and my MS I here in my home works fine. My MS II is on a remote ISY in my son's home in another state, and I have 5.0.14A running there. His MS II works fine with that software version. I won't be upgrading his ISY to 5.0.16 until Thanksgiving, when I'll be there. The only thing I can suggest is to uninstall the MS II from your ISY, then reinstall it. If that doesn't work, there may be a way to do a factory reset on it. I haven't researched that....

Brian H and JacktheRipper,

I have both the MS II on 5.0.16 working now.  1st it was not knowing to push the "Motion" button to bring it out of sleep mode (thanks Brian H).  Next was just getting back to basic ISY programming, that I have to have both an "On" and "Off" trigger program in ISY.  The "On&Off" option in the MS II doesn't trigger just the "On" program so I tested it with separate On and Off programs and that worked.

I went back to the timer approach (thanks JacktheRipper) for triggering and waiting for the motion sensor and now I'm enhancing that basic approach.

I also have a "Battery Level" program to test out since all of this testing has drained my battery on the MS II.  

------------------------------------------------

UPDATED

1. Just wanted to add.  I have both MS I and II and just verified that my MS I triggers a single program for both On and Off where the MS II doesn't.  Perhaps I don't have an option set correctly, but it appears that I do so I'll assume at this time it's a ISY bug.

2. Anyone else experienced this?

 

Thanks all.