larryllix

Mine seems a little early also but if you check online sources you will find 9:00 for GTA is correct by most sources. EDIT: I see you are not in Toronto. If you use the correct Lat/Long for OS you will get 9:12 PM

You will need a common "C" wire for any smart thermostat. The Nest stat and some others advertise that you don't need a "C" wire, and can use it without one, but the battery (or carry-over capacitor) in it goes dead if your A/C or heat is on too long, each cycle. Both my sons using a Nest experienced this, and had to run a new cable to get power to their stats in the middle of the winter when long furnace run cycles are experienced. Another item with Wi-Fi stats, is they generate electronics heat inside, and the sensing has compensation to make it read the correct temperature. If any draughts from the back hole or room breezes are experienced the sensor cools down and the room temperature may vary all over the place. It's the nature of the beast that didn't happen with lower energy or mechanical thermostats.

This could be done with the internal ISY logging facility via the notification technique also. There is a thread on this back a few months ago with mwareman, myself, and others. Here you go: http://forum.universal-devices.com/topic/7269-logging-variables/page-1

I have a lot of MiLights and Hue bulbs mixed into my Gathering Room Insteon lighting so I found I could not used my scenes with Alexa. After adding in spokens, for all my main SwitchLinc method programs, I found my scenes useless and removed them from Alexa control. If you only have Insteon (and possibly Zwave), the Scene method is probably best. My programs just operate the scenes plus Network Resources for the non-ISY-native lighting. However, I do have a range of program for differing lighting levels that can be Alexa operated, same as from the SwitchLinc so I don't use the percent factor. I find the spoken commands for level clumsy.

Ouch! Keep reading here and asking questions. There is a lot of hidden nuances.

Maybe moved the dual band device that was echoing the rf only signals coming through the small exit places between all the metal?

I have four of these Leak sensors. The two newer units are tap length sensitive. IIRC a long tap sends Wet On, Dry off, and a short tap sends Wet Off, Dry On. or maybe verse visa? This caused me a lot of confusion when testing.

Trouble with these complex systems, and my home has five zones using these stats, is that when you have a problem, the "pros" come in, have no idea what to do, do not understand the system, and just offer to rip it out and put in a system they understand and can work with. http://tekmarcontrols.com/images/_literature/546_d_06.pdf I am a logic control system guy and love this stuff but.... Two of my stats have about 500 settings in each one that most people have never heard of and can't begin to know how to set them. With that in mind, I was trying to replace my main stat with something more simple for the WAF, and remote control and HA but simpler is just that, no features that you become dependent on. Each winter and summer I change my stats to a custom setback schedule to suit the profile of the season for best HVAC. Removing a simple feature like shared schedules means I not only have to go around and change every schedule in five stats, I have to reprogramme them twice per year and document the schedule I determined from last year. How about schedule profiles? I have not only vacations and home profiles, I have several home profiles. I keep remote bedrooms on much lower temperature settings, when guests are not present. With that profile, the bedroom zones are on vacation settings, while "main" zones are running normal schedules. With a flick of a setting, "Guest" profile is entered, and suddenly remote bedrooms are in sync with the main part of the house, following their custom temperature settings for morning, day, evening, and sleep times. Without stats that talk to each other most of this isn't possible. I could give this up and get five smart thermostats and dedicate an ISY or some other logic control box to the job. It would be much cheaper than the $1200 thermostat I am using. Do I have the energy to do it? Not any more or the foolishness to attempt it.

Yeah, it's a little different need for heating large thermal mass radiators. You can't run a "bang-bang" thermostat technique or you can expect to overshoot your setpoint by 5-10 degrees for about 24 hours. EDIT: mind you the analogue portion can be done between the zone handler and the mixer too on some systems. This one makes some claims about benefits of each zone reporting graduated needs but never discloses what it actually does. @Stu: When I ask for a little cool I just get my favourite music.

That would be no different or more trouble than any X10 system, but there is also blockers for x10 signals at entrance panels. The x10 pseudo technique was only to satisfy the Echo/ISY connection. Perhaps there is another way to make the devices available to the local Echo for easy access. Once UDI implements some type of psuedo device, with a name, this may all change the ease of implementation.

I would think it would be easier/better to control just one ISY and set up a communications channel/protocol between ISY's. A few variables in each ISY and Network modules in each ISY could set up a code protocol for each command and a handshake variable back to indicate communication successful. An operator, operand and back handshake variable for each direction should be enough. The Echo end ISY/Master may need some pseudo X10 modules set up to duplicate devices in the remote. Once the small programs and Network resources are written for each to operate the opposite ends it should be fairly easy.

In the case if just between polyglot and ISY I am back to a selection of say two or three different speeds of heartbeat with an expanded exponential clicks. Say 15 seconds for OCD uses, 60 seconds, and 300 seconds. Personally I would use the 15 seconds and allow a few to slide before reporting. IOW I may discount some ISY logic triggers on one miss but not nuisance report until 10 heartbeats missed.

I think the heartbeat period needs to be set by the urgency of a failure. Leak detectors are typically 24 hours and IMHO that is too long for a device with that importance. My best gues for a leak detector woud be more like a few hours but that would shorten battery life for battery devices, also. The chance of an actual leak should be low so risk of a non-detected failure is low. Thermostats should have shorter times for heartbeat detection as some heating algorithms could run amuck before failure detection remedies need to be taken. IOW. Heartbeat time period should be based on the risk involved and the urgency of detection. Since these will vary from user to user and application to application, IMHO a variable period should be available. Better yet, perhaps selections of two, short and long periods, so that users can decide, but only within the confines of the designer who has thought out the device more thoroughly than an inexperienced user. eg. Some new ISY user sets a leak to a 7 day heartbeat period to save battery life and has a leak on the second day or ISY has power failures each week and increases the risk of detection failure past the usefulness of the Leak Detector. As far a signal style an alternating beacon polarity show some intelligence from the sending end. It could potentially increase noise rejection looking for a predicted polarity True/False. Other than that most ISY detection programs couldn't care less. I am reminded of some electrical metering pulses where signal polarity is actually three state to eliminate intermittent electrical signals form causing random pulses. The exact same concept may not apply but a random confused Insteon (or other style) signal could be eliminated from faking the receiving logic. A last point is retransmitted heartbeats that change polarity are easier to bridge between mediums. eg: Ethernet to RS485 to Insteon to copper contact. ie: how do you convert on-on-on-on to contact closures? The ramping value heartbeat sound interesting and may present some other uses, such as "alive time".

My zone controller talks to the mixer and the other stats. Some sort of analogue data is passed for amount of heat for each zone needed, as well as time, time of day information from the central schedule, what profile to follow, and whether heating, cooling, auto, etc..

The Y1/W2 needs to be sorted out. Keep following Stu. He'll get you sorted out.

I have two SwitchLincs that control outside lights. One is at the front of the house and controls it's porch lights at that end. The other SwitchLinc is at the back of the house and controls the side deck lights that traverse from that end to the front. Each switch controls it's hardwaired bank of lights but in addition a double tap up or double tap donw control both banks of lights from either switch. This does come in handy quite often. Not ideal, but I can turn on both banks of lights from one switch wih a double tap On and then turn off only the near bank of light with a single tap Off, effectively leaving the opposite end lights on, only, and from the opposite switch.

Are these thermostats connected to a central zone control panel? Do the slave stats communicate with the master zone?

Create a program that set the variable to true or false. Remote control apps can modify variable values also. Another method is to define an dummy x10 device. Since x10 is one way ISY has no idea whether anything is out there or not.

A scene is like a group of devices with a bunch of presets. You were playing with the p resetting, not the devices. An Insteon scene is like a a button on your car radio but with a volume preset too. In ISY you just push that button and the station and the volume happens, all set up before. These were created before ISY was even hatched and can work between devices without smarts.

You have written programs to change brightness. Now write programs to turn a device on and off.

The Venstar T7800-7900 series have heat pump modes to provide switch over contacts. They can be interfaced via RPi using NodeLink .

We will need more details of what you have, and what you want as we are all guessing. Sent from my CT9223W97 using Tapatalk

With ISY, you can name the SwitchLinc dimmers anything you want and control anything you want. However, the paddles on each, will only control their own dimmer circuits.

The new "cleaner" energy resources cost more to capture the energy and we have to pay for it. Ontario just started bragging about shutting down all the coal conversion plants. This was the cheapest fuel for electrical energy production but the dirtiest. Now we can blame our lung cancer bills on Ohio when we buy their energy for $100 per kWh. With all the electrical energy industry attention, real costs are becoming more obvious for placement, as the industry analyses this and analyses that. The shift in costs placement is away from the actual energy resource and more towards the delivery, using the system, and maintenance of said systems. The system costs are the same, and if the energy consumption goes down, the unit costs become higher. Since the so-called "cleaner" energy resources are so unreliable, like wind energy, and solar PV energy, we have to have two and three complete systems for generation in place, including the original and dependable one. Oh my aching wallet! I remember, in the 70s, how they tooted "all electric heated homes" with the R2000 certified home brag. Quiet, clean, but we don't see that anymore. They hide it like it like a pregnant preteen daughter. But now it is "cool" and "faddish" to have an electric car despite being horrible waste of energy, porting it to batteries and back. Once the electrical energy rates are competitive with other forms we will probably see the same walk of shame for electric vehicles, except in crowded city areas where the pollution should be swept away by ocean breezes into neighbouring states. Hydrogen was a complete farce before the so-called "scientists" got their bluff called by real facts. Interestingly enough, there is more hydrogen molecules, in a litre of gasoline, than there is in a litre of pure liquid hydrogen. The **exergy of hydrogen is about 3%, at it's best. The cost of converting electricity to hydrogen is outrageous! Then there is the compression and the storage in containers. Hydrogen is the smallest molecule so that it cannot be stored in any material known to man without leaking through the walls. ** "exergy" is the net efficiency, converting an energy from one form to another, and back. Hydrogen fuel cells are examples of this. Right now electrical energy is the best "fad" energy, and we can work with it using things we already know, like ISY994 to make it more efficient.

If you look at the rates of trade for electrical energy between provinces and big utilities they occasionally pay over $100 per kWh when in trouble, in Canada. The utilities attempt to predict how much power is going to be needed every hour of the day so that nuclear, the cheapest and cleanest, energy can be set to produce that much. Actually since it is so dangerous to match the peak, they set them for the base load and use other, more flexible generation to generate the peak as needed. Now, at time they generate too much and sell if for down to 0.00 cents per kWh. ...but when they miscalculate, in Ontario, and get caught short for energy, they quickly go to market for those last few kWh from Manitoba or Quebec, New York, Michigan or Ohio, "So you are in trouble and stuck? Well......", suddenly Ohio charges $100 per kWh 'cause they can. Ontario figures it's only for an hour or so and averages out. I assume Ontario does the same thing when they can. Dog eat dog. Customers on spot rate prices pay that for the time it costs that much. They just suck up on the averages also. Four hours later the price is back to $0.02 per kWh and things resume like nothing happened. These energy scalpers are offering prices closer to the real price at the time = spot pricing.