larryllix

Again, if ISY does not see a mode change the program will never run. There is no trigger, without a working thermostat, with a working comm channe to ISY,l and an ISY that knows the thermostat was in the Heat mode in the first place. Simply put with one scenario: If you reboot your ISY and the stat is not in Heat mode the program will never run to see/change it. You also need some other triggers to initiate status testing or the program may never run. You can query the Insteon thermostats 100 times and the program will not run.

Back a few posts you stated "I reread your post... My ISY program isn't looking for a state change. It's looking for them to be specifically on heat mode and if not heat, then set heat." ...which contradicts the later statement you made "check for state changes". I just wanted make sure you understood how the triggers work, coming from a linear code life, and not familiar with event driven software, maybe? Drives some old programmers crazy at first. This only works if ISY sees a change in status, comms are good and working, and doesn't wake up with stat already in that mode. Something has to make your program run and depending on the trigger, you are monitoring for failure, to trigger the same signal you are monitoring may not be the best thing. For your purposes, right now, I understand this is only a watch and correct situation, software, and is working to identify some problem irritating you. Does your thermostats have an Idle mode or waiting mode, based on a short cycle elimination setting? My T7900 has a state called Lockout, a misnomer, but if the stat calls for heat and the cycle is too short it throws out a Lockout status instead of Heat until the timing allows a Heat call again. This can mess with Heat detection programs and I learned the hard way for a bit,

There may be some of the problem too. What causes your programs to check for a state change?

Have you consider what happens if the power fails to both stat and ISY? Stat wakes up and sets mode to Off. ISY wakes up and no status changes from anything it is aware of = no need to change anything. ...ooops. Ice Age.

The two ISY thing is on the slate for UDI in the future IIRC. Something I thought while out blowing snow... Maybe your thermostats are set to off initially as they boot up and then reset themselves to the last known mode (Heat). Maye a longer Wait before sampling the mode again may yield some different results. Perhaps just a series of notifications based on mode changes to monitor what the stats do in the few say...10 minutes or so. But I realise you have been in logical processes for years and probably have already thought of that idea.....maybe? AS an aside. While I was away for months last year my stats were all set at 10 degrees C (50F) and that worked until I was on a cruise in the Carribe and my house temp started to rise back to normal living temps. I got notifications from ISY etc... but could not do anything about it. After some long logical sleuthing I figured out these $3-4K worth of thermostats set themselves back to Home mode after a power failure. This would similar to what you are experiencing and a good lesson to us all to test out smart stats to see what they do after a power failure. How stupid can these companies be. We buy basic electronics for high prices to monitor and keep our houses at a set temperature. So much emphasis is put on smart, communication, schedules, phoney money saving schemes and yet they can't remember what they were doing after a power failure.....duh! I am hearing about people with the Nests cannot block firmware upgrades and some fail locking the stat off. There's the poor bast... has all the bells and whistles and can't control the thing when actually needed. *SIGH*. mwester is right on about this. Makes me laugh about the old trick I heard in a Fla hot tub one night, is the thermostat trick. You take an old mechanical thermostat and put a resistor in series with it across your Mountain summer resort phone line. Every couple of days, you call the phone and if it rings...heat is OK. If the line is busy, your thermostat has closed it's contacts, and you need to call a service person.

I have a gas oven that depends on some high-tech electronics to control the gas valve. I have a tankless NG water heater that depends on more high-tech electronics than any Insteon thermostat I don't want to come home to a block of bits and pieces where my house was previously. In reality this is not likely to happen and either is his house freezing, like the staged, exaggeration scenario picture, he linked to. If he lived above the Arctic Circle I could see worrying about it happening. Not likely where he is unless he is absent for the whole winter without somebody performing the necessary insurance check every few days. The OP has been given a good backup safeguards by yourself . His OP and main concern, here, is how to trust the ISY equipment he has. Even if he installed a mechanical thermostat his high-tech high-efficiency furnace ignitor could fail and his house get really cold. More high tech dependency? It isn't going away in your manual shifted car. Should he now get a wood stove that he can depend on? Maybe the answer is to monitor the easy fail equipment with more equipment. Maybe he should purchase a HA box to send him notifications, if this happens so he can rush home or call a neighbour to investigate. ohhhh.wait.....! He already has an ISY. However, it sounds like the Insteon thermostats are too junky to depend on, for me too. Four separate heating systems may help but restoring from a power outage on Off setting is unforgiveable. Need ISY notifications working. Power outages are hard to handle but the POCO knows your house isn't going to freeze 'cause you won't let it. Ask the St. Lawrence River survivors without electricity for 3-4 weeks. The military boys ate a lot of surplus steaks on the BBQ, though.

See post 21

This sound like the query gives glitches in the status. Why are you querying these devices on a regular basis? I only have 2441ZTH units so there is never a point in querying them. I don't know about the 2441TH units. Stu is more the expert on those.

That didn't happen in one night and not likely within a week either. My house took almost two weeks to drop to 10c in Ontario last February, when it was -15 to -20 every day. To get down to 0c inside may never happen, if the sun shines on the house during the day. The house has insulation between the studs as you can see the wooden studs leaked the heat outside faster than the pockets between the studs.

How are you getting these stat statuses into ISY? Are they Insteon thermostats? 2441TH units?

Right. I guess I only link in controlling devices that cannot produce an Off like MSes. The rest of my scenes are run by programs triggers by devices. If the KPL can only produce On commands this shouldn't be a problem. ISY could act as a toggle to use a program initiated ramp off scene. If KPL button is switched On AND Light is not Off Then set 'Ramp Off scene' On Else ---

Yeah, as per KeviNH, above, I would try a few second wait in each. Your power may be glitching and sending Heat off commands or you have a defective thermostat but your programs aren't generating false alarms.

Sorry. It takes three hours to raise the house one degree C. I have a 180,000 BTU/hr tamkless water heater that runs in floor hydronic in the basement and n air handler with coil but I only run 60c water and it isn't very high BTU output from the air handler. I lower my stats 2 degrees C at night and it takes 6 hours to get it back each day. My MBR runs cooler so that helps with not as much setback to sleep.

@MWareman Not a bad idea! I have begun to not worry about my home freezing. After setting my house temp back to 10 C last January I watched it take almost two weeks before the temp dropped that far in Feb 2015. Yeah it went to freezing in Orlando are at that time too and it was -20C here in Ontario. When building my home I had an open attic and my basement didn't freeze water on the ground inside despite -20 C for a week. After two weeks a thin film of ice formed and the melted the next day. The house was fully insulated in the walls at that time. We get very little sun in the winter and there was no heat available. I have no plumbing in outside wall, though. I now have an On/Off module running a small heater in the utility room set at 5C for an emergency long term failure of my heating. It also acts as a repeater for Insteon signals, being in the elbow of our L shaped house. With all this thermal mass and insulation my house take 3 hours to raise the temperature 3 degrees though. This is a PITA if I get home and the temp is really low. We have to sleep with an electric blanket for at least one night and wear heavy clothing for the next day. If you have an insulated home the freezing risk is minimal for less than a week of heating failure unless you have pipes in the outside walls.

I was thinking more of two buttons for On and Off. Even better, your idea, but in reverse. We usually want the speed of on so a scene would be in order but a program to enable a very slow ramp off would not expose any program delay incurred. A second scene could be used but I would just use a program to do the Off.

Nahhh... the doorbell is for the dryer finishing here. My piezo runs about 1-2 KHz and is intermittent, My ears are blind to over 8kHz and I have no problem hearing this anywhere in the house.

You an use a scene for the faster ramp rate going on and a separate scene for he ramp rate going off. Scene are economical and devices can hold more that 200 of 'em, each. Or ISY could, in parallel, beat the shared slow rate Off scene, going On, by issuing an On command with a faster local ramp rate that overrides the scene ramp rate. I think LeeG was discussing that above also. There are a few options with ISY/Insteon.

This the most basic Insteon device function and requires no variables or programs to accomplish. See Stu's description above.

V5.0.2 is absolutely stable as is all ISY firmware releases I have experienced or heard of. There are just some unfinished gui items and other minor things not completely working yet.

He uses a strange font though.

The From-To only serves to stop your loop by running the Else block, take it out. It only can confuse the ISY engine and does not run your code or serve any purpose. Query Thermostat - [iD 0011][Parent 0001] If At 12:00:00PM OR At 12:00:00AM <---second trigger in case of power failure and reboot, if desired Then Repeat Every 10 minutes Set 'Main Floor Thermostat - Main' Query Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')

The For 24 hours line only runs the Else block at the same time as it should retrigger. Take it out. It is not a condition with range of time, just a trigger Then at 12:00AM and a trigger for Else 24 hr. later.

No. It can never trigger false. I look at triggers at though they are instigating something not really being true or false as an attention getter for the PLC engine. If they are true or false it is only for their own purposes. Nothing else can test the trigger and find it true, ever. However, If SwitchLinc is NOT switched 'On' ...will run the Else block when an On command is received.

As Stu noted above a BuzzLinc is a much better idea. Blinking and Insteon device on and off every second for a long time will tie up your Insteon network badly and cripple ISY's seeing and controlling power. I bought a pulsing sonalert style beeper off eBay for a few bucks and hooked them to an I/O Link. It's loud enough I try to bury it behind some other junk in the room.. I created a series of programs from DefCon 1 to 5 that do various seriousness of beep and alerts, all based on one State variable. To make a few second beeping sound I use this line from any program. $sAlarm.level = 1 That's it. $sAlarm.level = 3 would also send me a text message explaining the problem. It would also send my wife a text message apologising.

I am using a portable humidifier as I screwed up and never left room on my furnace/air handler. People told me with ahome sealed this tightly the humidity would always be higher than wanted....BS! If I boiled noodles every day, and didn't have exhaust fans, maybe. Anyway this is my set of programs to cycle my humidifier at a constant humidity specified by an Integer variable constant, easily changed and denoted with '$c......'. Humidifier.start - [ID 003C][Parent 00BD] If $sHouse.humidity < $cHOUSE.HUMIDITY.SETPOINT And $sHouse.vacation is $cFALSE Then Run Program 'Humidifier.stop' (Else Path) Repeat Every 5 minutes Set 'Foyer / Humidifier' On Wait 25 minutes Set 'Foyer / Humidifier' Off Repeat 1 times Else Wait 5 minutes Set 'Foyer / Humidifier' Off Every 25 minutes, allow wick/filter to soak to top for 5 minutes. Humidifier.stop - [ID 0050][Parent 00BD] If $sHouse.humidity > $cHOUSE.HUMIDITY.SETPOINT Then Run Program 'Humidifier.start' (Else Path) Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') I have attempted to use centralised $sHouse.factors now, and use programs to clone device parameters into central variables. This offers the chance to use alternate parameter resources. eg: My humidity clone program checks to see if the Venstar T7900 thermostat is reporting OK and uses it's humidity report. If the T7900 is not reporting it uses an Insteon 2441ZTH in the basement that is slight off from the main floor sensing, but workable. If something fails ie: T7900, Router, NodeLink, RPi bridge, or other comm pathway device I can get parameters from the Insteon network devices.