larryllix

Years back we had continual problems with a tapchanger control relay always getting hit by lightning surges and burning out the input sensing transistors. I replace the darn things in the middle of the night too many times over 15 years and finally the utility I worked for contacted the defunct manufacturer of the equipment. He explained some things I didn't know before. He sent us a few home-made looking boards with a large MOV and a few paralleled disc capacitors in series with the MOVS. The explanation was that lightning disturbances consist of many short bursts of high frequency spikes that ring and fade away. Frequency ranges and very technical details were supplied which I confirmed with other sources available back in the 80s. If a MOV was connected in parallel across the sensing input, to protect it, in a transformer station environment, the MOVs usually take the lightning effect out and save the equipment, but the grid supplied power surges that follow the disturbance would cause the MOVs to explode, as they do sometimes. Adding disc capacitors in series with a MOV provides the same path to high frequency disturbances and yet presents a high impedance to the grid power frequency that was stated to cause the damage. In short, I installed these boards on the 14kV PT secondaries 1983ish? and the problem has never occurred until I retired in 2008. There was some interesting lessons I learned in that one.

Ferrorus hole = choke. Lots of inductance to MHz ringing found in lightning discharges. Edit:I guess counterEMF would be the effect that is the result of the inductance to a high-freq current attempting pass through. CounterEMF would be counter to the voltage and cause no current to pass.

My comments were exactly that, about how to use grounding effectively for Direct lightning strikes since you raised it. Even a #12 AWG is good enough for a lightning rod. It only has to carry milliamperes or maybe even microamperes. #6 AWG as ammonium spec in electrical safety codes is mostly about physical prowess of the conductor. We frequently had to stop the HV electricians from running ground wires down metal towers and passing through the iron structure holes in order to avoid drilling and using one hole clamps on the conductors. Lightning results in pulsating high frequency bursts that will not pass to ground through a ferrous hole no matter how big the copper conductor is. Hard concept to explain to a HV electrician and we took a lot of flack for it.

It should be noted that although a nice slow ramp rate for off is great but a slow on can be a PITA. The slow on can be beaten in a program by issuing a Fast On for MS usage

The protection againt direct lightning strike is attempt to distract it from your sensitive parts...(Ouch! ) and try to eliminate it from becoming so large (not your sensitive parts!) by bleeding the charge with a pointed and grounded lightning rod.

Battery operated devices have to be put into Linking mode to write scene links to them. You can verify these links by putting the device into Linking mode and right clicking on the device in the Admin Console and viewing the Link tables, comparing it with ISY's tables. A restore device can fix any discrepancies . ....while in Linking Mode.

...and did you clear your Java cache and apps so that the new GUI downloads and they match?

Agree with LeeG above. v5.0.1 is a little rough for a newbie yet. 4.3.18 is quite polished and works very well.

Been there , done that, got the ISY Tee-shirt. You need to install 4.3.18 first then upgrade. This is not the usual UDI way but it is this time.

I never use Fade Up or Fade Down. I always use an absolute brightness level with a ramp about 4.5 seconds. This way when you set a group of lights they all appear to synchronize rather than lights suddenly changing one at a time where you can see the time lag between bulbs.

These ad hominem attacks are not welcome in any forum. Always address the issue only and not the person. You may have displayed some good information but at this point nobody is listening to either side, anyway. You have been asked and acknowledged it by quoting the request. Thank you.

Sensing when a garage door is open would be a pretty loose situation for detection. The physical location of the door can vary a fair bit and even wind could possibly fool the sensor into thinking the door closed temporarily. The closed position is very solid for positioning as it is pressed against gaskets seals from top to bottom and vertically at the bottom for absolute position. Interesting possibility to note: If the safety release that engages the door to the drive chain is released and your HA attempts to close the door, manually or automatically, are you going to come home to a garage door closer that has been running all day because the limit switch contacts never got satisfied? hmmmmm.... Me thinks the drive train is sensed by the door limits and not the actual door, making this point moot. Been a long time since I have done this. I guess this is why the thieves just poke your release and open your garage door to get in. reminder to all to block the access via the top of the garage door to the release mechanism for security.

My Win 10 came with IE 11. I just type ISY on the URL box and then click on Install Admin Console, looking for the icon on the desktop to drag it into my HA folder. All this requires working browsers. I am a little ashamed of MS for releasing a new browser with half of it missing. Very compact though but very confusing for me and slow to run JavaScript.

Here is another but without the nice armoured cable to your box to protect your sensitive wiring. https://www.aartech.ca/product/00/AMS-37B-GY/Amseco-Industrial-Surface-Contact-2-Inch-Gap-Form-C-Gray From T.O you could walk over and pick it up. Everytime I order from aartech.ca it comes the next day, if ordered early, or the second day, if not. Shipping is usually $9.95 for medium size orders.

Same switch item. Yup to Canada that will put about $74.83 on your Credit card going to T.O. And you haven't checked out yet to discover their surprise free shipping concept and prepaid taxes with agent fees adding another $45 to the bill. This is one of the reasons Canadians are stopping buying from the USA and going to China, unfortunately. eBay is doing it too. Stick with aartech.ca. You can't beat their prices in Canuckistan.

Reversing the logic is very easy but the problem, as I recall, is when you do a Query ISY the I/O Linc reports the incorrect status, for a fleeting moment, and then your programs get triggered where you don't want them to be triggered. Middle of the night reports your garage door is open and when you look "There it is...gone!" (Eastern Canuckistani accent)

There has been mention a few times regarding the particular model of sensor people are happy with and resolves these issues. A few searches should sleuth these links out. Normally open and normally closed are terms applied to electrical contacts to indicate their fully de-energised or deactivated positions. The problem comes when devices have two states that are "at rest" or "deactivated", thus blurring the "normal" definition for those devices. Examples would be latching relays that stay in either state without power, large breakers and possibly small breakers etc.. Industry has another way to resolve devices with two quiescent states by labelling contacts as "a" and "b" being the same state as the device or backwards to the device. With a garage door people could argue that the normal state is closed and therefore while the magnet is in proximity to the sensor. Then the closed contact would be called "normally closed". This would technically be incorrect as the normal definition does not apply to the device the contact is mounted on and only applies to the electrical contact device, itself. When you have the sensor in your hand, alone, (not you) the open contact would be called "NO" and "NC" for the closed contact. We liked to use terms like "usually closed" for a normally open contact that was usually activated by a magnet or being pushed. Totally confused yet?

Funny thing, Java was almost dead and gone a few years ago. They publicly stated they would never produce a 64 bit version and it was slated for the bin. Suddenly they make a big come back and begin promoting it everywhere. There must be big incentives. I wish google would win that fight, even though I have painfully avoided the Chrome load. It is going to cost me a new laptop. My 2.8 GHz Netbook runs Java so slowly it is painful. My local weather report uses it and it takes over 2 minutes to load and then most time the current weather is blank. I think it just gives up. Admin Console load is about the same speed.

Medical isolation 1:1 transformers have a grounded shield between the primary and secondary. It doesn't jump through those ones while you have a probe in your brain on the operating table.

As an old electrical grid utility worker "ground" takes on a whole new meaning. Some farms in the rural have so much step potential across their ground it has killed their cattle. Some have to do equipotential grounding around their tubs to take a shower without getting shocks off their shower head sprinkle. I worked with an older linesman that found a street light fault in the ground with his testicles. They dug where he said and there was the 120vac insulation skinned and buried down three feet deep. Yikes! "Ground" is not any absolute and just another huge high impedance/resistance conductor path for potential drop due to people grounding everything. There is no "Earth potential". When people stop connecting everything to "ground" many of these problems go away. Make your own common and have no difference across yourself, your transistors, or your equipment. In short (pun intended) we don't connect things to ground but rather we connect ground to things, (or was it both? ) raising ground's voltage potential voltage to the same point. This is equipotential grounding and it works for lightning too, When lightning hits, be somewhere else. The Knights of Old had it right. EMPs can be stopped with faraday cage style shield made of ferrous materials. Something to conduct magnetic fields around you, rather than voltage differences, in this case, around us. If there is no difference of field there is no problem. You can never take a bath though, Ironman.

Good to know! It was a shot in the dark as I have never tried it but then I have a lighted PB and it wouldn't work for that. My PB is mounted on the side of the doorframe so people don't even see it without a light glaring at them. The latest PB I got has an LED in it and I thought I could play the diode aspect of it whereas the contacts show shorted for both polarities but the LED only shows a circuit for one way.

A browser is needed to download the Java app first. Chrome will fight you on that one and you won't likely get the java app.

I tried Edge for a few days and then turn it off and went back to IE 11 that Windows 10 comes with. I have had no admin console problems. In fact the Admin Console takes longer to and does not time out as frequently as Win 7 java did. Go into your Control Panel and change your default programs to all IE and uncheck all defaults for Edge. It sucks and seems only half developed. Slow as molasses in January when you open PDF files. favourites are two menus deep??? Yuk.

If you don't want dimming or colour changing consider getting a plug-in motion sensor receptacle plug-in and have them come on as you approach the counter. I purchased one for about $10 at Lowes in the US a few years back. They are not available in Canada and now I can't find them on the US online catalogue either.

I wouldn't. I deleted mine and ran without it for several months and never noticed any incorrect statuses. ISY/Insteon is fairly accurate with it's retries etc. If you repeat it during the busy hours you may delay or miss some HA operations.