larryllix

Add your wants into one of the many existing threads requesting the same thing. It has been requested many times and promised as coming for almost a year that I have participated.

Some thoughts without completely understanding your programs. For the motion detectors in my bedrooms I use scenes to turn the lamps on and off. The advantage to this is I can change the brightness settings and the ramp speeds twice per day (or more if desired) so that the responding units respond quickly when motion is detected. This has worked well and the response is much quicker. The bathroom lights could be ramped on very slowly (using above technique) for quick-on blindness prevention while the shower light is turned on slowly, in the middle of the night while ramped very quickly during the day. Lights can be brought up to medium level and if motions is seen again, indicating you are extending your stay in the bathroom, brighten the lights to 100% for mirror usage. This logic gets tricky. A one minute warning by dimming the shower light slightly (and back?), could be used so that the showeree knows to cause some motion, resetting the timer, or he/she will be in the dark soon. This may also be used as a self-timer to encourage shorter showers or pickup time is approaching. The SwitchLinc dimming command could be used to provide preset dimming levels for bath soaking mood lighting.

Have your program stuff the current time from your program, every update into the boot-up copy of a variable.. say $LastTimeRecorded. This is available with the "Init to" command. When the ISY reboots have a program with it's "Run at startup" flag set that sends a notification to your email/SMS with the current time and the saved $LastTimeRecordedand let the receiver figure out the duration. Once the notification is complete set an $Initialised variable as a flag that allows your time program to resume recording the time. It will be out of sync with real time. Perhaps several resync times per day could reduce the error times after a power failure.

Perhaps for ALL battery operated devices we need detectors like this? If Control 'Gathering Room / Motion.GathRm' is switched On Or Control 'Gathering Room / Dark.GathRm' is switched On Or Control 'Gathering Room / Dark.GathRm' is switched Off Then Wait 26 hours $MS_Battery_Status = $cGATHERING_ROOM Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') andb $MS_Battery_Status ${var.2.14} is a State variable so the following programme should event trigger. If $MS_Battery_Status is not 0 Then Wait 5 seconds Send Notification to 'Text Larry' content 'MS Battery Low' Wait 5 seconds Send Notification to 'eMail Larry' content 'MS Battery Low' Wait 12 hours Send Notification to 'Text Larry' content 'MS Battery Low' Wait 5 seconds Send Notification to 'eMail Larry' content 'MS Battery Low' Wait 30 minutes Run Program 'MS Battery Low' (Else Path) Else $MS_Battery_Status = 0 Note $cGATHERING_ROOM is a constant defined by myself and is further used in the notification Alert! MS Battery Low ${sys.date} @${sys.time24} Detected in room ${var.2.14}. 10=RecRm,12=AftBr,13=EveBr 14=Libr,16=Util,19=LLand 20=GathRm,21=MBR,29=MudRm 30=Shop

It's just too bad that Dallas didn't make anything standard for these cute 1wire sensors so that we could plug in any new 1wire device that comes along and a standard device-control-block would just assume the position/data. Now every driver writer supporter has to incorporate a huge library of profiles for all these devices. Then again the complete openness of the beast is probably what makes it so capable and powerful. Eg. EPROM memory at the end a 1wire?

That's the big problem with UDI. They want to fix everything to work better, just like the rest of the crowd here. I don't know this is an ISY problem but.... Thanks.

Thanks. This sounds very possible if a speed typist doesn't use it. Of course this would be dependant on the Insteon congestion at the time I would think. I noticed in the video that the KeyPad lights stayed on indicating a record of each button pressed. I assume this is controllable so this wouldn't happen if desired? As a note: I have a few wireless keypads and the toggle, four unit, eight unit thing never made any sense. After trying different modes I could not detect any differences. Perhaps some study on that would push that into my brain more...assuming the units would similarly. (I know ISY can set the LEDs on and beeper on all it wants but there is none on the wireless ones)

Mostly in systems built 1995-2007. It started with these guys and has spread to most of the other brands now. http://www.classactionsnews.com/settlements/zurn-pex-f1807-fittings-litigation-settlement "Problems found to date are with the following products: IPEX Inc – sold as Kitec, PlumbBetter, IPEX, AQUA, WARMRITE, Kitex XPA, AmbioComfort, XPA, KERR Controls, Plomberie Amelioree ZURN PEX – sold as QPex (may not be sold in Canada) Uponer Inc – sold as Plasco Plumb-PEX, P Pex, MB Pex These companies are all currently involved in lawsuits."

Thanks guys! That is not exactly what I had in mind but interesting. There is no sequence required and the key sequence speed would not be quite as particular. I don't have a KeyPad unit to experiment with this as I have never really had an application for one before.

Do they make rockers so that the on/off button appear as one larger button like the four unit you mentioned?

Has anybody ever used a KeyPad as a combination input or Does anybody know how fast the KeyPad can send a sequence of key presses to the ISY? I am looking for a method of changing ISY house modes via program recognition of maybe a two or three keypress length sequence. Would the user have to press the sequence very slowly? Any other foreseen problems? Thoughts?

The actual events are really hard to track down and there are rumours and guesses everywhere on forums. From what I can make out some cheap brands of fittings had too much zinc in the brass and the zinc leaches out of the brass causing the fitting to collapse eventually. The best report I heard was that the "zinc accumulates in the PEX, causing a blockage and the pressure builds up until the PEX pipe bursts." I did notice most of the case studies had PEX-AL-PEX crimped with various rings, a complete no-no to crush the aluminum strength layer.

That thing has a 1wire port on it??? Does it work? Properly? Is it a hardware interface? What does it do with the data? Could this be a heating system designer's dream?

hmmmmmm... hard to test fro calibration. Put in the freezer and when you take out you should get a range of temperature reports but how would you know what the actual temperature is? ahhhh... brainstorm! Get a Styrofoam cooler for $1.98. Put the thermostat in the freezer for a few hours with a few bottles of water. Put them all into the cooler Poke a calibrating alcohol thermometer through the Styrofoam wall and record real vs. reading temperature on the ISY at of reading.. Establish any linearity relationship. There may be a pattern or mathematical relationship. We need an ISY995i with a USB port and driver install loader. ... Think of the possibilities for UDI. $19.95 per driver?

I believe thermal shock can separate the PEX from the concrete slab and then thermal contact becomes a problem for spotty heat zones. With PEX embedded in wood it shouldn't be as much of a problem. Are you aware of the de-zincification of brass PEX fittings? I believe the class-action suit is still ongoing for cashbacks. Looks for white powder on your fittings.

Anti-scalding and, lest we forget those that gave their lives, anti-legionella bacteria.

Speaking of flushing your buffers.

Racoon in your garage? Your off cycle always lasts about 3 seconds. Are you sure you don't have the darkness sensor being used?

After they turn it off. My kids previously told their friends "If you don't turn it on then don't turn it off". But now we go into our friends house and stand in the middle of the room thinking "How pathetic! The lights don't go on. What would I do if was carrying something with two hands?"

I have a motion sensor switch (not Insteon) in my guest powder room. Most of my guests are surprised when the lights come on automatically but then turn it off when they leave. Now it doesn't work at all.

I have a box full of X10 modules. I use a few of them in things like China cabinet light and ornaments that have the "who cares?" level of security involved. For the wall switches I won't bother to take the switch cover off to install them, They aren't worth it, piece of junk communication wise and mechanically. I do still use about 7 motion sensors in bedrooms that are guest only status. I am slowly replacing them with Insteon motion detectors that don't require wireless to powerline translators that burn out every few years and only work about 98% of the time. The X10 modules is not required if you don't mind running with X10 code names. I find a delay needs to be inserted after every X10 command as the PLM can send an X10 signal that will clobber the next Insteon signal. They don't play nice with Insteon units. Also the PLM can get so behind on say a flashing light sequence that it can take 60 seconds to get the flashing stopped after stopping the running program. Very slow and it becomes apparent after running Insteon modules. Keep in mind I have these X10 units already so they are free of cost for me to use. If you are thinking of ordering these new and having these shipped, don't waste your money. You can occasionally find people selling boxes of used X10 modules online for a few bucks. I deal with aartech.ca in Canada. They ship fast, are cheaper than US counterparts, and stand behind any problems you have with warranties and investigation of problems with flakey items.

Thank you sensei !

I noticed that since they started charging for false ambulance calls the Clapper stopped advertising on TV.

With Noobs, you can load several different O/Ses and select which ever one you want to boot into. You get a few seconds to change from the last one you booted to. Otherwise the last one will boot up again. I didn't find raspBMC useful for anything but XBMC. The O/Ses are chopped to a minimum. XBMC runs well. Rasbian comes with about 4-5 versions of python and the syntax changes a lot between versions so that many help forums don't. This is similar to different versions of the O/S. Raspbian can be accessed with a remote terminal programme such as PuTTY or with a GUI interface built into Windows called RDC=remote desktop connection. On a very HD monitor you can barely make out the 6 pt system menus font. You will need a KB, mouse and monitor until you set that up loading the other RPi end of RDC.

I have an 88 key MIDI keyboard under my pillow and if I need something I just reach under my pillow and play a particular note to get the task done I want. If I want to pull up a programming language I press C# If I want to turn on the coffee maker I play the note sequence C-A-F-F. If I want to turn on the bedroom sex lights I play an Fminor chord. If I want to raise the heat on the thermostat I play a cool tune. The list goes on and on but I only need to remember the sequence to turn on the monitor and then pull-up the menu with over 500 different commands shown. One simple 88 key keyboard has replaced my single button that used to do everything until my car backed out of the garage and my toilet flushed instead of the garage door opening. My toaster burned my breakfast that day too. The programming may need a little tweaking yet but I am learning to play the piano.