larryllix

@Brian Slightly off topic but I never saw any results of your fix for your PLM. IIRC you replaced the PS cap in your PLM???

Thanks! With only the occasional comm failure I haven't needed to spend the time to understand all the cryptic hexadecanimals yet. Mosty I only see Don and val d'offing and hopping with each other and having INST-SRX , so far.

I wired one connected between my PLM receptacle and with lees than three feet of wire from the distribution box. It seems to work well to pass the X10 signals from phase to phase but with the Insteon signals....? I have enough dual-band signal repeating units to never know if it does anything. Since the signals are close enough in frequency the thought is it will work well with Insteon, also. With about 20 units and an PV co-generating inverter on one phase making electrical noise when the sun shines I get the odd device comm failure less than one per month. Some of my X10 units will not work at the 100' feet of cable end of the house but the Insteon always works everywhere.

Whatcha' drinkin' on a Saturday night? You did!

@LeeG Sorry for the bit of a sidetrack but... What is the difference between Dim/Brighten vs Fade Down/Fade Up. I have only used them a few times and just tweak usage until they function as desired, so far.

Sounds like more Java problems. This happens to me if I let the Admin Console fall into background processing or go to sleep mode. Perhaps doing a Java cache clear may help this somewhat. It seems until Java gets scrapped this isn't going to go away. I just downgraded back to Java 7 u67 from Java 8 to see if that helps some of the forgetfulness of ISY. Too early to tell yet.

Is this lack of operation consistent? Does it vary with time of day? Is it always the same units that do not work? Have you checked your link tables in the ISY against the links installed in the devices? Perhaps ISY has forgotten links to the devices.

Now you got me thinking! A 9v (NiMH?) battery with a trickle charger running the CAI board could make a good UPS backed system. or even a dioded-in 9v alkaline battery for grid failure carry over? OTOH: When the grid is out not much else is functioning.

The energy still has to come from somewhere and the device linked to doesn't store or produce power. Again if you are considering running the CAI off a 9v battery it should last about an hour. We haven't touched the Peukert factor. The main SWE3 sensor chip is the DS2438z chip rated at 50-100uA but even a 10K pullup is going to draw 0.9mA not to mention the HIH-40xx humidity sensor. With a 2mA draw you could expect about 250 hours= 10 days out of a 9v battery rated at 500mAh .http://datasheets.maximintegrated.com/en/ds/DS2438.pdf

Are you saying Insteon transmits more or less power than Z-wave? Without any personal experience, I thought I have read comments indicating Z-Wave has a shorter distance capability.

That units looks good if you wanted to have 12v battery backup. My CAI board puts out 5vdc on the 1wire terminals. Make sure you get hardware 2.2.2 (current) and v2.03.17 or newer. The firmware is updatable without returning the board. Shipping costs are the prohibitive factor in this game.

The CAI board has three terminals for 1wire, 5V, data,and common. These feed the CAI board and any other 1wire devices on that 3wire bus. The CAI board has a recommended 9v power supply to a 7805 regulator. I am told I can just wire into the interface (1wire or humidity sensor terminal) with a 5v power supply like a getting to be standard microUSB / USB power supply. I haven't tried this and to be in parallel with a regulator chip output, I am not too sure about. At 9v the regulator runs hot but tolerable. I recommend gluing a heat sink onto it, especially if over 9v. I run 9-10v and it's hot without the sink. 7.5 may have worked better but harder to get and if the whole thing gets scrapped the 9v adapter works for the Insteon MSs. The SWE3 contains two chips, ie. humidity sensor (optional in purchase) and battery monitor chip. I think the spec says these chips will operate at very low voltages. Not sure about 3v without researching chip specs. BTW: this battery monitor contains a temp. sensor (0.1c resolution), voltage A/D for the humidity chip or other input via terminals provided, and a current accumulator A/D input that is designed for keeping track of current charging and draining in a battery. Thus the battery monitor name. The CAI board is well suited to these small jobs as a peripheral to the ISY. I have some reboot problems with mine so far but the CAI_support is working on it and has done some mods in the firmware. I may have a noisy PS but I have been too lazy to get the scope out, so far, and expecting a better switching wallwart replacement soon. The main reason I went CAI is the 2MHz counter in hardware on the board, that works excellent for my anemometer, and 1wire I/f.

The CAI board came with a case and with shipping came to about $70 http://www.ebay.com/itm/WebControl-timer-temperature-humidity-I-O-controller-HW-2-2-2-/260849255154?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cbbd3c2f2 I ordered the SWE3 and the RPi 1wire adapter, just in case I switch to the Rpi later. With shipping and all that came to about $105. Note: There is no duty charged coming into Canada, under $200 they will not even bother to stop packages. Don't fall for the latest eBay, "Worldwide Shipping" money grab scam.

The SWE3 module is based on the DS2438z which will give you temperature as well as humidity. This was an unexpected bonus for me and eliminated some extra wiring connections at the top on my weather pole.

In the Windows o/s classically if you closed the window via the formal "file | close/quit" menu method the window size was remembered as it was when closed. If you click the "X" the settings are forgotten.

You didn't say what the two devices were but is there a way to transmit the data from the 1wire host to the other device? A CAI Webcontrol board with a string of 1wire probes on it could send readings to two ISY units.

The strobing of program status is something I have seen. Disabling the offending program caused it to stop then I could examine the "if" conditions for items controlled by it's own "then" or "else" section. Of course if this involves a "round robin" of several program interlinked this gets lot more complicated. State variables can be dangerous this way. Check your events for repeated device codes. After watching your video I see those two programs are already disabled. It would appear they call each other in a loop fashion. In view of the slow speed they do this I would guess there is another looping structure going on somewhere else also. Maybe the video doesn't show the actual speed or maybe the Admin Console doesn't either. Another thought I had was a firmware add-on or 3rd party software that is stuffing more variables into ISY than you have defined or are overlapping and writing to state variables they aren't supposed to be.

If you like to tinker and best yourself with complex logic the Hub is not for you. ISY and HomeSeer both require a computer running 24/7. ISY comes with it's own cigarette pack size computer that has no moving arts and draws about 3 Watts or less and is extremely stable. A PC is going to draw much more power and software running under Windows is going to be a lot less stable. When you want to play a game on your PC you may risk your automation setup, including your humidifier or heating control or notification you have a leaking pipe in your basement. It can get serious if you are like most of us. It definitely becomes a serious hobby and obsession. I have run HomeSeer and to interface all kinds of specialised software you write yourself it probably wins. You can find downloads of hacked versions to try online. I run an ISY994i and if I had a chance to select again I would select the ISY994i. The programming is a little weird but gets the job done and it will grow on you. All systems also (X10- HC2000 and even my own self written software) I have used are quirky in their own little world. We will always want more and the UDI people are busy giving it to us.

I would definitely take it out first before any prospective buyer even sees the things. In my area house with pools are hard to sell. I know of several people bought a house with a pool and ended up filling the thing in as they didn't want the costs of maintenance. Without the "special buyer" some things detract from the price you may get. Alternative energy systems can be like that too. People want money subtracted from the list price to have somebody remove it, are afraid of it, etc.. I have also seen many people that wiil not buy a house with a pool only to install one themselves two years after purchase. Years back I sold a house full of X10 switches. After the sale I removed all the X10 switches and replaced them with not-manufactured anymore, small rocker switches. When the buyers came in for their last day inspection the woman freaked out running in right to a switch I had "made disappear" and exclaimed, "Oh good you took out those weird switches. We had no idea what to do with them!". My question would be.... Would you buy a house where somebody else has installed a fancy gadget that you probably don't understand, in it? Would you pay extra for it or use it for an excuse to lower the price offer? In short. The techies want to do it themselves and the non-techies are afraid of it. Yeah, leave a few switches in with one keypad to "dazzle" the young techie into buying the house. Spend many hours training the Real Estate Agent on how and when to push the buttons.

I don't like my equipment connected by an RS232 ground to be on different power supplies personally. Now I don't know what galvanic isolation the OEMs have provided on the ports but lightning discharge disturbances and grid ferroresonance effects from switching on the grid usually don't care. The ISY recovers very well with it's INITialisation variable storage so I am not sure how the UPS benefits you. My ISY994i notifies me via SMS that a reboot has occurred with the time and date. I am still mentally working on the outage time report.

Me thinks your TVS diode is way too low a voltage rating. This should clip about 30vdc. Your supply is likely 24vac peaking at 24 x SQRT(2) = 34v ! Yeah I have made some of my own firecrackers when I got caught with the AC/DC thing (just the electronic portion of that!. ) The MOV is likely doing nothing and blown apart physically or inside. This does look like a tstat hardware defect, now. A replacement should work, IMHO, but I would pass all leads through some toroid to spike protect it. I have two 2441ZTH and they work OK but are not directly connected to anything. There is a previous thread where others have had big issues with this and IMHO it looks like this unit can't take being connected to the real world.

Nothing changed in v4.2.5 for me from v4.2.3. Yes the name lengths can be a problem for some software and each one shows folder names differently. Three status points are correct and the points that ISY usually sets up for the Leak sensor.

Have you considered contacting aartech.ca to see if they would import them for you? Excellent company to deal with, great pricing and delivery, as you may already know.

Right click on the program title and do a "Copy to clipboard". Then paste your program here using the <> so we can analyse it. Usually two programs are needed with the second, called one, containing time filters, disabled from triggers.

(I can't quote or paste but...) The Hub comment sounds like an uneducated dig at non-Hub controllers.