oberkc

Blinking, at my house, suggests communication problems. I suggest opening the event viewer and trying your suspect keypad button. See if the event viewer captures the button press correctly. If not, you may have a bad KPL, or you may have some communication issues. Also, try a scene test on your all house scene. Does it indicate any problems?

There are two options. The event viewer needs to be open to see on-going events. There are no stored data here. No need for excel. In addition to the event viewer, there is also a log. From what I can tell, it stores data from the beginning of time. It does not need to be open. It is here that you can see your activity from overnight.

Like Brian H, I am an advocate of putting a filter on the computer if your PLM is plugged in to the same set of outlets. At the suggestion of those much smarter than I, I eventually added a dedicated circuit for my PLM. Right now, my X-10 communication is good.

I do not believe it has to be linked, other than to the ISY/PLM. You did link it to the ISY, did you not? If not, then begin linking with the ISY and then set the KPL button to link status, adding the device to the ISY device list. This is all by memory, but your if condition would be based on a "control" (not status). If control "KPL Button" is faston Then set scene "all house" on. Or something like that. The ISY will, of course, create the correct verbage.

I don't know about the compare function with regards to the PLM, but I believe there is a restore function. I doubt that it would hurt to try it. Good thought. Regarding the log, my experience is that one needs excel to view it. Also, make sure you enable macro's. It is a useful tool.

Have you looked into the event log for any clues? Sorry if you said you did already.

X-10, in this case, is all powerline noise. The fact that you can control them when plugged into the the same circuit suggests powerline communication interference. Before go there, however, let's confirm one thing... Do you have a phase bridge? Forgive me if I tell you things you already know, but most houses' electrical system consists of two "phases" of electric power. Most powerline communication, including X-10, have difficulty bridging those phases. There are devices that provide a communication bridge between the phases. Are you familiar with these devices? Do you have one? If not, I can almost guarantee you will not be happy with your X-10 system. If you have a phase bridge, I think it most likely an interference problem. These are generally solvable by identifying the devices throughout your house causing this interference and powering those through X-10 filters. My experience suggests that devices such as computers, UPS, power supplies, TVs, CFLs, can all cause some level of interference. The trick is to identify what is causing it in your house and eliminating it. I don't want to make this sound like a trivial task. Much has been written about the difficulty with this, but it can be done. It is mostly trial-and-error. Start with the obvious devices mentioned above. Unplug them. See if that helps communication. If not, move on to the next device. Perhaps try unplugging all TVs and power supplies. Make sure flourescent lights in your house are off. See if this helps. Sometimes, it is the sum of many devices causing problems. Keep at it. Assume nothing. Eventually, you can find it. First, though, let's ensure you have that phase bridge.

Is your PLM in the same plug as your computer system? Is your computer system filtered? Did you plug your X-10 controller into the same plug as the PLM, or in another room somewhere? Depending on the X-10 devices, move it closer (on the same cirucit) as the PLM. See if it helps the response. If so, you may have some interference. Another option would be to get an extension cord and plug it into the same outlet into which you plugged your X-10 controller and successfully controlled your devices. The other end should be used to power your PLM, keeping it plugged into your network as before. See if you can now control your X-10 devices from your ISY. If so, you may have some interference. Try this out, and see what you can conclude, if anything.

I would be tempted to run a scene test on any scene you have that includes the garage lite. This might give you a better sense of communication status between ISY and the light. Is it possible that you are getting signal collisions, with the motion sensor transmitting at the same time that your ISY is trying to turn on the light?

That is a generous offer. Thank you. I think, however, that I will use insteon for any growth of my system. I have enough spare X-10 stuff laying around. I suspect any more would lay around, as well. Thanks, again.

Reading another post just now, I wonder if restoring your devices would help?

My experience is that restore devices eliminates the unknowns. Of course, this assume good communication during the restore process. I recall, too, that one can restore the entire system. This is something that could be run overnight. It might be a better option that restoring individual devices, one at a time.

But are we not having so much fun!!!??? My system is much more modest than yours. I have, probably, 6 keypads, 30 switches of various types, 20 plug-in modules, and the remotelink. I use X-10 for holiday lighting, motion sensors, table-top control, and integration with theater remote. You are correct, I have had a few headaches, but probably no migranes such as yours. If it were easy, everyone would do it. Fortunately, my system is working pretty well right now, thanks to a few strategically placed filters and a dedicated ciruit for the PLM. No offense taken. I, too, was taken aback. Yikes. I thought the problem was just a couple of controllers and a scene or two.

That is, indeed, a lot of devices. I would not be willing to start completely over, either. Fortunately, my suggestion about starting over applies only to the couple of devices and scenes with which I percieve you are having trouble. But it sounds like my perception has been less than accurate at times.[/img]

That was my first reaction...you had already created a bunch of links in the devices prior to ISY. I wondered if you had performed a factory reset on the device before adding to the ISY. If not, did you remove the links when adding to the ISY. Also, is it possible that there are some X-10 addresses in the device. I know it is a little bit of pain, but it doesn't sound like you have too many devices yet, so I would start over. Remove the devices from the ISY. Factory reset each of your switches, link them back to the ISY, then create the scenes. I would expect this to solve your problem.

Is this accurate? It appears you repeated KPL3. I may be missing something here, but you are using KPLs 1 and 3 as controllers for you dim and full scenes, yet the mutually exclusive condition are for KPS 1 and 2. Is this as you want. Could this be contributing to your problem?

I assume you have thought of this, but in case not...I use a laptop when working around the house and want to be able to get close to the device while making adjustments. Of course, this requires wifi, but I am guessing most of us have that already.

The "non-admin page"? Is that the first one that pops up? If this works the same as my mobile phone, you can still choose the "administrative control" option and see and control your devices. Not as pretty, but may work for your puposes.

Flashing lights at my house usually mean communication difficulties. Have you added any new electronic devices in your house lately that might contribute to these problems?

I do not claim to understand all those log file lines, but I associate those max hop statements with less-than-robust communication. I would be looking for sources of electronic noise and interference. Do you use any filters? Access points?

When I have intermittent problems and less-than-full scene response, I can usually trace that to communication issues. Powerline noise or "signal suckers". Communication problems can slow down responses and force rebroadcasts. I think these can result in signal collisions and the like. It may be possible to mitigate this problem. You could create an "all device" shutdown program, and send off commands to all devices, inserting short (a second or two) waits between each. This may work better. The best best is to test for communication quality (under tools, scene test) and identify and remove (or filter) and problem devices in your house.

In case you did not realize it, there is an "event viewer" under tools. If you don't see anything there that helps, I am with the others.....you have noise problems.

I am not sure I can respond to everything you ask, but I can try a couple of points: I believe the answer lies in "control" versus "status". From a time standpoint, you can choose a specific time (when time = XX:XX) or range (from XX:XX to XX:XX). A control represents a one event (device sends an on signal). Status represent the fact that a device is on, for as long as it is on. Knowing this, most commands that I can think of to perform in response to these conditions are one time commands (turn on, turn off, dim, bright). I am not sure how one would run a program indefinitely, based on the if statement. Else is never evaluated. Only the "if" statement is evaluated. The program statments will run one time when the "if"condition is true. However, if the "if" statement remains true, and somebody comes along and trys to create a condition contrary to the else statement, then the else statement will run again. For example, if the else statement tells switch A to turn on, and somebody comes along and turns it off later, then the program will immediately turn it back on. I hope I am making sense here. "Then" and "Else" conditions can be called from other programs. The syntax looks like: Run Program "program name" (then path)

I use a statement in a program: set scene "my lighting" off (or something close to that). This appears to turn off all insteon devices. It has no affect on X-10 that I can tell.

Since your links pre-existed your ISY, the only question that remains is how you added your devices. When linking, there are three options. It sounds like you may have chosen the option to link without importing the existing links. Perhaps I, too, misundertand these options. Fortunately, this is easy to fix. First, I assume all your devices are linked to the ISY/PLM. Correct? Go ahead and create the various scenes you want in the ISY. Once done, I would use the "restore device" option (available by right-click) on each device in question. Restoring makes the device links match the ISY. If your programming and system is relatively small at this point, you may also consider performing removing your devices from the ISY, performing a factory reset on the devices, relinking, and creating the scenes from scratch. The factory reset would remove those links, as well as any residual X-10 addresses, which can cause problems as well.