paulbates

Hi Teken I knew I was taking a risk of getting the meter connected when I started. The purpose for trying to connect with the ISY is that my utility has an off hours rate schedule. Under that program, the price spikes dramatically when they call a ADR event. If the ISY simply knew that an ADR event is being called, there are several power hungry devices and certain lights that the ISY could shut off during that time. I've had my ISY ZS for a little over a year, and have contacted the power company several times and been sent on several missions calling other departments.. I recognize the vendor that services the meters, I see them in the neighborhood and have approached them about what to do to join my ISY to the meter, but they sent me back to the metering department, who told me I should contact the vendor... I followed the ISY wiki directions, can see the meter, can generate an install code, but that's as far as I get. The utility did sign me up for a program to put a network appliance in my house that did join with the meter and provides whole house power and gas consumption stats, comparisons to previous periods, overlays vs outside temp, to a smartphone app. The iphone app can even estimate power usage of a device by holding the power cord up to it and sensing the magnetic field. When I hooked up the utilities appliance to my meter, I also tried again with the ISY at the same time thinking the meter would be administratively open and I could connect then. No joy. I contacted the group that provides the app / appliance, and told that I would not be able to connect my ISY. Since the internet meter appliance and app give me a good read on power use, I've accepted that's what I'm getting Paul

Long story, but I have lost faith in my power company to allow me to connect my ISY ZS to my Smart Meter. That gives an extra slot in my ISY. I see reasons why zwave would provide a lot of additional choices in sensors, switches and locks. Anybody here using zigbee with your ISY as your powerline, sensor and/or lock solution? If so, what do you think? What are plusses and minuses? Paul

Rob- Right, what you described is the way Insteon behaves: (building on what Lee said above) The ISY turning on a scene will turn on all participants that can respond (eg a switch can but not a motion sensor) A hard key press at a device with a scene assigned to it will turn on all devices in the scene Turning on a device from the ISY does not activate a scene assigned to it. The devices in the scene don't go on. I don't know of a way around this one. In general in lighting involving multiple switches, scenes are the way to go. They create virtual circuits and work together like one switch, and Insteon does the work. Paul

It looks like you'd need to be handy with electronics to tackle this inside the cover. Does the warning light only come on when its in the state you're looking for? If so, I wonder what its voltage is? Paul

Hi Can you provide a link to the manual/pdf and any tech specs? What you're suggesting is plausible, but its not possible to provide suggestions without technical specifications of some kind. Paul

I had this on my list to go back and implement checks for ezflora HW failure, here are some notes on how it really worked for me: When the Ezflora is working, 5 seconds is needed between the query and running the checking program (Program B ) to get a good confirmation back. Less than that, and the query isn't complete and it executes the 'then' in Program B falsely. No wait was needed between turning the zone on and querying. I was able to add the checks inline with my programs that do the sprinkling. If it finds a problem, it shuts down the sprinkling programs at the first use of that Exflora, turns off the valves and sends an alert. I have 2 Ezfloras, so I repeated this process and have a similar program to check at Zone 8, the first zone of controller 2. I use all of my zones, so it makes sense to test inline with sprinkling, its going to open a valve anyway. An alternative, As Stu pointed out above, if you have a zone you don't use, you could do this with a separate time of day program, turning on and checking a valve that isn't in use. Remember to disable your program B that takes action on failure As pointed out, there are other possible failure modes this might not catch, but its fairly fast and easy to do

I've come to this rationalization: As a traveler, having a UDI engineered and manufactured device = peace of mind, its worth the investment to me. When UDI is able to sell a PLM, I will buy and install it, whatever the state of my current PLM is.

The latest update is that its in "Licence Limbo". SmartLabs has to agree to licence use of their chips to UDI, so that UDI actually receive the chips, test their own prototypes, and spin up production. Michel / UDI have been waiting for an answer on this. A long way of saying I have watched this for some time, and don't have any info that SmartLabs has moved on this. Michel would be the first one to tell us. I would go with Teken's advice and get the latest smartlabs model PLM.

I have (3) 8 button keypads that control related devices. the top four buttons on each keypad control the exact same devices. In the case of the A button, all three control outside lights. They are all controllers (they are red when controller / responders, blue when responder only) I use method one. The advantages are that there is one scene that keeps the keypad buttons and outside light switches synced. The motion sensor also turns them all on. Also, use the ISY to create scenes to do the linking, on shown on my admin screen. Then there is nothing to do at the switches themselves ( you do have to press the set button for battery only devices like motion sensors, but not the keypads) Page 21 of the manual describes setting these up. Crosslinking is the same as the device being Red and a controller/responder. I Does this help answer what you're looking for? Paul

If you are getting correct on/off readings at every query, I would guess that the syncrolinc and PLM are not liked properly. I would suggest finding the device in the admin console, right clicking on it, and selecting "Restore device". Its fast and easy to try. If that doesn't work, than going through Larry's steps would be next.

There was this ISY/Echo update from Michel in another thread that I thought should also be copied here, FYI.

I evaluated one of the Serial Hub PLMs. It worked for 3 months then began showing the symptoms discussed above, classic PLM failure. Within a week of that, it no longer would accept links. (This unit was from SL and before UDI will work their magic on the electronics for their version). I agree with the other comments. Why are there still BOM type problems that probably affect price minimally? Please SL, raise the price of the PLM covering the cost to fix everything that needs to be fixed. That would be worth it to me, to not have worry about my PLM all of the time. I interpret this as either bad judgement trying to cut costs, or lack of discipline in design and testing. Is product reputation worth this chronic, incessant problem?

Lp Not sure I'm following, just put the a CR in the body of the message per this example. Paul

I lost a hub a few months back.. it exhibited the same flaky, intermittent behavior. The behavior got worse as time went on, to the point of no links being in the buffer. I would be ordering another PLM.

Those are the symptoms, I'm afraid.

Lp Ok. I'm sure they will figure it out. Paul

LP, Ok, this helps. UDI is on record of saying don't use their mail service (default), but send through your own. Intermittent success is a symptom. I send through google. This is a little bit of guessing, but I would see if you can send through icloud. Back up your ISY, and then see if these settings for smtp will work. SMTP information for the outgoing mail server Server name: smtp.mail.me.com SSL Required: Yes If you see an error message when using SSL, try using TLS or STARTTLS instead. Port: 587 SMTP Authentication Required: Yes Username: Your full iCloud email address (for example, emilyparker@icloud.com, not emilyparker) Password: Your iCloud password You should be able to send to both accounts using your icloud account. You can try searching the forum for icloud or maybe others who have used it can chime in, Paul

LP Can you post the configuration you used under settings/groups? Who/what is providing SMTP transport to the sprint and icloud destinations? Paul

Lp, Ok. So it might be the mail / cell service or potentially configuration of it. Can you describe the provider(s) and how you've configured them (no accounts and passwords) Ok, that "if status" caught my eye.. if something changes it, it could stop the program. But it looks like its something to do with the messages being sent / received. Paul

Lp Hmm ok. Just to confirm, that the program always finishes and the ezrains run all the way everytime regardless of messages? What is this and how does it affect program execution? Status 'KpIrr B IrrigationTime 5 Min' is 100% Paul

Lp Try building a program that only has the notifications in it and some other action to trigger it. See if you can spot a trend without waiting for everything to run. The next steps would be to look out how the notifications are configured, what email / mobile provider, etc Paul

Lp Ok, that helps. I see 4 different Send Notification commands. Are all of them intermittent and flaky? How would you describe it? Any one of the 4 flakier than the others? Email more flaky than cell? Was there ever a time it worked right, and then it started becoming flaky? Paul

lp Irrigation programs can be tricky depending what is allowing/preventing their running. If the conditions causing the programs to run change, its possible it never gets to sending the alert. I had this same experience in my irrigation programs and I had to create a set of programs manage variables for state that only get touched once a day, right before running the main sprinkling routine. Can you post the program(s) in question? Paul

We all have different pressures on our lives, me too. Good luck and I hope you accomplish your goals. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

There is something going on here as well. I found this link a few months back looking at skyport: https://firstalert.skyportcloud.com/