bruceyeg

When I set up HA on a RaspPi 4 with 8 GB, I added the UDI integration which allows HA to talk to my ISY. HA said it got 100 devices and 244 entities. All of these are Insteon devices that I manage with my ISY994/IR Pro. I've had a huge number of hardware or software problems with HA. It generally runs for about 2 days and then disappears from my LAN. I have a DHCP reservation and when HA stops working nothing is at the IP address my HA should be at. After this happened the first time, I flashed the SD card with a new image of HA and started all over again. The same thing happened after a couple days. I third time I tried to reflash the SD card and start again, I learned the SD chip was ruined. Next I bought an SSD drive. I got my HA working again and I made a backup of HA on Google Drive. After a couple days the same problem occurred again. My HA just keeps disappearing from my LAN. I cannot access it. I had to reflash the SSD and start again. I did that and restored my HA software from the backup on Google Drive. Then the problem occurred again. But this was different. After I reflashed the SSD and tried to get it running HA didn't reappear on my LAN. It seemed as if there was a problem with the networkiing on my RaspPi. The Pi should have booted HA from the SSD image and appeared on my LAN. It didn't appear. I then used another SD chip and booted my RaspPi into the Raspberrian OS that comes with the Pi. I had this setup to work with WiFi. HA was set up to use Ethernet. Anyway, my RaspPi booted up Raspberrian but it didn't connect to WiFi right away. When it wouldn't connect, I used the keyboard to put the Pi into debug mode. After about 30 seconds it seemed to fix the problem and Raspberrian OS starting running OK with WiFi. It seems that my Pi had hardware problems that kept getting worse. Not only did it ruin the SD chip, it now appears to have damaged the networking chip on the PI. Before installing the ISY integration on my HA I installed other integrations and didn't have any problems. I suspect that the ISY integration might be overloading HA. My HA remembers the states of all the devices and entities and plots a timeline showing the state of these over many days. The ISY integration added 100 devices and 244 entities with HA would have tracked over many days. My guess is that all the data HA is gathering and plotting from the ISY is overwhelming its database. HA goes offline after it has accumulated data for a few days. Has anybody else experienced this? I've just purchased a new RaspPi 4 with 8GB just like the previous one. I'm worried that if I set it up as before, I'll just have the same problems. However, my old Pi could have been defective. Should I try the new Pi and see if the problem repeats? If the problem is caused by data from 100 devices and 244 entities overwhelming the Pi, then the problem will just reoccur. My ISY 994 is running the latest version 4 firmware. I haven't yet upgraded to version 5 firmware. Would that make a difference? I've got about 20,000 lines of code running on the ISY. The devices in my house are constantly changing all day. My HA seems to track what all my devices are doing just fine until HA just disappears from my LAN and I have to start all over again. I should probably post this as well is a forum with Home Assistant experts. HA should be robust and shouldn't crash under any circumstances. I'm posting this here because I'm pretty sure the problems are related to the ISY integration. I wonder if others have have had similar problems. Thanks Bruce

I'm keenly interested in the new Matter devices and protocols. However, on reading through this forum, I see that few people realize that Matter devices don't run on WiFi. Instead, they have their own thread based mesh network which accesses your LAN through the thread network's border router. Much of the thread traffic might not appear on your LAN. If it does appear on your LAN, it might only be one group of matter devices in one thread subnet talking to another group of matter devices in another thread subnet using communication between the 2 thread subnetworks using their border routers. Matter devices have IPv6 addresses. There are only about 4 billion possible IPv4 addresses, which is only enough to provide 1 IP address for half the population on the planet. However, IPv6 provides about 32000 IP addresses for every human. This means that Matter devices can communicate through your router to the WAN without network address translation. They need to be extremely secure, and the Matter spec allows the firmware to be updated remotely and automatically as soon as a security exploit is discovered. Matter is currently being implemented only for devices and situations with low data rates. Zigbee is now part of Matter, so it will turn lights on and off. Matter can control door locks, thermostats and control TV's. It is being used to synchronize Google's Nest Audio devices and in this situation is works the same way Sonos does when Sonos synchronizes its speakers using SonosNet. Matter is also in networking equipment such as mesh routers and switches. If you are watching video from the cloud in several locations in your home, on a normal LAN all the packets for all your video streams would be visible everywhere on your LAN. Matter solves this problem. I believe it can manage your mesh routers and switches to utilize your LAN efficiently so that packets are sent where they are needed and not everywhere on your LAN. Matter devices have standardized APIs that will be supported by about 100 companies that support Matter. The list of companies includes Google, Apple, Samsung and many others. People can go to Best Buy and just look for the Matter logo on a product and know that it will work with almost everything. Now to my situation. I have 2 Ethernet LANs with mesh routers. On these I have about 120 devices including 13 cameras, 50 Google devices, over 20 Sonos speakers and much more. So I am really happy to have my other 250 devices such as light switches, HVAC, irrigation, etc on INSTEON. I couldn't add these 250 devices to my LANs that already have 120 devices. However, INSTEON has its problems, such as keeping RF noise out of my electrical wiring. Ultimately, I would like to replace all my INSTEON devices with Matter devices. Moreover, Matter will support door locks, which I can currently not controlling with my ISY. I've thought about how the ISY could work with Matter and here are 3 possibilities. (1) The ISY supports Zigbee, and Zigbee is now part of Matter. The ISY has a Zigbee radio so it could communicate with Matter devices using their IPv6 addresses. This would almost certainly require a firmware update in the ISY's Zigbee radio. I don't use Zigbee and don't know much about it, so I'm wondering if the Zigbee radio chip can be updated in this way. (2) People who use Home Assistant and Open HAB are very keen on connecting to Matter devices. Suppose they succeed in getting software running on their Linux systems that can talk to Matter devices using their IPv6 addresses. Then it should be possible to put the same software on the POLISY and connect the matter devices to the virtual node server framework. Then a Matter node with your Matter devices should appear on the ISY. (3) We (or rather I) don't know if interacting with Matter devices using the IPv6 address has all the capabilities that would be available if the POLISY could talk to Matter devices directly using Thread. I think there are going to be devices with a thread radio that could be used to build a POLISY. Maybe there will be a RaspPi with a tread radio. I think people using HA or OpenHAB will probably start using these before we will. However, whatever software is developed, it should run on the POLISY and we ISY fans should be able to interact with Matter devices. In my case, as INSTEON slowly dies, I'd like to swap all my INSTEON devices for Matter devices and continue to run my smart home with my ISY. The questions I'm most interested in having an answer to in this forum are (1) is UDI thinking about whether or how the Zigbee radio can work with Matter, and (2) are any of you POLISY developers interested in getting the Matter software running on the POLISY.

Thanks. The key words to use are "set heating" and that always works. It changes the heat set point leaving the cool set point unchanged. I also tried to use "set cooling" even though I don't have AC so this doesn't really matter. This command causes erratic unpredictable results. For example, my set points were originally 20 and 28. I said "OK Google. Set cooling on the main thermostat to 29 degrees". My Google Home changed the set points to 25 and 33. This is not at all what I want.

The fact that you can query motion sensors is not mentioned in the Wiki. I'll give 2 useful examples. Example 1 Outside my house I have many motion sensors. If someone approaches any of these, a program is triggered which sounds a chime. However, I didn't know which sensor was triggered until I got a Google Home. The "spokens" for my sensors are porch sensor driveway sensor side door sensor deck sensor When I hear the chime, I ask Google "which sensors are on?" Google might reply "The driveway sensor is on. The porch sensor, the side door sensor and the deck sensor are off" Example 2 I like to change the batteries on my 22 Insteon motion sensors as soon as the low battery sensors turn on. To make me aware that a sensor has a low battery, I set up a program which is triggered if any low battery sensor turns on. This program causes a chime to chime every minute until the battery is replaced. The problem is to find out which of my 22 sensors has the low battery. I added all 22 devices into the Portal for Google Home with spokens such as "Change battery kitchen". In Google Home Control I created a separate "virtual room" for these devices. The room is called Duracell. Now I can say "OK Google. What is on in the Duracell". Usually the reply is "22 lights are off". But if the low battery in my kitchen motion sensor comes on, then Google will say "Change battery kitchen is on and 21 lights are off". Linguistics The point here is that "kitchen lights" and "lights in the kitchen" are NOT the same. Understanding the difference can be very useful. My kitchen has 4 devices. Here are their spokens and the name of the room I assigned to them in Google Home Control: kitchen ceiling light -- in room "kitchen" kitchen sink light -- in room "kitchen" kitchen speaker -- in room "sound room" change battery kitchen -- in room "Duracell" Note that I put my audio equipment in the "sound room" and not in the kitchen. "OK Google. What lights are on in the kitchen?" Reply: "The kitchen ceiling light is on. The kitchen sink light is off" Not that "lights in the kitchen" refers to ONLY the lights in the room called "kitchen" "OK Google. Which kitchen lights are on?" Reply: "The kitchen ceiling light and the kitchen speaker are on. The kitchen sink light and the change battery kitchen are off" Note that "kitchen lights" doesn't just refer the device assigned to the room "kitchen", but it also includes all other devices with the word "kitchen" in the device name. Suppose I say: "OK Google. Turn on the lights in the kitchen" Reply: "Turning on 2 lights" "OK Google: Turn on the kitchen lights" Reply: "I'm sorry. There was an error" The error occurred because "kitchen lights" includes the device "change battery kitchen" which can be queried but cannot be turned on. Now you understand why I did not put the change battery kitchen and the kitchen speaker into the room "kitchen". I often want to control only the lights in that room without including the motion sensor or speaker. Querying Programs It is also not mentioned in the Wiki that programs can be queried. A program is ON or OFF according to whether it is listed as "True" or "False" in the Admin Console. That value is set the last time the program was run. Example I have a number of devices which are controlled by a schedule, the weather, or the time of day. An example is my irrigation. However, I can choose between turning off irrigation or running it according to its schedule. The "irrigation timer" is a program which turns irrigation on or off. I put the following spokens into Google Home irrigation timer mosquito zapper timer fountain timer birdbath heater timer christmas yard timer "OK Google Which timers are on" Reply: "The birdbath heater timer is on. The irrigation timer, the mosquito zapper timer, the fountain timer and the christmas yard timers are off"

I'm having trouble setting the temperature with my Insteon thermostat. Suppose my thermostat is in the Program Auto mode, and the heat and cool set points are 19 and 27. Suppose it is cold outside and my furnace has warmed the house to 19. Now, suppose I want the house to be 20, If I tell Google to set the temperature to 20. Google will then change the set points to 16 and 24. The midpoint between these numbers is the 20 degrees that I requested. However, because it is cold, my house will cool down to 16. The problem is that to change the temperature I have to change the heat set point. Instead, Google is shifting the heat and cold set points so the middle of that range is the temperature I asked for. To get my house to warm up to 20, I would have to tell Google to set the temperature to 24. That would raise the set points by 1 degree to 20 and 28. My furnace would come on and warm the house to 20. My thermostat is using "Program Auto" mode. If I switch it to "Heat" mode there is no problem. However, I need to have my thermostat run a program. The only modes available for my thermostat are: off, heat, cool, auto, program auto The problem would be solved it I could put my thermostat into a "Program Heat" mode. This mode must be available for other thermostats because it appears as an option in the Admin console. However, my thermostat doesn't have that mode. The only way to run the thermostat's program is to use "Program Auto" mode. The problem would be fixed it I could say "OK Google, set main thermostat heat set point to 20" If I give this command Google says "Sorry. I do not understand". Can you make this work? Another way to solve the same problem is to tell Google to raise the temperature of the main thermostat by 1 degree. That does work. However, I would still like to be able to tell Google what temperature I want and that should also work.

My wireless Insteon thermostat problem vanished after I re-linked the Portal to Google Home. Now my thermostats work perfectly.

I have another thermostat problem. I have two Insteon thermostats which I call "main thermostat" and "bedroom thermostat". The first controls my furnace and is hard-wired. The bedroom thermostat is battery powered. GH works fine with the main thermostat, but it does not work at all with the battery powered thermostat. If I use the buttons on the bedroom thermostat to change the set points, it takes about 6 seconds before the change appears in the admin console and in the Agave app on my phone. But every time I ask GH about my bedroom thermostat, it always says "I'm sorry. There was an error." Is this a timeout problem? Maybe the battery powered thermostat is responding too slowly.

Using a program is interesting, but it doesn't solve my problem. My scene is simple. The only devices are the bedroom ceiling light and wall switch. If I want GH to turn this light on properly it has to use the scene. If GH just turns on the device but not the scene, the wall switch that controls the device is OFF even when the light is on. Using a scene turns on the light and the wall switch. I want the wall switch to be on whenever the light is on. Your suggestion seems to be that I write a program to determine if the light is on. I my case I don't need to. I can include the device in the Portal and just ask GH if the device is on. There are two possibilities: 1. The portal contains the scene and the device 2. The portal contains the scene and the program. In both of these cases I have to use the scene to turn on the light and I get an error message when I query GH because the scene cannot respond to a query. I can still find out if the light is on because GH will tell me if the device is on (case 1) or if the program is true (case 2). In both cases, I get the error message when I ask what is on in the bedroom. My problem is that I get error messages all the time and they are annoying. Considering that about 2/3 of all my lights work this way, it is a real problem for me to be getting so many error messages. A scene flag would solve the problem. If the scene flag were implemented, you wouldn't have to use it. Whether or not you attach a flag to a scene is up to you. There is one way to get what I want without a scene flag. Suppose I didn't have a scene. Suppose adjusting the wall switch would trigger a program in the ISY which would control the light just as the switch does now. Because the program in the only thing that controls the light, querying the program would always give me the correct answer about whether the light is on. I could have GH operate the program and query the program and all would be well. This still has the problem that I can dim and brighten the light with the switch. A program that passed the dimming and brightening to the light would not be simple. The problem with using a program in the ISY is that it produces a delay. I see this all the time where motion sensors turn on lights. The sensors that are controllers of a scene that turns on a light work very fast. But when a motion sensor has to run a program in the ISY to turn on the light there is a noticeable delay. . In the case of complicated scenes, the flag could also be a program. So you could write a program that checks the state of every device in the IF block, and have nothing in the THEN or ELSE blocks. This program would be triggered whenever any device changed its status and would be TRUE or FALSE according to the criteria in the program. Use such a program as a scene flag would make it possible for you to ask what is on in the room with the scene and not get an error message because the scene cannot respond to a query. Instead, the query would look at your program. You would get back exactly whatever you want, even for your complicated scene. As for the suggestion that this be implemented in the ISY, that couldn't happen very soon. However, the changes to the Portal that I described could be done right away and are not much work. I'm happy with the ISY as it is. My problem is the error messages that I get from GH. Fixing it in the portal would solve my problem.

There is another big disadvantage to using programs. The ISY remembers whether the program is TRUE or FALSE the last time it ran. If TRUE Google Home will say the program is ON. FALSE is OFF. If you ask GH to turn on a device using a program, GH will always report that the device is ON, unless you run the ELSE block of the same program. Then GH will report the device is OFF. If the device is turned on or off by any other means than this one program, GH will not tell you whether the device is actually on or off. It will report on the program that last time it was run. I gave up on using programs. However, I will use them in the future. The programming in the ISY has to be setup so that one program always runs to control something. That way the program actually does show what is on or off. Regarding scenes. The name "scene" suggests a room with many lights with various levels of brightness. Scenes may have been originally setup with that in mind. I rarely use scenes that way. There are 2 other important ways to use scenes. 1. If a wall switch has to control a light but the house was not wired so that the Insteon wall switch has both a hot and neutral wire plus a third wire that goes to the light. In such cases many people use 2-wire Insteon switches, which rely completely on RF. Because my wall switches are in metal boxes and don't receive RF very well, I've rewired my house so those locations where a 2-wire switch would be needed now have a hot and neutral wire inside the switch. That makes it possible for the switch to use Powerline signals and not depend completely on RF. However, to do that I've had to remove the wire that the switch previously used to control the light. Instead I made this wire into the required neutral wire. Now my switch works with Powerline signals, but the only way to control the light is with a scene. When I use a scene this way, the link table in the wall switch and light fixture both have each other's Insteon ID and communicate directly. The ISY isn't involved. When a wall switch is wired this way the ceiling light responds instantly to the wall switch. A person using the switch would never guess that they were communicating with only Powerlline signals. I guess that it why they named it Insteon. It works fast because the signals between the wall switch and ceiling light only have to travel about 10 feet. Because of the way my house was wired, about 2/3 of all my lights use scenes in this way. Another reason for so many scenes is that everywhere I used to have a 3-way switch (garage, stairs, entry, driveway, ...) I also had to wire it up so all the switches got a hot and neutral wire so they could use Powerline signals, and then the only way to make these work normally is with a scene. In all these cases my "scenes" are not like in a Home Theater setup where various lights are dimmed or brightened. My scenes are usually just ON or OFF. I just need to be able to ask Google Home what lights are on and have it tell me, even though I'm using scenes to control lights. 2. The third important way to use scenes is for KeypadLinks. The buttons on these cannot be turned on and off directly like a switch. The only way to control them is with a scene. These buttons can be used to dim and brighten lights, but most of the time for me they are ON or OFF. For example, here are some buttons that are ON or OFF AWAKE - on if I'm awake, off if I'm asleep. Pressing the button in the morning wakes up my house. Turning it off at night shuts everything down. AWAY ERRANDS - on means I've left home. The lights in the exit stay on awhile and then the whole house switch to "Green Lighting Mode" which saves energy. When I come home, I turn this off, and my house reconfigures itself. AWAY VACATION - same as ERRANDS except that the thermostat is lowered, and cooling is turned off. Also, my house shuts down and wakes up on a schedule. MOTION - when this is on, lights turn on automatically in occupied rooms. Lights in all unoccupied room are set to the default. As I walk around the house the lights adjust automatically. When I turn this off the lights do not ajust to occupancy. However, they do adjust throughout my house to the time of day, according to the light levels set in my Lighting Mode GREEN LIGHTING, COZY LIGHTING, GUEST LIGHTING, BLACKOUT LIGHTING. These are lighting modes that determine the default level of light throughout the 24 hour days. These are setup so that only one lighting mode is on the rest are off. I can turn them on with Google Home. All these controls are in GH in a room that I call Configuration. Because they are all scenes, when I ask GH "What is on in configuration", GH replies "Unable to reach 10 things. That mode isn't available for 10 things." All I want is to have flags so that I can ask GH if my lights and scenes are on and get and answer, not an error message.

I agree completely with post #5. It makes the point that in the general case you cannot say a scene is on or off. My concern is not some abstract general case. I would like GH to give me useful information rather than annoying error messages in certain situations where that makes sense. I will explain how some fairly minor changes in how the Portal works will solve my problem. What I'm proposing is optional. If you use scenes and you like hearing the error messages from the Portal my proposal will allow you to continue to receive error messages. However, in certain cases the portal can use a "flag device" and report back that the scene is ON or OFF according to whether the flag device is ON or OFF. A simple example where this would be useful is my bedroom ceiling light. This involves 2 devices and a scene. These are: BedroomCeilingFixture - a device - Insteon mini-dimmer switch in the light fixture BedroomWallSwitch - Insteon KPL6 on the wall location that used to control the ceiling light BedroomLightScene - scene - controller is BedroomWallSwitch, responders are both of the above devices. Suppose I put the scene into the Portal and call it "bedroom light". Suppose I also put BedroomCeilingFixture into the Portal and call it "bedroom light fixture" Now when I ask GH "what is on in the bedroom" it will tell me whether "bedroom light fixture" is ON or OFF because that is a device, and that is what I want to know. But it will also tell me that it is "unable to reach the bedroom light. That mode isn't available for the bedroom light". My proposal is to enhance the Portal so that it can (optionally) use a flag device. Then I would put the scene in the Portal but not the BedroomCeilingFixture. Instead, I would make the latter the FLAG DEVICE for the scene. When I ask the Portal what is on in the bedroom, it would report back the state of the flag device. The advantages of this approach are: 1. There is only one device the Portal instead of two 2. I don't have to listen to error messages that tell me nothing. 3. I can now use scenes in the Portal. I've been avoiding them because the error messages are so annoying. I've done a lot of programming and have a pretty good idea how the Portal works. The changes needed are minor. When I ask GH what is on in my bedroom, GH converts my request to text and sends it to a Google Home Manager (my terminology) in the cloud. The GHM looks up "bedroom" in a dictionary and decides that this question can be handled by UDI's Portal. I've also told GH the room every device is located in. So the GHM looks up the devices in that room and includes this list of devices in the request it sends to UDI's Portal for the status of these devices. The Portal passes the request to my ISY. The ISY then replies to the Portal, which passes the response it back to the GHM, which sends the answer to my Google Home as text. The latter converts text back to speech. When the Portal uses a scene, the error message could originate from 3 possible stages in this process: 1. GHM might have is its dictionary that the ON/OFF mode is not supported for a scene 2. GHM might pass the scene request to the Portal, which knows that the ON/OFF mode is not supported for a scene. 3 GHM could pass the request through the Portal to the ISY which responds that ON/OFF is not supported. What I propose is that the GHM should pass a status request to the Portal even if it is for a scene. When the Portal gets a status request for a scene, it should determine the matching FLAG device and query the ISY for the status of that device. The answer will be ON or OFF and that should be returned. On the other hand, if I ask GH to turn on the scene, the Portal should pass that request to the ISY so the scene gets turned on. The use of a FLAG device should be purely optional. Anyone who doesn't like my proposal doesn't need to use any flag devices. I want them to be available for those situations where useful information can be returned by the Portal to my GH. The programming change in the Portal is minor. An extra field has to set aside in a data structure. This field could have a pointer to the flag device if one were specified. The changes in the Portals web UI to implement this are also quite simple. After you log into the Portal, click Select, and choose Amazon Echo/Google Home, you get a popup window called "Amazon Echo device list" At the top is says Add / Device / Scene / Program / Variable I propose changing this to read Add / Device / Scene / Scene Flag / Program / Variable The only change in the device list would be that some devices would be called "scene flag" (or maybe just "flag") A new popup window would have to be created for adding a scene flag. That window would be similar to the other windows you use for adding things, but with a small change. The "Scene flag" creation window be called "Scene flag mapping" and would require that you NOT use a scene (because a scene flag cannot be a scene). This window would not have the entry box called "Spoken" Instead of a Spoken entry box, there would be a box with a drop-down list of scenes that have already been entered into the Portal. These scenes already have the spoken phrase defined in the portal. The "Scene Flag" device would use the same spoken phrase. On the main popup windows called "Amazon Echo device list", the Scene Flag you added would appear that marked as a "flag" and the spoken would be identical to the matching scene. If you sort this list according to "spoken" and entries with identical spokens would appear together. Thus sorting this way would cause every scene and scene flag to appear together on the device list. My proposed changes to the Portal's UI are minor and the changes in the code in the Portal that direct queries to the flag and turn on/turn off requests to the scene are not difficult. Moreover, those of you who don't like this idea wouldn't need to set up any scene flags in the Portal. Everything would continue to behave as it now does. One big advantage of my proposal is that no changes need to be made to the code in the ISY. Every change is in the Portal. So I am not asking for the ISY to have and ON/OFF state for scenes. I can think of a lot of advantages for scene flags other than my bedroom light. In my house a have a lot of KPL6 and KPL8 devices which I use to control my ISY. The only way you can turn the buttons of these device on or off is by using scenes. The scenes I use of my KPL6 and KPL8 turn matching buttons on and off on a number of KPL6/8. Thus, I have an "Away Errand" button by each entry to my house. If I turn this button on or off, all the matching buttons go on or off throughout my house. Now with GH, I can say "turn on Away Errands" as I leave to go shopping. My "Away Errands" scene is in a room called "Configuration". If I ask GH "What is on in Configuration?" I get the response that a large number of things cannot be reached and that mode isn't available for all this things" If I had "scene flags" I could get a lot of useful information when I ask what is on in Configuration. When I press a configuration button on a KPL8, it could run a program, set a variable, or turn on a device. I would like to be able to assign a program, variable or device as the scene flag. I know there are scenes where the ON/OFF could be ambiguous. I wouldn't bother defining a scene flag for those. My main point is that scene flags and be very useful and powerful. They can eliminate a lot of useless error messages. I hope this convinces the people who could implement this. Bruce

I like this suggestion. Maybe that could be implemented in the Portal. So far I've learned that (in the case of my bedroom light), the Portal should be able to turn on both the scene and the the mini dimmer device in the ceiling. These are options 1 and 3 at the start of this post. This will allow me to turn the light on and off and the wall switch will match the light because the scene is also being turned on or off. Now when I ask GH what lights are on the bedroom. It should look at the device Bedroom0 and tell me the correct status of the light.The problem is that it will also tell me about the scene and then I get an error message from GH. These error messages can be annoying. For example,I have a "room" called "configuration" which has 5 scenes. Every time I ask which is on GH says: "Unable to reach 5 things. That mode isn't available for 5 things." I shouldn't have to always listen to these error messages every time I ask what is on. I don't think GH can be configured not to report these error messages. The only solution I can think of is for the Portal to provide answers when I ask what is on. I would like to be able to define a device to act as a flag for the scene and have the Portal respond to GH with an answer rather than error messages.

In the Admin Console, I see that under Main Network, the list of devices that are on or off doesn't include any scenes. This supports what you say. However in the Console, all my scenes are listed and I can choose any one of them to see if it is on or off. Doesn't this mean the ISY knows and might be able to tell the Portal to let GH know? If what you say is correct, then it might be possible to make the portal setup a little more complicated. If you tell the portal to turn a scene on or off, maybe you could also specify a second device (besides the scene) that the portal would use to determine if the scene were on or off.

I have a scene called "Home Motion". If I ask Google Home if it is on, GH replies "That mode isn't available for the Home Motion". However, I can tell GH to turn Home Motion on or off and these work. Is there any reason why the Portal doesn't tell GH whether of not a scene is on or off? Another example. I put a KPL6 in the wall switch that controls my bedroom ceiling light. I needed a KPL6 to control a few more things around the bedroom. However, I had to do some rewiring to make this work well. The power for my bedroom light goes to the box in the ceiling and originally the wall switch did not have a neutral wire and had to operate wirelessly without powerline signals. So I changed one wire so the wall switch has hot and neutral wires. Then I put a micro dimmer switch inside the ceiling box. To make this work I setup a scene where the wall switch (called Bedroom) controls the scene, and micro switch in the ceiling (called Bedroom0) is the responder. These work perfectly. \ However, when I setup GH to control my bedroom lights I had 3 options: 1. Make GH control the device Bedroom0 in the ceiling 2. Make GH control the device Bedroom in the wall switch 3 Make GH control the scene. Option 1 has the advantage that GH always knows if the light is on or off, but the wall switch shows the light is off after I've turned it on with GH. Option 2 doesn't turn the light on. The wall switch turns on and off but the scene doesn't. Option 3 works properly. However, GH doesn't know if a scene is on or off. I need to know which lights are on so I cannot use option 3. The best way to program GH would be to use option 3, but then the Portal has to tell GH if a scene is on or off. Can this be fixed? Thanks, Bruce

More on popup window. If I open the "spoken devices" popup with 10 items, I can switch to 100 items. Then I can see the entire popup. This is really handy because I can print the popup all on one sheet of paper. A problem would occur if I closed the popup when it is set to 100 items. The next time I opened that popup, I wouldn't be able to see the top, change the number of items or add devices, scenes or programs. So it I set it to 100 items for printing, I have to reset it to 10 before I close it. It appears to me that the popup doesn't need a scroll bar. I just needs to be put properly on the page when it is reopened. Cheers Bruce

I'm using the 32-bit Chrome browser version 59.0.3071 in Windows 7. My brower says it is up to date. I just ran into another problem. After you use "Select Tool", "connectivity", "Google Home" you get a popup called "Spoken device list". At the top of that list you can choose how many spoken device will appear on one page of the list. The options are 10, 25, 50, 100. I set mine to 100. Then I added a lot of new devices. I ultimately had 33 devices when I closed the popup windows. The next time I tried to add more devices, the same popup window "Spoken device list" was positioned so I could see the bottom of the popup with the "Close" button, but I could not see the top of the list. Scrolling to the top of the web page did not list me see the top of the spoken devices popup. I was in a catch-22. The list had too many items, but I could not change the # of items in the list. The only way I managed to fix this, was to delete many devices. When I had 25 devices I could close the spoken devices popup and reopen it and see part of the top of the list. I could not see the very top where is says "Add device scene program". But I could see below that where I could change the number of items in one page of the popup. Only by reducing the number of items to 10, was I able to see the very top of the popup where it says "Add device scene program". I would prefer to set the number of devices to 100 and scroll the web page up and down. But because the popup doesn't have its own scrollbar and it not positioned properly I cannot do that. Could you make the size of the web page large enough to include the entire "spoken devices" popup so that I can see the top of the popup when I scroll to the top of the web page. Thanks.