Wingsy

The IOLinc sensor is triggered by the stairway sensor (indirectly, through relay contacts activated by the stairway sensor). Attached is the schematic of the entire stairway. Now it may seem like a lot to have to go through just to light a light, but what I want is: 1. Instant activation of stairway lights when someone steps on the top or bottom step. 2. On time of lights controlled by an ISY program. 3. Re-triggerable, so if a 2nd person enters the stairway while the lights are on due to the 1st person, then they get the full duration of the on-time of the lights. There are actually 2 sets of lights for the stairway. The embedded LEDs in the wall are what needs to come on quickly. There are also 2 overhead lights, a sconce at the top of the stairs and a recessed light in the ceiling at the bottom. Those 2 lights turn on via the ISY program and it's OK for them to come on seconds after the LEDs (which happens since they are controlled via the ISY). They are intended to provide light in the room at the top and the bottom of the stairs, and give enough light long enough for someone to either pass through those rooms or to find a light switch if they intend to stay in that room. The way I have it wired works exactly like I want, right up until the IOLinc relay fails to activate when the ISY program runs. When that happens the relay never unlatches and the LEDs stay on forever, or until I manually activate the IOLinc briefly. Generally the way it works is, (1) stairway sensor activates which closes the relay and the relay latches on, lighting the LEDs and triggering the ISY via the IOLinc sensor input. (2) IOLinc relay closes via ISY which takes over lighting the LEDs and unlatches the relay. (3) After 45 seconds (or something) the ISY opens the IOLinc relay, turning off the lights and allowing the external relay to latch again. Notice that while the ISY is timing out the 45 seconds, the program can be re-triggered if the stairway sensor energizes the external relay again. This would be simpler if only the IOLinc relay could be triggered by its own sensor and not turn off when the sensor input goes away. What I tried to do was to set the IOLinc timeout to 30 minutes, then have it triggered by the stairway sensor (the IOLInc sensor closing the IOLinc relay), and after 45 seconds or so have an ISY program turn off the IOLinc relay prior to its timeout. That doesn't work because as soon as the person's foot leaves the 1st step the IOLinc relay goes off. This is what drove me to use a relay configured to latch itself on. (I had to use a relay anyway since the IOLinc sensor needs a hard closure and the stairway IR sensor only goes to 0.7v when on.)

I was setting the local level to 0% in an attempt to prevent my driveway lights from coming on briefly during the day. That wasn't for my stairway. And my stairway... I never wanted a couple of motion sensors sticking out from a wall in/near the stairs, so when the house was built 3 years ago I had 2 IR beam sensors embedded into the wall. Also people walk right by the top of the stairs constantly so I thought that adjusting a motion sensor to only detect when someone stepped on the top or bottom step would be problematic at best. The bottom IR beam sensor is that black object in the wall. The embedded LEDs come on instantly and the overhead recessed lights come on when the ISY gets around to turning them on. Right now this is working fine up until the IOLinc that's involved in this decides to not come on at all. At least when that happens the lights fail latched on. (That IOLinc is located under the stairs in the mechanical room right next to the PLM and is on the same circuit, so if it's a comm issue then I may have deeper troubles.)

It was so spooky that I gave up on that method of doing what I want and I'm trying something else, but I do appreciate your reply. (I think I must have been using the correct thing or I wouldn't have gotten the correct response for settings of 1% to 100%.) You wanna know what I'm trying to do? I'll tell ya... I'm revisiting my stairway lights and my garage door & driveway lights, trying to do something, anything, different from my old ways in an effort to shake this $#&%@ curse of the ALL-ON event. It's too early to tell but maybe, just maybe, the garage/driveway may stop being one source. In that scenario I got my IOLinc moved into a scene as recommended by someone somewhere. We'll see. My requirement for both the stairway and driveway lights is that they come on right now when triggered by a sensor. Not 1 second or 3 seconds later. That rules out using a program for turning them on, but can be used for turning them off a minute or so later. My driveway lights use an IOLinc sensor in the garage (triggered by underground coil & detector) to trigger a scene containing an ON-OFF module also in the garage that controls the driveway lights and to an inline dimmer in the rock columns at the end of the driveway which light the column lights and another IOLinc relay in the house which controls a chime device. An ISY program turns the ON-OFF module and inline dimmer off and the IOLinc relay delay controls the duration of the chime. The garage door is sensed with an OPEN-CLOSE sensor & magnetic switch, which lights a salt-rock light in the kitchen via a plug-in dimmer. The IOLinc relay in the garage is wired to the garage door switch which I sometimes control via my iPhone. This works fairly well (assuming no more ALL-ON events) most of the time, but occasionally I still see the driveway lights coming on when I'm well into the driveway and about 1 out of 50 times they don't come on at all. It's not consistently instant. Another thing that I don't like about the setup is that I wanted the lights to only come on during the night. They come on all the time but the ISY program turns them back off as fast as it can during the day and at night it leaves them on for 5 minutes. Not exactly what I want but I guess I can live with it. My stairway is much simpler in that all I want to do is to turn on the stairways lights when someone steps on the top or bottom step (via 2 IR beam sensors). Again, they need to come on right now when someone enters the stairway, and every single time. Kinda rules out Insteon, huh? I'm working on this right now and have things in a state of limbo at the moment. I'll be using a latching relay to get the lights on immediately and an IOLinc to turn them off and unlatch the relay. I think.

What I want to do is to change the ON level (applied locally) to 0% so that pressing the ON button in a LampLinc does exactly that - turns it off if on. If I set the ON level to anything from 1% to 100%, it works as expected - the lamp goes to that brightness level. But when I set it to 0% and press the ON button it goes full on. You suppose that's a kink in the software or you think they intended it to be like this? And why? Whoa... just discovered that if I press the ON button once it turns full on, and press ON again and it turns OFF. It toggles! This stuff is real intuitive, not. Another edit: If I use a program to turn on the LampLinc (Set 'Garage Door Indicator' On), it goes to 0%. I guess I really DO live in a quantum world.

Yes. It will partially light the green sensor light on the IOLinc but it's not quite low enough to trigger the IOLinc. This photo-sensor has what's called a Darlington output, where 2 transistors are connected together to act as one with very high gain. Drawback is that a Darlington only pulls to about .7v when on. (In my drawing it's shown as a single transistor, but it's actually a Darlington pair.) The purpose of the latching circuit is to turn on the stairway lights immediately and to hold them on until the ISY program finally gets around to turning on the IOLinc. If the lights were turned on by a program, you'd sometimes be on the 3rd step before the lights come on. Programs are often very very slow to execute. My program is: If 'Stairway-Sensor' is On Then Set 'Stairway-Relay' On Set 'StairwayOverheadLightsGR' On Wait 45 seconds Set 'Stairway-Relay' Off Set 'StairwayOverheadLightsGR' Off The StairwayOverheadLightsGR and the Stairway-Relay will sometimes come on up to 3 seconds after the photo-sensor is tripped. Not acceptable for a light that will light up that toy firetruck on the 3rd step. If I trigger the IOLinc's relay with it's sensor, it comes on right away but then the IOLinc relay will go off whenever the sensor signal goes away (i.e., when someone's foot leaves the 1st or last step). I went round and round and round with this a couple of years ago when my house was built. Best I could come up with was an Open/Close linked to the IOLinc relay, plus a program. That works as I want, with the exception of flickering lights due to Insteon traffic for up to 10 seconds when someone enters the stairs. I traced all that traffic to the Open/Close. I don't get that (nearly as much) if I use the IOLinc sensor input to trigger my program. Do you see anything that would cause my relay circuit to not do what I need?

I've had my stairway lights working with an IOLinc and an Open/Close sensor. But that sensor generates so much Insteon traffic that I want to try another solution. (Instead traffic = lights flickering.) I have the same scenario with my driveway lights. The objective is to have my stairway lights come on the instant someone steps on the first or last step, and stay on for a set period of time (like 45 seconds). The time delay needs to be retriggerable to allow a 2nd person entering the stairs to have the same amount of on-time as the first. I also want to do this without using an Open/Close sensor, just an IOLinc (in Latching Mode). The limitations of the IOLinc prevent one from doing this in a straightforward way. I have a reflective photosensor on the first & last step to sense someone entering the stairway. This photo-sensor has a transistor output switch that does not trigger the sense input of the IOLinc - the photo-sensor's ON voltage is 0.7v, not zero volts like the IOLinc wants to see. So I've wired my photosensors (2 in parallel) to operate a small 12v relay and use it's contacts to signal the IOLinc (via its sense input) and to instantly light the lights. When the IOLinc is turned ON via a program, it takes over powering the lights and allows the photo-sensor to sense a 2nd person entering the stairs. Here's how it works: * The stairway sensor output turns on when someone steps on the first or last step. This closes the 12v relay (K1). * The 12v relay C-1 and NO-1 contacts are connected to the IOLinc's sense terminals. The relay closing will trigger a program in my ISY994. * When the 12v relay closes it also latches itself ON so that it stays on even when someone steps to the next step, and it also powers the stairway lights via C-2 and NO-2. This happens instantly. As long as the IOLinc stays off the K1 relay will power the stairs. * A program in the ISY, triggered by the IOLinc's sense input, turns ON the IOLinc (eventually - sometimes there is a significant delay in the program sending the ON command), then delays for 45 seconds then turns it off. When ON the IOlinc powers the lights and unlatches the relay so that a 2nd person entering the stairs can retrigger the program. You would think that there would be a way for you to turn something on quickly from one source and turn it off via a different source. I've not been able to do it without help from this hardware. If it will even work... haven't tried this yet. If you see a problem with this please let me know before I go to the trouble of wiring it up. I'll post again when I get it done.

I dunno Larry. I think we come from different areas of electronics. It's been my experience that digital scopes excel at displaying random occurrences. I've used it before in tracking down and identifying glitches on power lines more than once or twice. In my case, whatever is causing this continuous Insteon traffic is very much repetitive. Anyway, have a look at this FFT. Harmonics, yes, as is always the case. But the worst is around 40db down from the fundamental. I'm convinced my problem is not noise related.

I had a good close look at my power line this morning and this is what I found: (spoiler - nothing) Power line. I can stare at this scope trace all day long and I never see even a hint of a glitch. Amplified view of the zero-crossing, clipped. Insteon traffic plainly visible, and lots of it. Zoomed in view of zero-crossing. I'm no expert in the world of Insteon but I would say this all looks fine to me. My house is 1-1/2 years old. I know the electrician who wired it. He's really good, and I watched him every day. I have no doubts that it is wired correctly.

I don't. I agree 100%.

No, they don't flicker when there is no Insteon traffic. It would be a poor state of affairs if a device that is suppose to blink on "Insteon traffic" would flash on random noise. Surely they would only flash the LED when a valid message appears on the line. (Unless the software was written in a certain foreign country, in which case I would withdraw that statement.) I unplugged my ISY and my PLM. Took the batteries out of my TriggerLincs, unplugged all my IOLincs. Still have traffic and still have lights flickering. It's really hard to tell because things are so random, but it appears that the flickering isn't as bad as before. Again, hard to tell. Isn't there any way to tell where this traffic is coming from, other than UNwiring all my devices one at a time until it stops?

Thanks Larry & MWareman. I got them both to the latest version. Suddenly I had a log file, going back about 2 months. Looking it over at the time the All-ON event occurred, I cannot see anything that looks to me like anything turned on everything. Like, my fireplace - the only events I see about that are after the All-ON event where I turned the fireplace off and on via my iPhone. I think. I believe that log was created to only be read by UDI people or you guys who live and breathe this stuff. I don't want to dedicate my life to this, I just want it to work. And this morning (2AM) I fired up the Admin Console and the log problem is back. Choosing to show or save the log file results in "Couldn't Open the Excel Macro [path-to-filename]".. And trying to do a backup I get "Could Not Create the ZIP File". All, same as before. I suspect a permission issue but I have that folder set to anyone-can-read/write So, OK, let me just forget about the file problems and the All-ON event for a while and concentrate on the current problem that's driving me & my wife nuts. Ever since the All-ON things have been getting strange here. First, the constant flickering of the lights. That's the big thing. Even the IOLinc sitting here at my desk is flickering, and I thought that it only blinks its LED when it sends Insteon commands. (All my IOLincs are blinking.) How can it be sending commands when it's just sitting here doing nothing? And the MBR lights -- when you turn them on, you can't turn them off for the next 5 seconds to a minute. Likewise when you turn it off you can't turn it back on for the next 5 secs to a minute. Same for the bathroom lights, the closet light, and probably others but not all. Other problems are that not all lights turn on via my programs when the program is triggered, or they will not turn off. But this constant Insteon traffic is my main problem right now. I think if I can resolve that then the light flickering problem will go away, giving me time to work on the other problems before my wife insists that I pull the plug on this really neat home automation stuff. (She was home alone when, simultaneously, the fireplaces came on, the doors unlocked and the driveway alert went off. Can you imagine that.) My lights have always flickered when there is a burst of Insteon traffic, but it happens just below our threshold of pain. I want to get back to where this system is working just good enough to get by. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Other info that may be pertinent: About a couple of weeks before all this, I had an InLineLinc fail (ants got into it). I removed it. I recently received a replacement. Got it connected and used the command to let the ISY replace that device. It works OK, and responds to Insteon commands and plays well in a scene. I don't have any motion sensors but I do have 3 battery powered devices - a leak sensor and 2 TriggerLincs, one of which was activated by the garage door at the time of the All-ON. Also, it appears that the lights that do not turn on/off reliably are those lights that I have programmed to come on at 20% power at night, and 100% during the day (by changing its max on value at night and in the morning). Not entirely sure about that tho.

It's not so much of an issue with not being able to find it, but that when I try to upgrade either automatically or manually (which is what I assume you do when downgrading), but that the ISY won't even continue to the point where I can choose what to load.

Since I am unable to upgrade, how can I downgrade?

I am unable to backup my ISY. Says can not create the zip file. (I do have 2 backups I did in Jan 2016 but nothing since) I can't do an automatic upgrade. After clicking Yes or No to the question of first making a backup, nothing. I have no log file (never have had one). The folder "ISY" is empty. MacOS 10.10.5 (Yosemite), latest Java, Mac Pro. Please, any suggestions?

You can't do separate OFF commands with the Open/Close anymore. They took away the jumper in the recent devices.

I've got that too -- motion sensor for on and code for off. The good thing about a motion sensor is that you can set it to issue ON commands but no OFF commands. In fact, that's what I WAS using for my driveway lights until my motion sensor failed. So now I thought I would revisit the problem using open/close device or an IOLinc. In order to get a relay contact closure to trigger the motion sensor I modified the motion sensor IR circuit to accept a contact closure for its trigger. That's a really sensitive circuit and I believe that a transient from a recent storm killed it. I'm going to try something ... I haven't yet looked into it and I expect to hit a wall but if not, it may work. I'll trigger a scene with the open/close and also trigger a program. Hopefully I can disable the scene via code and once the light is turned off, reenable the scene.

If I had a comm issue would not the scene that turns it on also experience a delay at times?

You would think it would be instantaneous but it's not. Not all the time. I don't know what's going on with the ISY processor firmware but the guys who wrote it evidently didn't have response time as an important criteria. And in my scene, the scene turns it on and the program turns it off.

With all due respect I believe you have that backwards. I've tried doing this before with a photo sensor device (relay output) to light my stairway. A program appeared to work but many times there would be a 3-5 second delay before the lights would light. I wound up using an open/close to trigger an IOLinc (in a scene) with the IOLinc set for a very long delay (for its on time). My program would turn it off after about a minute. This worked because my stairway lights required the relay in the IOLinc for its on/off control. In what I'm doing now I need several dimmers to come on instantly and I can turn them off later via a program, as before. But dimmers would turn off as soon as the driveway sensor contacts open, and I need them to come on immediately and go off after 5 minutes or so.

Ahhh, forgot to add... I don't want to do this with a program because it is too slow.

OK, I've had this discussion before and I'm at it again. Here's the scenario: Have a NO relay contact from a driveway sensor. It closes for 1-5 seconds when a car passes. I want this to trigger a 2475DA1 InLineLinc Dimmer (or any dimmer) to come on, AND STAY ON. Is this even possible with any Insteon devices?

Maybe I should start a new topic but this thread is close enough. In the 9 months I've had my system running I've had several occasions where things would come on unexpectedly. I've chalked it up to someone hitting a switch by mistake or tapping the wrong button on their phone. But the deck fans were the exception. Both have come on at the same time, and both controlled by separate Fanlincs via iPhone only. Now with the events happening here recently I've come to realize that the only things that come on by themselves are on/off devices and the FanLincs. None of my dimmers have done this. (The dimmers have their own quirks - if not at 100% the 6-button devices cause the light to flicker with Insteon traffic, but not every time.) I'm wondering if the comm protocol has sufficient (or any) protection from corrupt data. It's almost like one bit in the stream gets toggled to trigger all on/off devices and this erroneous bit goes undetected. That or there are some obscure software issues in the ISY.

Going to add one more oddity. This morning I noticed that both of my IOLincs that control my two fireplaces were on. I didn't check these yesterday. I turn on these IOLincs via my phone when I want the gas logs on (they are lit via thermocouple control - close a switch and the gas comes on). I've had the gas lines to the fireplaces turned off since winter so nothing happened. Hate to think if we had been away for a week during the winter and this occurred. I'll be unplugging these IOLincs if we ever go off for more than a day when the gas is on. And this isn't the first time these 2 IOLincs have come on spontaneously (both at the same time). The last time it happened I thought I had done it by mistake. This time i know I didn't.

Thanks Stu. Appreciate your efforts.

Well that's just great. Now when I try to do a backup it says "Could Not create the ZIP File". This reminds me of Windows 3.1