matapan

FWIW, I sent a comment to the new Insteon company about product quality and the longevity of the PLM in particular. Steve Lee responded back, who mentioned that the PLM quality has improved significantly over past several years, to the point where the Insteon company has a negligable return rate on the devices. I did stress the importance of product reliability and stability in terms of a product line's reputation in the email thread.

Instead of using a single motion sensor, you can use two for attempting to detect detection. The sequence of motion sensor triggers will provide the direction one is walking. I say "attempting" because in real life, people walk back and forth before the sensor times out for detecting the next event. You can set each motion sensor to have a short timeout cycle to address this.

I'm not in the same boat as you are. I am still using an ISY994i with a Z-Wave board. But I had a communication issue with one device and nearby devices would also not operate correctly when toggled off. The solution for me was to delete the device having communication errors and then add it back as a new device. This cleared the problems. The options to repair links or to update them were useless. It might be worth a try to delete one of the devices that you lose and add it back to see if it sticks around.

I was able to address the issue with odd behavior in the Admin UI with respect to the state reporting of Z-Wave devices recently added to my setup. The Admin UI was not correctly displaying the state information from one of two Aeotec Trisensors I added. One of the sensors would toggle on a motion sensing flag then toggle the flag off after the timeout period was reached with no additional motion sensed. The other sensor would toggle on like the first one on motion detection but would fail to toggle off on timeout. At the same time I was having this issue, one of my Z-Wave devices kept reporting communication errors. The option to repair links or update neighbors didn't do anything to resolve the communication errors. So I deleted and added the device back, then restored any links or references in programs that were broken when the device was deleted. This cured the communication error, and also corrected the state information reported in the Admin UI. For whatever reason, UDI Mobile was reporting the correct state information from both Trisensors. FWIW, this is what I found as a solution. If you have Z-Wave devices and get communication errors, don't ignore them - other devices in your Z-Wave network may be impacted if you leave the error(s) unresolved.

I have an ISY994i with version 5.3.4 firmware. I have the Z-Wave Plus board installed in the controller.

Thank you for this reference!

To completely answer your previous question, Lutron offers a retrofit solution called RadioRa3 which works well. No wires to add. Lutron products are well engineered and TESTED, which is why it costs a lot more than products from startups or entities evolving from the personal computing space. If you don't want to pay for Lutron, then it's really a matter of finding a technology stack that has either a curated cookbook solution for you that handles your use cases well, or finding a solution which you feel comfortable customizing yourself. Your needs may be as simple as running a phone app to turn Wifi controlled lights on and off, in which case there are gobs and gobs of consumer grade products that handle this on the market. Insteon is great with scene control and the ISY is great for conditional evaluation for triggering events. Z-Wave is great if you have the need for door locks, but scenes are apparently a pain and you have to have a lot of devices on the network to be reliable. My personal experience with Z-Wave is that it's slow. From the time an event is triggered using a Z-Wave motion sensor to the time a Z-Wave appliance module is triggered is noticably slower than the same done with Insteon devices. The UI for configuring and displaying device parameters for Z-Wave is horrible in my opinion in the ISY Admin UI. It's probably usable once you figure it out, but there's definitely a learning curve.

I recently added several more Z-Wave devices to my setup and ran across some interesting behaviors. The two Aeotec Trisensors I added behaved differently from each other if the Admin UI is assumed to be accurate with respect to device state. On motion detection, each sensor changes its motion state from off to on. Upon reaching the timeout period, only one sensor reverts back to an off state for its motion state. The other sensor remains in an On state with respect to motion detection. All of this was reported in the Admin UI. I tried modifying the parameter of the motion sensor, but upon choosing (Write Changes), the Admin UI returned a communication error for the sensor. I assumed this was due to the proximity of the sensor from nearby Z-Wave devices. For a completely different reason, I installed UD Mobile on my phone. I looked at the device state for the motion sensors and noticed that both motion sensing states were now off. I triggered each of the sensors and waited for the timeout period to be reached. In the mobile app, both sensors reverted back to an off state after the timeout period was reached. There were no communication errors. What can account for the difference in reporting from the Admin UI and UD Mobile? Why am I getting communication errors in the Admin UI with these devices but not in the mobile app?

Your local Lutron installer can give you a price on RadioRa3 equipment. I never looked into it myself as it was out of my budget. But those I know who installed it are very happy with it. No rinky dink popcorn effect with dimmers, no flickering. No sporadic issues with certain virtual switches in n way circuits not working all the time. You get what you pay for is what I take away from this.

thanks, but I still get a 404 error after modifying the url

http://10.0.xx.xx/rest/zwave/node/ZW023_1/query/

Second method is over my head.

I get a 404 error when using the first method.

I doubt there are any switches that allow you to do n-way switching as easily as Insteon. Since you don't have any equipment, you can just find the best deal out there and wait for the technology to catch up with respect to ease of use and configuration. Or just go with Lutron non-consumer grade products if you can afford it. It just works.

I had the occasion to turn some circuit breakers on and off several times while working on installing some new outlets in my house. The circuits power cycled have some Z-Wave devices on it. Apparently, power cycling these Z-Wave devices didn't do them any good, as I am getting strange communication errors now for these devices. According to the wiki page article on communication errors, there should be an option in the Z-Wave menu in the Admin UI for healing the Z-Wave network. I cannot find this menu pick or its parent called Tools. Is the Wiki page outdated? I am on firmware version 5.3.4 on an ISY994i with the Z-Wave plus board.

I have the occasion to update device properties on two Aeotec Trisensors I acquired recently. There appears to be a means to set a device's properties by specifying a parameter to be updated along with its value in the Admin UI. There doesn't appear to be a means to view the device property values directly. I think I found another post in this forum which describes in general detail how to pull the parameter values in a script and assign it to a variable to email or text it out. Seems like a kludge if all you want to do is to see the current device property value is set to. Is there an easy way to see the parameter values set for a device? If the script route is prescribed, can someone describe in detailed terms how this is done? Thanks.

I would stick with the Insteon devices. You already have them. Presumably they work. From what I'm scanning through posts here, Z-Wave is really a transitory option until the up and coming protocol takes its place. I've been playing with a few more Z-Wave devices and they are totally underwhelming. The device-specific settings are not visible to you in the ISY. From what I can glean from posts here, you have to write a script to get the current device settings in the form of parameters and values. Lord knows why it's not displayed in the ISY Admin UI, but I'm sure there's a technical reason why it's not there. You do have the ability to set parameters on a Z-Wave device using the Admin UI, but there's no tellng if the values have taken unless you run that query script mentioned in another post. Z-Wave, like dual band Insteon has to have a large enough mesh of devices to function properly. You have to add new devices close to the ISY or it won't add, at least from my experience. There have to be intermediary devices physically installed in close proximity to each other for the endpoint device to communicate reliably with the controller. Another drawback of ZWave, from what I can gather from reading posts here is the ability to set up scenes as easily as you can with Insteon. Finally, there doesn't seem to be a good Z-Wave option that is the equivalent of a Keypadlinc. I used to really not like Insteon because of the troubles I had with product quality and older single band devices. My opinion has changed somewhat since I tried a setup with predominantly dual band devices. Much more reliable, but still some hiccups. Z-Wave on the other hand just looks like a cluster. Awful or generic industrial design for their switches, and the setup, at least through ISY is just not that clean. I don't know if this is just an ease of use thing with the ISY since I haven't really played with other controllers like Smartthings, Homeseer or Home Assistant. But hey, you can mix Insteon with Z-Wave Plus devices with the ISY994i. That should get you through to the next generation of Home Automation once it solidifies and becomes truly usable instead of being vaporware or alpha release products. It is after all the race to deliver products first, regardless of product quality of stability!

I have a six button Keypadlinc I added to my ISY setup a while ago. Recently, I wanted to assign one of the buttons as a controller for a scene, only to discover two of the nodes for the buttons were missing. What is the best way to restore the nodes in the Admin Console. I have no idea how they went away.

What if you deleted and recreated one of the scenes that is failing? Does this change anything?

I'm kind of curious if an extra layer of control causes noticable latency.

I second the recommendation you should just test the bulb with your specific configuration directly. There are many Insteon dimmer revisions, all addressing different issues. Some of them I recall related to specific flickering conditions. You may or may not have the revision that addresses the flickering issues. Bulbs themselves have specific characteristics that cause them to flicker on one circuit but not another. It's beyond my pay grade. I can just share with you my personal experience. I'd just go out and get the bulbs and see if they do the trick or not. If not, hopefully you've purchased them from a retailer that has a good return policy for situations like this.

Not really sure how this thread became a discussion about the Nokia Hub; the title of the thread specifically refers to the Insteon hub. If UDI attempted to purchase the unused inventory from the new owners of Insteon and they weren't interested in selling the Nokia hubs for a reasonable cost to repurpose them as hubs, and they require rework of code on the ISY or Polisy, is there any worthwhile value proposition to be considered for the Nokia hub? As mentioned previously, there is a post from another user which asserts he/she was able to take a stock 2nd generation Insteon hub, connect some wires from it to a serial card and use it as a PLM. If the poster is to be believed, no code changes required. Isn't that a worthwhile avenue to explore if PLMs are not going to be available for a long time or ever from the new owners of Insteon?

I Googled MAX232 breakout boards. eBay has them for less than $5. Some for $1.29. You still have to convert from a DB9 connector to what the ISY uses in the form of a different cable. To me, once this is replicated, it is a solution some enterprising individual like the recap service eBay seller can easily do at an affordable price.

Fixing your old PLM is an option. I've recapped mine. However, there are products other than the ISY that also use a PLM like the EZIOSA8 which require a PLM. PLM's are hard to come by. If you look at the prevailing prices paid on eBay for them, they are like gold unless you get really lucky. There is also no guarantee that replacing the caps which typically fail will resurrect a PLM. I have one PLM which still had issues after replacing the caps. The original poster of the thread I am referring to on this forum reported they modded the Hub and was able to use it as a PLM. No code change on the ISY required. The original poster posted the information about their discovery over a year ago. I attempted to PM them but have not received any reply. I have a number of hubs and would be very interested in giving it a try. We're literally talking about four wires soldered to the hub PCB connected to a generic serial breakout board if the OP is to be believed.

According to the original poster on this forum in a different thread: "It is easy to figure out where to connect the serial just by looking at the 18f25j10 datasheet for the tx/rx pins." "But all I did was connect tx,rx,3.3v,gnd and held the pic32 in reset." For the serial card used: "a max3232 chip breakout board would be good enough." I believe you actually responded to this posting when it was posted a year ago. The proposed mods are above my pay grade in terms of understanding it - I am not someone with an EE degree. Maybe it is very simple for someone who does as the OP alludes in his post.