greazer

Excellent! Thanks for the info! I'll give it a try.

I'm trying to setup a geofencing solution using my iPhone. I've been mildly successful with IFTTT and Stringify, but neither seem to work as consistently as I'd like. Are there any recommended iPhone apps that monitor your location via GPS and can simply do a restful call from the phone directly to the ISY portal? I *think* both IFTTT and Stringify rely on communicating with THEIR servers before sending out a command to the ISY portal -- which introduces just one more point of failure. I've considered creating the app myself, but I would think it already exists. I've tried looking, but have been unsuccessful finding one.

I don't use CFL's. I hate them, actually. The light is ugly and they have consistently burnt out on my WAY sooner than they're supposedly rated. I do have two LED bulbs though. Are those known to cause noise problems?

I've resorted to having one filterlinc for each garage door and things have been fine. However, freeing up one to be used elsewhere sounds like a great idea.

It did seem that plugging in a lamplinc to one of the openers did help. However, it bothered me that I needed to rely on the wireless signal from one device that I had other uses for solved the problem. So I ended up getting a filterlinc for both openers. I plugged the filterlinc into the outlet, then piggy-backed the iolinc into that. I think that makes the most sense and it seems to have alleviated my problem. But let me know if there's something I'm missing. I really appreciate the activeness and helpfulness of this forum!

Thanks, just plugged in a lamplinc. Hopefully that'll solve it for one of them.

Thanks Techman, I'll likely go the filter route. But just for future knowledge, are there any downsides to running a program over and over again to query a device? I mean it shouldn't be necessary, I understand, but can it cause a problem?

I've been having trouble with two garage door sensor units (IOLinc's). For some reason, either one will somehow lose connection with the ISY (It appears in the admin console with a red !). When I query it manually it finds it again just fine. I have many other insteon devices throughout my house, light switches, motion sensors, door sensors and none of those ever just randomly lose connection like this. So I have two questions: 1) What might be causing this? Each IOLinc is plugged into an outlight immediately above the opener itself, so maybe when the door is in operation it messes with the insteon signals dramatically? 2) I wrote a program to query both sensor units every two minutes as an attempt to work around this problem. Is this a good idea? Is there any downside to running a program that continually queries a device? Thanks!

Perfect! Thanks Greg, this is exactly what I needed and it works great.

Ok thanks. I thought maybe I was crazy.

I am trying to use a new Insteon Motion Sensor 2 for the first time in my setup. I was able to link it successfully as a 2842-222 and it kinda works. I can't get it to send On signals until after the timeout regardless of the options I set. I really want it to only send On signals like I've done with several other of the older motion sensors. Is this a limitation of using the newer motion sensor as used with 4.6.2? Timeout: 0.5 ​LED Brightness: 15 Darkness Sensitivity: 128 ​Sensing Mode: Checked ​LED On: Unchecked ​On commands only: Checked ​Night only mode: Unchecked

Basically, what I was hoping for that the Alexa integration would cause actual device gestures (on/off at least) to mimic the gesture on the device itself. In other words, if I say "Alexa, turn on bedroom light", it would be equivalent to actually pressing the insteon switch I have in the bedroom to turn on the light. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case. What I've decided to do (which is kind of a pain), is to create a program for any command I want to invoke through Alexa. By doing this I am able to detect when such an event occurs. I did try using STATUS, but that will fail if I have a program that doesn't depend on the actual state of the device but rather the gesture. For example, I have situations where pressing a switch on needs to do something if the light it controls is already on. Of course this may become cumbersome to maintain, down the line. Oh well.

I have several programs that trigger when an insteon swtich gets turned on or off. Oftentimes it's used to maintain state. However if Alexa is used to toggle the same switch no programs are triggered. This often results in a screwed up state within the house. Any suggests as to how to deal with this? Or has a best-practices been established yet?

But state variables and regular variables on the ISY have different behavior. I've frequently confused myself on this so simply prefixing state variables with "s." or whatever is an easy and obvious solution.

Thanks so much larryllix. Super helpful and I totally agree with you about the looks and operation of the KPL. For me, it's not wife friendly. On other switches in my house I have done similar things as you describe (double tap for additional behavior), though not to the same extent. But now that you mention it, I like the notion of tapping up for more lthink I'll incorporate it. Also, yes, I think I agree with you on the last state tapping ON to turn both lights OFF is counter intuitive. I'll just remove that one. And finally, thanks for pointing out the variable prefix stuff. So obvious, I didn't even consider it! Oh, and after posting, I noticed Oberkc's comments as well. (I read through Teken's just to return the favor). I will read through that and try to grock it. Looks good. And for what it's worth, my wife did turn on Switch1 tonight and sure enough, it went from state 0, to 1 to 2 with that single tap on. Note I had tried to duplicate this behavior several times before she came home, but just couldn't.

Sure. I could and have considered splurging for yet another device or two. But given the program I have almost works, I'm trying to figure out the logic as to why it DOESN'T work when it doesn't. Also can anybody categorically tell me that switching a lightswitch from within an ISY Then clause will or will not cause an event to fire and thus cause another program to run? If it CAN, then this could explain the behavior I'm seeing. However, from what I've been seeing that doesn't seem to be the case.

Thanks larryllix! Really appreciate the advice. Eventually, I hope to grock this stuff. In any event, this is my new state machine. Much simpler, and it does work. At least the few times I've just tried it. However I suspect when my wife comes home tonight and turns on switch1, it'll turn on the expected lights, then turn them off and turn on the upright lamp (lamp2). I.e. it'll move through two states with one on toggle. If there's something obvious I should do, I'm all ears. (Again, remember that Fireplace Switch 2 isn't actually physically controlling a light. It's just an extra switch that I setup as a virtual 3-way with Fireplace Switch 1.) =================================================================================== MBFL.0 Manual Off - [iD 0093][Parent 0099] If Control 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 1' is switched Off Or Control 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 2' is switched Off Then $MBFireplaceSwitchState = 0 Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Upright Lamp' Off Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 1' Off Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 2' Off ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MBFL.1 FireplaceOnly - [iD 0094][Parent 0099] If $MBFireplaceSwitchState is 0 And ( Control 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 1' is switched On Or Control 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 2' is switched On ) Then $MBFireplaceSwitchState = 1 Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Upright Lamp' Off Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 1' On Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 2' On ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MBFL.2 LampOnly - [iD 0095][Parent 0099] If $MBFireplaceSwitchState is 1 And ( Control 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 1' is switched On Or Control 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 2' is switched On ) Then $MBFireplaceSwitchState = 2 Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 1' Off Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 2' Off Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Upright Lamp' On ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MBFL.3 Both - [iD 0096][Parent 0099] If $MBFireplaceSwitchState is 2 And ( Control 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 1' is switched On Or Control 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 2' is switched On ) Then $MBFireplaceSwitchState = 3 Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 1' On Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 2' On Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Upright Lamp' On ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MBFL.4 BothOff - [iD 0097][Parent 0099] If $MBFireplaceSwitchState is 3 And ( Control 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 1' is switched On Or Control 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 2' is switched On ) Then Run Program 'MBFL.0 Manual Off ' (Then Path)

Oh, I just found this in that link I posted too (added after I originally found it and started using this spaghetti technique... sigh...) "EDIT: Version 3 of ISY firmware allows the use of integer-valued variables in our programs. The variables come in two flavors: state variables and non-state variables. Both state and non-state variables can be used to great advantage, simplifying the structure of the state-machine programs that are described below. Ergodic has described how the state variables can be used. You can see that post here: http://forum.univers...riables-part-1/."

Thanks guys. I'll play around with scenes (which I haven't done much of yet) and see if that helps. As for creating a program to poll devices, I'm not sure why that would help, but I'm willing to try.

Yeah, I totally agree its not fun to read through. I hate it too. However, my original set of programs that controlled this state machine that used a state variable (or a variable that kept a state value) had the same problem. As I was pursuing trying to fix THAT problem I ran across the link that basically argued splitting your state machine logic into "condition" and "do" programs. I figured, ok, maybe this is the blessed way of doing this. I'm not expecting any of you to read that and what I'm gathering, I should just ignore it (perhaps it's old information before ISY provided the ability to save state in a variable, I have no idea). Look, I've been a professional programmer at Microsoft for 20+ years and I now manage developers in the Visual C++ organization at Microsoft. So I know what I'm doing when it comes to programming. However, the way the ISY is programmed and the interaction with Insteon devices is just wrought with weird behavior. I'm trying to wrap my head around what's going on. I've considered going down the path of actually using C++ or C# and a PC to do this stuff, but I was hoping to help another friend of mine who doesn't have a programming background, so I figured I should get good at using this admin console thing. So, larryllix -- So you're saying that when I make a state change in the ISY of a device I should have a wait of a second or two or whatever time it typically takes for a change to occur. Fine I can do that. Of course it would be nice if the ISY had some sort of defined behavior OR if there were synchronization mechanisms built in to provide a consistent solution. Creating wait's is the equivalent of adding sleeps in a regular program to try and fix multithreading problems. That's ridiculous. But if that's all there is, then that's all there is. Also the wait's on the last line of the programs was just part of a desperate move to try and make different behavior happen. They didn't fix anything so I will remove them. Teken -- thanks What I'll do is redo this whole thing using a variable to track state instead.

I have a simple program: If Switch1 is fast switched on Then Turn on Switch 2 It works, but there is a 4 to 5 second CONSISTENT delay that occurs after the fast switch of Switch 1 occurs before Switch2 is turned on. Why???? I see my program fire very quickly in the ISY admin console, it's just that the Then portion seems to take 4 to 5 seconds. I figured there was just some delay in ISY being able to access Switch2. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to hold water because if I turn Switch2 on and off directly via the ISY admin console, it responds very quickly (within a second of toggling). So, I'm totally confused as to where the delay is coming from. Can anybody help me understand what might be happening and whether there's a way around it?

Thanks, but I'm not sure what you mean. There are definitely checks to see whether the switch has been turned on. Note that the "switched on" event fires even if the switch was on before you physically clicked it on again. Essentially this set of programs implements a state machine that is controlled by the True/False state of each "Do" subroutine. See http://forum.universal-devices.com/topic/5410-triggers-and-conditions-and-ifs-oh-my for what I'm talking about.

Thanks for all the advice so far. I'm not that concerned about the immediacy of the behavior, just the correctness. As I originally tried to indicate, this actually works -- but not *all* the time. The trouble is that sometimes if both lights are off and I turn on switch1 then light1 comes on, then goes off and light2 goes on. Basically it skips a state. It's as if there is just a delay that is occurring in the hub or the Insteon network that is causing the hub to get confused as to what state it's in as lights are being turned on and off. Here's my program (also note that at one point I was doing this with a state variable instead of having 'condition' and 'do' programs, but because of the issue I was having (SAME PROBLEM), I found some link that noted that the format I have below is the best way to achieve a proper state machine in the ISY. If I can't safely get away with using a variable to control state, I'd MUCH rather do that) Master Bedroom/MB Fireplace Lights 1 = Switch1 which directly controls Light1 (as noted in my original post) Master Bedroom / MB Upright Lamp = Light2 Note: Master Bedroom/MB Fireplace Lights 2 is not connected to a load/light. I simply use this as another switch to control Switch 1, just ignore it for now. =================================================================================== MBFL.0 Manual Off Condition - [iD 002E][Parent 0025] If Control 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 1' is switched Off Or Control 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 2' is switched Off Then Run Program 'MBFL.0 Manual Off Do' (Then Path) Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MBFL.0 Manual Off Do - [iD 0078][Parent 0025][Run At Startup] If - No Conditions - (To add one, press 'Schedule' or 'Condition') Then Run Program 'MBFL Auto Off' (Else Path) Run Program 'MBFL.1 FireplaceOnly Do' (Else Path) Run Program 'MBFL.2 LampOnly Do' (Else Path) Run Program 'MBFL.3 Both Do' (Else Path) Run Program 'MBFL.4 BothOff Do' (Else Path) Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Upright Lamp' Off Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 1' Off Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 2' Off Wait 2 seconds Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MBFL.1 FireplaceOnly Condition - [iD 0026][Parent 0025] If Program 'MBFL.0 Manual Off Do' is True And ( Control 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 1' is switched On ) Then Run Program 'MBFL.1 FireplaceOnly Do' (Then Path) Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MBFL.1 FireplaceOnly Do - [iD 0079][Parent 0025] If - No Conditions - (To add one, press 'Schedule' or 'Condition') Then Run Program 'MBFL.0 Manual Off Do' (Else Path) Run Program 'MBFL.2 LampOnly Do' (Else Path) Run Program 'MBFL.3 Both Do' (Else Path) Run Program 'MBFL.4 BothOff Do' (Else Path) Run Program 'MBFL Auto Off' (Else Path) Wait 2 seconds Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MBFL.2 LampOnly Condition - [iD 0018][Parent 0025] If Program 'MBFL.1 FireplaceOnly Do' is True And ( Control 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 1' is switched On ) Then Run Program 'MBFL.2 LampOnly Do' (Then Path) Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MBFL.2 LampOnly Do - [iD 007A][Parent 0025] If - No Conditions - (To add one, press 'Schedule' or 'Condition') Then Run Program 'MBFL.0 Manual Off Do' (Else Path) Run Program 'MBFL.1 FireplaceOnly Do' (Else Path) Run Program 'MBFL.3 Both Do' (Else Path) Run Program 'MBFL.4 BothOff Do' (Else Path) Run Program 'MBFL Auto Off' (Else Path) Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Upright Lamp' On Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 1' Off Wait 2 seconds Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MBFL.3 Both Condition - [iD 002C][Parent 0025] If Program 'MBFL.2 LampOnly Do' is True And ( Control 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 1' is switched On ) Then Run Program 'MBFL.3 Both Do' (Then Path) Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MBFL.3 Both Do - [iD 007B][Parent 0025] If - No Conditions - (To add one, press 'Schedule' or 'Condition') Then Run Program 'MBFL.0 Manual Off Do' (Else Path) Run Program 'MBFL.1 FireplaceOnly Do' (Else Path) Run Program 'MBFL.2 LampOnly Do' (Else Path) Run Program 'MBFL.4 BothOff Do' (Else Path) Run Program 'MBFL Auto Off' (Else Path) Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 1' On Set 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Upright Lamp' On Wait 2 seconds Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MBFL.4 BothOff Condition - [iD 002D][Parent 0025] If Program 'MBFL.3 Both Do' is True And ( Control 'Lights - Master Bedroom / MB Fireplace Lights 1' is switched On ) Then Run Program 'MBFL.4 BothOff Do' (Then Path) Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MBFL.4 BothOff Do - [iD 007C][Parent 0025] If - No Conditions - (To add one, press 'Schedule' or 'Condition') Then Run Program 'MBFL.0 Manual Off Do' (Then Path) Wait 2 seconds Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')

I'm trying to setup a program with two lights (on separate Insteon switches) to be controlled by one switch. The idea is: Assume: switch1 is directly connected to light1 light2 is on a separate switch but that switch isn't used here. 1) If both lights are off and switch1 is turned on, then turn on the light that is controlled by the switch. (i.e. normal behavior) 2) If light1 is on and light2 is off and switch1 is turned on, then turn off light1 and turn on light2. 3) If light1 is off and light 2 is on, and switch1 is turned on, then turn on both lights. 4) If both lights are on and switch1 is turned on, then turn off both lights. 5) If either or both lights are on and switch1 is turned off, turn off both lights. Basically I want switch1 to step through 4 states as it continually is turned on. I have tried lots of things to try and make this work and it ALMOST does, but inevitably, daily I'll have the situation where both lights are off, switch1 is turned on and then light1 comes on, then goes off and light2 comes on. Basically, it's like the switch was pressed twice. However, I know for SURE that this isn't happening by being careful about just pressing the switch once, very deliberately. Has anybody tried this and got it consistently working?