rccoleman

Appreciate your continued interest in this, Lee. I can create scenes in the Insteon for Hub iOS app, but I don't know what it's doing under the covers. For fun, I connected my 2413s PLM to my Mac and started Indigo. If I go into Add Device, its event log goes through this sequence: Jan 21, 2016, 8:10:37 AM PowerLinc Linking - entered discovery linking mode (240 seconds) <-- Started the Add Device process PowerLinc Linking - received module button pressed from 36.81.36 <-- Immediately when I held down the set button on the motion sensor to put it into linking mode. As soon as this happens, it fills in the address automatically. PowerLinc Linking - exited linking mode I can't find a way to get more raw, detailed logs from Indigo, but it's clearly getting something from the motion sensor and finding its address without any user intervention. It also appears to be establishing links like the ISY does. Edit: I was thinking more about this in the shower (as I often do) and I wonder if Indigo is drawing an indirect correlation between several things: * I told it to look for a new motion sensor * The act of putting the motion sensor into linking mode causes it to detect motion and broadcast that event * Indigo sees that event and makes an assumption that that must be the device that I want to add. In other words, it's not a directed action, but more of monitoring a side effect and using some intelligence to figure out what to do. Is that possible with Insteon? Rob

And that appears to be the difference with battery-powered devices. When I hit Start Linking, I see the LNK-BGN message from the PLM. When I then put a wired-in SwitchLinc into linking mode, I see the LNK-STAT from the switch and the PLM response that you quoted above. When I put a motion sensor or mini-remote into linking mode, I see no activity from the motion sensor at level 3 (no equivalent LNK-STAT). With the Insteon Hub, I can go through their "add device" process, tell it to search for motion sensors, put the sensor into linking mode, and it finds it right away. I don't see any activity on the ISY, but presumably that's because it's not directed to the PLM. I wonder how it's working its magic, though. Rob

No, all wired-in devices add fine through the Start Linking option. The only reason that I mentioned them was that the linking mode behavior is externally similar (LED blinks and device appears to stay awake), but only wired-in devices are recognized during a Start Linking session.

This is part of what's confusing me - once placed in linking mode, the LED on the device (motion sensor, mini remote, wired-in switch, whatever) blinks for the expected 4 minutes waiting for something to link to it. My feeling is that it's awake during this process, and other devices (like the Insteon hub) immediately see it. It just doesn't happen with the ISY no matter what I do, so I'm trying to understand if there's something wrong with my process or if there's a reason why it shouldn't work. Like I said, it's not a hardship to enter the address, but it makes the setup for a new user more annoying, and unexpectedly so since other devices (wired-in switches, the Insteon hub) don't require the user to find or type in an address. If there's no technical limitation, it would be great to see the ISY pick up this capability in the future. Perhaps something has changed in the newer beta software?

And that works fine. Stu's comment made it sound like I should be able to do it through Start Linking without entering the address, so I was trying to make that work. It doesn't happen often, so I don't mind entering the address if it's the only way to do it. Thanks, Rob

It looks like that's just a shortcut to "Start Linking", and it still doesn't find my new motion sensor. I've tried putting the motion sensor into linking mode before starting the search, using single- or multi-link mode, putting it into linking mode while it's searching, etc. If I do "Add Motion Sensor" and enter the address, it finds it right away and adds it properly. It may seem silly to worry about this, but it bugs me that it's not working the way that I expect For what it's worth, I see no traffic at all during these "Start Linking" attempts if I start the Event Viewer and select option 3. If I add it using the address, I see a lot of activity and it adds properly. I ran another test tonight using a shorter name and I now see the suffixes for the different nodes. Thanks!

Thanks for the quick responses, folks. Excellent! Thanks for the pointer - I'll try it tonight. I think that I expanded the panel without any success, but I'll try it again tonight. I have another motion sensor that I can use for experiments. Is that true of the stock 4.3.26 firmware (what I'm running).

I just received my ISY994i yesterday and spent a lot of time programming it last night. From that experience, I have a few observations/questions - The Insteon Hub and (I think) Indigo using the same 2413s PLM was able to link with mini remotes and motion sensors by just putting the accessory into linking mode (hold down "set"), while the ISY994 seems to require manually typing in the Insteon address. Is there a technical limitation preventing a more automated linking process for battery-powered devices? When I added a motion detector and gave it a reasonable name in the dialog box, it created three different nodes all with that name and no obvious way to differentiate which was the sensor, low-battery, and dusk/dawn nodes. After finding no guidance through a web search, I realized that the automatic names that you get if you leave the "name" field blank *do* include suffixes, and then the user is free to rename them from the UI. It was confusing to me at first and I wanted to point it out to other newbies who may be in a similar situation. I was happy to see the "Start Linking..." option in the menu that allows you to add a bunch of devices at once, but I was disappointed to see that there was no way to rename them until the entire linking process is finished. This led to my having a bunch of nodes with "random" Insteon addresses and no quick-and-easy way to identify which was which to rename them to something meaningful. Rather than trying to turn each of them on and off to figure it out, I just deleted them all and did them in smaller batches. It would have been a lot easier if I could have changed the name right in the growing list as I linked each new device, while it was still fresh in my mind. If there's a easier way to do this, I'm anxious to hear about it. Overall, I love the device, the flexibility, and how well it works compared to other options. Rob