rccoleman

I had the same "not responding" problem yesterday morning (Sunday) when the same scene worked the night before (Saturday). Nothing short of unlinking the v3 skill and adding it back again solved the problem - I first tried forgetting all devices and rediscovering without success. I don't think that I had orphaned spokens, but I suppose that it's possible. I also notice that my devices all have "There was a problem" in a banner at the top of each device page in the iOS app, despite the fact that they seem to work fine. If I tap on the icon to toggle the device state, it works, the banner disappears, and then it returns in a second or so. None of the devices mention "offline". Rob

I'm still unclear as to whether you think it's a viable solution, but I'll leave it to the OP to evaluate.

So you're saying that he can't do what I'm suggesting? I don't see why not. If the ISY can't communicate with an Insteon device because the PLM is flaky or has failed, the polling will fail to respond as expected. The ISY can then send an email or push notification. This could be as simple as a heartbeat program that loops while turning a device on and off, a program that responds to the device turning on and off and changing a counter, and a watchdog program to detect an irregular count. It would be similar to the programs that monitor water sensors.

This is what he asked: Is there anyway I can poll the PLM periodically and send a message if the ISY doesn't get a proper response? The answer to that is "no", but he can poll a device (set status and query) and send an email or push notification from the ISY if it doesn't act as expected. From your responses, it sounds like you're trying to solve the problem of the ISY dying. As long as the ISY doesn't commit suicide and go into safe mode if the PLM fails, it'll continue to work just fine and be able to send notifications through the network about unexpected behavior that it sees with Insteon devices. There's no mention of Z-Wave in the original message, so I don't see how that enters into this.

He's specifically asking about how he can detect a failing PLM, so it doesn't sound like Z-Wave is part of the equation here. If he uses the ISY firmware that won't go into safe mode when it can't communicate with the PLM, it would be able to attempt to communicate with Insteon devices and send a notification if it was unable to do so.

Couldn't a program try to set and query a hidden lamplinc or something similar? Loop to retry a few times to handle any comms issues.

That requires a substantial investment in Mobilinc and an additional purchase of the geofence module, while this is free. I do have Mobilinc, but chose not to rely on their geofence solution because I’ve generally found them to be unreliable. That was my original motivation for moving to this, but I’ve since transitioned to the free Locative app that has reliable geofence support and a more friendly interface. I think that the problem with most geofence apps is that they’re likely to crash when they trigger due to issues around network reliability, and this works around that by relying on Apple’s presumably hardened Find my iPhone service. I certainly see this problem with IFTTT geofences, and they almost never work properly for me. Maybe Mobilinc is more reliable, but this is a free alternative that takes a new and creative approach.

Ah, yes. I have a bunch of echoes and Dots, so it was buried in Settings.

It’s not actually under the Settings section, but it’s a top-level item (and peer to Settings) in the menu (hamburger icon). At least that’s where it is in iOS.

That’ll be a great feature! I’ve already set up Good Morning and Good Night. Thanks for the heads up.

I’m using Locative now, but 2FA was working fine for me with this script a while ago.

Coincidentally or not, two of my 5 leak sensors have given me a "missing heartbeat" alert twice yesterday after being quiet and happy for quite a long time. It doesn't seem like those log messages would be related, though. Mine are all fine now, and looking at the status variables I see that I forgot to init the latest one to 1 and that may look like a failure after a reboot of the ISY994. Under normal conditions, "missing heartbeat" could indicate that the battery died (which should take 10 years) or it malfunctioned in some way. I would go hit the button on the top and see if the green light shows up. Rob

Just pull the power, wait a few seconds, and plug it back in.

I do wish that the dialog box was clearer about what it's busy doing. Sometimes it's hard to tell if it's timing out waiting for something to happen, or if it's actually busy working. And there's no way to stop it, so you just have to sit and wait for it to finish whatever it's doing. It could be more transparent about what's going on, and that might help diagnose problems.

They've started contacting me when I report that Alexa didn't understand me (even when I don't check the box), but I don't know if that's due to increased interest from customer service or my long history of reporting these issues. Amid a sea of words, the two meaningful suggestions that they've made are to re-do the voice training that I did some time last year and to rename the problematic words to a more distinctive term (they suggested "night mode" rather than "night", which often conflicts with "light"). They also said that my devices were still under warranty and could be replaced for free in case they're defective, but this doesn't seem to be a hardware problem. Swearing at it makes me feel a little better (and results in the humorous "Sorry, I can't find f<beep> you"), but it doesn't help it respond correctly Rob

That's a good tip. Last night, I tried to turn on my whole house fan with "Alexa, turn on the fan" and it gave me the typical "there are several devices with that name..." line. It turns out that it heard "turn on the fans" (with an "s"), and it couldn't figure out what I wanted. I have exactly one device called "fan", so there's really no excuse for it not to be able to figure it out. Not being able to understand a word is one thing, but being unable to deduce intent in a case like that just seems silly. I do have 1 Google Home device and I've never had it misunderstand me, but I use it less often than the Dots spread around the house.

Presumably he means that he hit the set button again to take it out of linking mode (you actually have to hit it twice to exit), and further pushes of the set button don't toggle the responder or change the state. At least that's how I interpret it based on how the old motion sensors work.

Yeah, I got something similar from support. I've been meaning to re-do the voice training to see if it helps, but I haven't gotten around to it yet (it takes a while). For what it's worth, I find eKeyPad to be much faster than Mobillinc from app launch->turn a device on or off. It takes a few seconds for Mobilinc to check my devices and sync status before I can do anything, while eKeypad is ready to go almost immediately. Echo used to be faster and better than both of them because it's easier to walk and speak than walk and type, but the tide is turning. Now, I really need to stop in front of my Echo and speak directly at it to have a good chance of it understanding me. Rob

I'd almost prefer that it just beeped or buzzed or something so that I can try again without having to pretend like I'm having a conversation with a robot. Once it misunderstands, it takes so long to recover that I might as well keep walking until I hit the next Dot/Echo and try again. For some reason, swearing at it doesn't make it reconsider what I said

I've been getting that *a lot* lately, and it's gotten worse recently. Things that used to work very well, like "turn on morning", "turn on night", "turn on the fan", etc. are now misinterpreted and give me the "A few things share that name, which one did you want?". When I look at the history in the Alexa app, it's almost always because it misunderstood what I said - last night it heard "family" instead of "fan", despite the fact that the audio recording sounded fine. I've been religiously saying "no, it didn't do what I wanted" in the Alexa app when this happens, but it's not clear if it's doing any good. I think it's now more predisposed to hear "light" than it was before, and there's a 50/50 chance that my "turn on night" will be interpreted as "turn on light", followed by the "a few things share that name..."

Right. I recall from the launch that the Ecobee 4 Alexa support didn't work with the new ESP (echo spatial perception) feature that causes only the nearest device to respond. If you have an Echo or Dot nearby, it's hard to see the value of the Alexa support in the E4, and the E4 in general (over the E3).

Michel said that they were going to do it, but I don't know if it's happened yet.

Presumably, giesen means "secure communication link to the lock", which is lacking from Insteon solutions (and Insteon protocol in general), but supported by most (all?) ZWave locks.

My HomeKit use case is pretty simple - display a widget on the Today page and in the control center to show the status of my locks and alarm and to control them easily with tap. For that, HomeBridge on an RPI3 is working fine for me, so ISY supporting HomeKit would just simplify that installation. Configuring HomeBridge to expose only a specific subset of my devices is a bit cumbersome and doesn't work at all for some of them, so native HomeKit support in the ISY would be a welcome addition. Rob

I'm a bit confused, too. I think it's accurate to say that the schedule condition will evaluate to TRUE for the entire duration, but it will only trigger the program to run at the beginning or the end. If you manually or programmatically execute the IF clause of the program, or if there are other conditions in the IF statement (like your geofence variable), they may also cause the IF clause to be evaluated. At that point, the schedule condition will evaluate to TRUE or FALSE depending on whether you're within the time range or not.