CoolToys

Quick Update - In one scene I used "Motion" from the first motion II sensor instead of "Activity" which is where motion was registered. One scene problem solved and possible one "random" light since "Motion" was always "On" for that option on that sensor. Doesn't explain why that light/scene wasn't always on but... I also realized that in my "Bedtime" program I used the option of "Switched" instead of "Status" IF MB Door Keypad is switched off Instead of IF MB Door Keypad Status is off. My guess is that "Switched off" is momentarily true, where "Status off" is true until "on". That would explain a lot. I have that in a lot of places and just made them all "Status" since I force the switched "on" when the lights come on at sunset and the only momentary command I use is the side gate lock release. To monitor this I have colored the buttons green and have the LED on so I know the status without logging into the UDI AC. Fingers crossed the next few days work.

@paulbates, Thanks I will try and figure out how to turn the blink on traffic on. I don't see that in the UDI admin panel so it must be another way. Last week I tried changing the IF statement and having only IF $sBedtime=1 Then I created a program "Bedtime Trigger" IF $sOccupied =1 And (MB Keypad door is switched off or MB Keypad Window is switched off) THEN $sBedtime=1 When I pressed the button, $sBedtime went from "0" to "1" but the Bedtime program didn't run at all. Last night I took out the state variable $sOccupied and reverted to the buttons. So instead of IF $sOccupied=1 and (MB Keypad door is switched off or MD Keypad window is switched off) I used IF MB Keypad door is switched off or MB Keypad Window is switched off The bedtime program ran. But it ran before sometimes with $sOccupied = 1 in there. Today I have been going through the system with a fine tooth comb, comparing everything and I noticed I have three Insteon Motion II v.47 sensors but for some reason the UDI admin panel sees them differently. The First One Has: Activity (With the same boxes as the Motion option below) Motion (Always On) Tamper (blank) The Other Two Have Motion (on or off depending on activity) Motion.Enabled (blank) Tamper (blank) I also found several scenes where the light was off but the button was on. Since the button on the 6 buttons is a controller/responder I assumed the button would follow the light if the light was turned off somewhere. So as I followed some earlier advice of using scenes in the longer programs it appears where there is still a direct command to the light, the button is not "responding". I also added the Amazon command "time for bed" via the mobile app, to see what that does to the bedtime scene. It didn't work at all. Alexa said "Sleep Well" and that was it. I wish I could have an option to return the eISY to "linear" thinking so this "wait" thing wouldn't be the looming question. It shouldn't be, especially when i used triggers for variables, and yet those are the least consistent results. According to the UDI guide, ISY works on states and the $svariable=1 doesn't change so each wait should still read true, and the fact that the program has a green bar also indicates true and yet the program randomly stops or light come back on. I am thinking of relocating the eISY and PLM today to a position closer to the main panel as a test of noise/signal strength issues. I do have a dual mode switch in at least every other room. If Lutron/Control4/Crestron had the capability of the Insteon 6 button in a prosumer product so I didn't need a dealer or need to become one, I would switch today.

@paulbates, New experiment, one "bedtime" all scenes, one all direct commands with 2 seconds in between. The button on my side of the bed started the scene version, my wife's side the other version. Similar issues, first three-five steps completed and it stops. Working from the thought process that the wait statement causes a re-evaluation of the "if" I went to the next experiment. The "off" button next to the bed would change sBedtime from 0 to 1. Then the "If" was changed to if sBedtime = 1. This time nothing happened. The variable changed to 1, so we know the command was received, but not one light went out. I then used UDI mobile to run the "Then" of the bedtime flows. This time the one will only direct commands worked, however 45 seconds later a light came back on downstairs. I then sent the "Then" for the version with scenes, and the light went out and a few minutes later a different light came back on. All the other state variables were 0 so no other lights should be triggered.

@paulbates and @oberkc, the idea of direct v scene and inserting delays, along with noise etc are all challenges of the system at this point. Sadly I don't have enough data points that are consistent to have any reliable data. The only thing that really conclusively screwed up my system was a cyber power UPS. Everything on that phase quit working and the minute I unplugged it, back to normal. Rebuilding the entire program from scratch and using more scenes and fewer direct commands resulted in one perfect run and one zero run. Again no data. Last night when I pressed the "off" button, the program started running and nothing happened. I manually ran the "then" from the AP and it worked. Since X-10 is weaker and less reliable I keep an old X-10 keypad and plug it in when I have issues and test. The AP doesn't see a thing when I use the X-10 keypad next to my bed, so maybe comm, but then why did it work perfectly two nights ago? As you both pointed out scenes don't have a response, so if the command is lost, that scene never turns off. That I have experienced over and over. Very frustrating. As I look around the house this morning, I see that two of the three way slave switches that are in scenes still display an "on status". The AP says "off", the master is off and the light is off. When I select "Query" the AP still says off. When I force the scene on and then off, everything corrects. Clearly the "handshake" of the query is not happening or the comm noise is so bad, 50% is being read as "off". One very odd thing from time to time is that I will find a light stops working and the "on level" in the scene is set to 0%. Something that was working, now isn't. I change it to 60% or something and the scene again works. I thought as a practice after deleting variables or scenes that I should re-boot IOX or the entire eisy. Last night the reboot did all kinds of odd things. The unknown variable [Var2.8] came back, and the sDaytime Variable appeared in some of the programs as "State_8" again. I resaved, restarted and State_8 changed to sDaytime in the programs again. I don't change anything when it is working. I only dig when it stops. I haven't made any major changes to my system except the eisy upgrade and zigbee/matter module upgrade. I bought the zigbee/matter for my Greywind blinds but they don't work with the eisy for some reason. I can find them but can't control them. Like you guys many of my insteon switches are pushing 15 years old.

Well, it is getting to be more fun.... I wiped the program. Rebooted and recreated the program clean. The bedtime button worked (only once and this has happened before) but now random lights are turning off. When I query the device it says "on" when I can see the red LED from here that it is off. There is clearly a communication problem. The isy would show "unable to communicate" when it couldn't see the device. In this case I have no idea where the problem is. Noisy lines, Insteon issues, PLM issues?

Ugh... @larryllix I have been thinking that it would be necessary to wipe the slate clean and start over. And after reading thorough all of my posts over the years (I have another name on here that some guy with a skiwear company sued me over so I can't use it, I won, he had more money so I gave up) I realize now that there were two changes about the time I started having issues with the "bedtime" program. I used to have the old smarthome 2430. When that died, no one made a replacement and Ken talked me into the insteon mini-remotes. There are two other threads here about how those never worked. In that mix was the swap from iSY to eIsy. The rest of the house works as it should as long as all of the batteries in the motion sensors are good. I just don't want to reprogram that many battery devices that require manually forcing into set mode. Several of which are the in door sensors so they have to be physically removed. Last night I did watch everything shut down, and while it did work, @Guy Lavoie is correct, the order is wonky. This is where my little human pea brain just doesn't get it. Humans are a linear serial computer. Why isn't this any more? anyway, the first and last items both were in order but the house looked like three people going to bed, lights here and there randomly turning off. I designed it pretty much as I did every Lutron or Creston my former business ever installed. Starting at the alarm keypad I walk to the bedroom turning off lights as I pass the switches. That becomes the program. Last night it looked liked I was a pachinko ball. I think tomorrow, I will invest the time to wipe the bedtime program. Save and reboot the eisy and then build it again and see what happens. I may also set up a stepped state so that when I press the bedtime button it just sets a state variable, so the fact that the button is no longer being pressed can be ruled out.

Well I did that and with the "wait's", I never get there. Worse is that each loop back to the top stops at a different place and I can't figure out why. I don't know if the button is temporary but 12 days of testing, each day the program stops at a different spot. If I press "off" please run the program with the waits so it looks like someone walking though the house. Lutron does it, Crestron does it and Isy used to do it. I gave up my Crestron/Lutron 20 years ago when Crestron released their own lighting panels. My Isy worked great for years but, since upgrading to the eIsy, nothing has worked right since. Insteon Bankruptcy was about the same time so I have no idea where the bugs are... Sorry but this is not what I want the system to do. Yes say it, because I hear it, "Give it up boomer, linear programming is dead". But sadly humans are linear systems so some may think they can outthink with a system like this, but we can't mimic human behavior without it. When A happens, do B, C, D, E and a little later do F. That is how we work. The goal is to make my house "feel natural", and it used to. Now it is just "bedtime = all off" or the system gets lost.

@oberkc, Yes I understand this, my point is that it makes troubleshooting one step harder, and if I make it false otherwise 4:01 there may be other trickle down consequences since each wait statement rechecks validity of the "IF" statement. I once thought I was pushing the limits but have since seen two much larger systems. I have a bug in my program and haven't found it yet. The bedtime button worked for years. Last night it worked except for two lights which are not related, not in any joint scenes. I waited 5 minutes, pressed off again and one light remained on.

And the Saga Continues..... @larryllix thought on variables I think is valid. If you delete a variable but don't save the changes and make sure it is deleted from all programs the variable doesn't get commented or errored out like if you delete a scene or device. I did recheck all of the programs for variables, and resaved each one, a second mystery variable was found and deleted. All of the scenes that used three way switches were deleted and rebuilt with different names. All switches that are in a scene were removed from the main program and the scene became the then action line. There are times where I want only one device in a scene to come on, and it seems to help if I turn the scene off instead of the device but.... In order to troubleshoot, I placed some random switches in the program that light up at different points in the sequence. The trigger or "state" to start the bedtime program is to press the "off" button on one of two 6 button keypads. For the past 10 days, it has: 1. Worked perfectly once. 2. For 7 days it ran half of the program and stopped. After 5 minutes I press off again and it worked. 3. For 2 days (not sequential) it did the same thing where the lights in our bedroom came on and some other random light downstairs. Both times the other light was different and when I look at the variables and programs running, it looks like what I think I should expect. Some programs like "night to early morning" are always green even though the "If" is 4:00 am so there may be something hiding in there. In my mind it should be green at 4 am only at 4:01 back to red but that is just me. Tonight I added a scene where both of the 6 button keypads are responders so they are both "off" when either one is pressed. I'll check back in next week with an update since one or two days are never enough. I almost wonder if I did something wrong in the migration from the ISY to the eISY and should just reset and start over. Unfortunately I am way too busy (and lazy) for that. I'd rather stroke the local control4 or Lutron rep a check. The other question I have is that if each wait goes back and checks the "If" state to make sure it is still true. When you press a button, how long is that press true for. I spent some time today looking for anything that could undo or reset the "off" state and came up empty. I checked the state of the button each of the 10 days and the program and both were correct (off and true). So I don't know why it stopped halfway twice. I assume it looked at the IF and declared it false but the program still showed "true" so that shouldn't be it.

@oberkc, Well there is a thinker. I did a find/replace all on a variable a while ago I had two that did the same thing, so I changed them all to one, and then deleted the variable from the table. I also noticed that "Bedtime_2" test program was back. Did not know that when you delete a program you must "save" or it is still there just not visible, it doesn't have a "red arrow" to remind me to delete, I thought "delete" was enough. Did not know that a broken variable can overload the system. Looking back at logs, there was an extended power failure while I was gone so my guess is the eisy rebooted and brought back my unsaved changes. Thank you

Got a new one tonight. House was in "away" mode, and I got home. The program didn't run so I looked in the AC and the "Away to Home" program was yellow. In the summary, there are two that say "not loaded, out of memory". The interesting thing is I do not have a program called "Bedtime_2". I built it as a test, and then deleted it after @larryllix cleared up the linear thinking issue. I rebooted at the bedtime_2 went away but bedtime still says "out of memory"?

@Ross, we looked at Hunter Douglas and they are a better quality product without a doubt. I had hoped that since the Greywind/Yooksmart had the Matter option it would work with my eISY. No such luck. When listening for matter devices they immediately appear but then are blank. I still have hope, but am stuck telling Alexa or Apple to open and close the blinds for me when the fixed schedule doesn't work.

@larryllix, I am coming to that conclusion as well. I really liked the idea of Matter, but as someone here posted "does it matter?" MK and I had a conversation about having an open standard so we can make this stuff work and his response was no more standards. Sadly every manufacturer of RF or Matter devices is catering to Amazon/Apple/Google and occasionally Samsung, we are getting left out of some great stuff. My automatic blinds are a game changer to my sleep and home A/C usage in the summer. All of my matter devices work great with the Alexa and Apple Home Kit ecosystems right out of the box. I don't understand why I can poll them with the UDI/eISY but just get "unavailable". I don't want Amazon or Apple knowing when I am home opening and closing blinds, bad enough half of my house uses Alexa for music, but I think I am going to change that. Half is already wired, so I am thinking of going wireless, non amazon and using my REQUEST Server more or building my own winmedia server since the Request can no longer stream. I am getting tired of walking in my kitchen to ads about faucets, and my watch telling me I slept in late again. Just for fun I split my matter devices between the Apple and Alexa systems to see how it affects ads and stuff that shows up at my house.

Well @larryllix and @dbwarner5 and @paulbates, the Sensi Touch Smart 2 is supposed to be Matter ready but it is only with the Samsung matter app using wifi. Epic Fail, getting returned, which is too bad I like the look way more than the ecobee. Still trying to get the ecobee to connect to the eISY, but giving up for tonight, regroup tomorrow. Thanks again.

@paulbates, I use a similar tactic, with two different VPN's, one for house and one for guest. I had to port my eisy out so that UDI could help a while ago, and I am about to close it back off and see if the Poly apps keep working. I see data going back and forth but can't see what it is. Sadly the Alexa multi room music feature is the reason I caved in the main living area, however I am considering another solution since it randomly stops the music quite often.

@larryllix and @paulbates, I ordered both a Sensi and Ecobee. I have a two zone house that is pretty well balanced so I don't need to play with vents or baffles either. Why I bought one of each ($20 cheaper and delivered today on Amazon instead of direct) was to see how much data the devices pass outside of the house. Neither is going to be connected to the Google/Alexa/Apple eco systems, and I am hopping eISY can control one of them without it checking into the host regularly. The entire reason I have an eISY is so my home can operate autonomously, but that dream appears to be fading. The new Crestron gear is starting to interest me.

@larryllix, thank you , ecobee is on the top, as I understand there is a way to disable the cloud portion. There are a couple of others that are "matter enabled" but as I found with my Greywind/zooksmart blinds, that works great for Apple/Google/Amazon, however UDI not so much. The other issue is the wall behind the thermostat was never finished from the original home and the shape of the ecobee means I have to finish, texture and repaint the wall, but it might be worth doing. No real need for remote sensors, but it looks like to get the upgraded model, the sensor is part of the deal? Back to this thread, everything is still running ok. Bedtime again took way longer than it used to but ran perfectly, Maybe it realized I am getting older so it slowed down to look like me walking through the house. The older Insteon motion sensor, is still acting up, so it is getting replaced with a new one, and last night my garage lights didn't go out and the AC said communication error. I queried the lights and they responded and turned off. I had that issue a while back and it was fixed by replacing the "CyberPower" brand of power strip on my work bench with APC.

New insteon owners don't have a thermostat and and as @larryllix noted the conversion isn't usable for me either so I am looking for a larger cooler looking thermostat that isn't tied to a paid or central service.

I didn't see this thread earlier, but I may be having similar issues so I started a new thread which may or may not be related. Here is what I have done so far. When ISY is in control, no LED on set button, when removed from ISY, red program button on, but still no response from buttons on device. Here is what I have done to troubleshoot: 1. Following @dbwarner5 advice, I attempted to reset but that didn't work since mine are both locked up. The ISY can change modes and temps but nothing else. None of the hard buttons work at all. 2. Remove the downstairs thermostat from eISY (AC) and see if the SET button would allow a reset, it still did not. I reset power to the HVAC, still same thing. 3. Tried @paulbates suggestion to pull power wire directly. I did this by pulling the face plate release and separating the circuit board from the terminal block. Image below in case someone isn't sure what I mean. Status after steps 1-3. What you see in photo below is all I get. My guess is brown out failure from multiple power surges over the last three weeks. If the moderators believe these threads are linked, please delete and/or migrate the other thread. Step 4. Attempted to reconnect to eISY with Autodiscover. Since Set button didn't work, not discoverable. Step 5. Attempted to reconnect to eISY with Insteon Address. It re-added but as three different devices this time, 1 main line, 1 cool line, and 1 heat line. This was interesting. Is this an eISY thing? Why is it different? The Cool Control and Heat Control lines (devices?) have no data but the main looks like the Upstairs unit I haven't messed with yet. Status now. I can send the time and date to the 2441TH (incorrect in previous thread). None of the buttons on the face work. Beep works. Changing temp in drop down does not, but using set point up or down does. When a change or command comes from the eISY (AC) the set let turns red. Still in C, no way to get F, not trying to be that European right now so still frustrated.

Agreed, bad insteon. One of the old motion sensors went out last night and my closet just flashed like a disco ball. Ever since selling my Lutron/Crestron dealership, I have been pretty happy with insteon, but then as I look back over the years and all the problems I have had, they always came down to two things. My programs in the iSY (HAI just worked but didn't have if then else, only if then so much harder to goof up the linear logic) or insteon. Now that both Thermostats have gone totally wonky, I am looking for all new lighting and HVAC control. The hard part is that no one has the outlets (not wall warts, but real outlets) and light switches except insteon. I am as you say "committed" to some extent. New insteon doesn't have thermostats, so today, I am trying to find a couple of matter thermostats that I can control with the AC. I would love to stay totally autonomous but the AC won't run my matter greywind blinds that Apple/Amazon and Google all find and control perfectly. My M1 can do basic lighting control, but not even as good as the Insteon hub. I don't want a thermostat that tells any of the big three I am home or not, so nest and company are off the list.

5th night update, So far so good. Thank you again for explaining the tokens so I would verify every scene I just assumed worked.

@larryllix, Last night using two computers in the bedroom to watch the logs, variables and states, I may have found it, and figured out why it is "random". Yes as both you and @dbwarner5 noted, something was corrupt. Not understanding the "token" it makes more sense now. Several of the scenes didn't work and in program code for some reason I changed directly to the device instead of fixing the scene then, but it worked so I didn't think about it. After fixing scenes (deleting and rebuilding the three that didn't work) and replacing the direct commands to scene commands in the Program "then" and "else" lines, something different happened. There was a motion sensor at the top of the stairs with a low battery that was randomly sending "On". When Bedtime was pressed, there are two different programs triggered by the motion sensor. That was stopping the bedtime run and setting the house back to "occupied". Why it took as long as an hour is still a mystery, and why I say I "may" have found it. This is a flaw in my logic where the Bedtime was setting the house to inactive, and the stairwell was resetting to active before Bedtime could complete. I added a statement to the "occupied" program to check if "$sBedtime" was = "1". Scene fixed new, battery, variable state changes moved. and so far so good. Fingers crossed since I hit the road again and my wife has early days all week. Everything done last 48 hours: 1. Elk Poly upgraded and rebooted 2. Notifications poly rebooted. 3. Three Scenes that were for three way switches, two switches one load, all deleted and rebuilt with a new name 4. Device names in programs replaced with scene names 5. Battery in motion sensor replaced. 6. Added "sBedtime=0" to Occupied check program 7. eisy backed up and restarted. Thank you both again for all the ideas and things to check.

@larryllix, I agree with @dbwarner5, great test, and I get a similar result when I used "0" and "1" rather than True/False. So I used the same methodology for my existing program, and all three lights went off, but when I changed to 5 seconds, then the lights stopped where I moved my variable "sAtomic_Test". Thank you, and I have moved my resets to the bottom on all three programs that use this, and I will try and figure out what else could have been turning the lights off 30 minutes later. And @dbwarner5, no I did not delete and rewrite the Bedtime program and since it has worked for 10 days now, I am not sure how I will know if that is the fix unless it fails again, but I will do that just in case. An interesting side note. All of my notifications related to the ELK Alarm stopped working on the 20th. That is about the same as the last time it went wonky. So not only am I going to rewrite the program and stuff it in a folder, I am going to look at all of the places I use the ELK poly. Thank you both, for the time and I will post here if I figure out what the issue is. The Elk module says it is working and needs an update so clearly I have some work to do. Update, the "notification" module wasn't working, so a quick restart and notifications work. So... I wrote the new program but left it disabled so I can see what happens tonight. Question then comes up with the "Bedtime" due to it's size, the momentary "off" starts the program, but the state of that switch never turns "on", so this is probably where I have some things really jacked up. There is a 6 button keypad on each side of the bed, one old insteon, one new, so one appears as a 5 button, one as a six. Should build a scene that activates when "bedtime" no longer applies to set both buttons to on or is that way over thinking the issue? Update 2 - I started testing every single scene and program one by one, and found that three of the "scenes" do not work at all. They are three way lights with an insteon dimmer at each end. Three others work. Turning on the master works. The slave does not set the master, and the master does not turn on the slave. In the Admin Panel, when I try to turn the scenes on and off, nothing happens. I deleted the scene and rebuilt each of them, so there is clearly something that didn't migrate right from the ISY or got corrupt along the way.

@larryllix, I understand where ISY came from, I started out with a 99 when Leviton purchased HAI and made a mess of a great product before discontinuing it. That said, the program you said will never run works just fine. In both versions, I have tested each and they both work exactly the same. While I trust you have a deeper knowledge of ISY than I do, I do like to test things before I take them as gospel. That Late_Arrival program is at least 5 years old and hasn't failed once. Yes I have searched for that variable and it is in two places. "Auto_Late_Arrival" where it is set to "1" and "Auto_Late_Arrival_Off" where it is set to "0". The same methodology is used for "Late_Night_Snack" as well, basically the opposite of arriving late, it is getting up after bedtime and leaving a bedroom. It lights the same path backwards. Again with "sSnack" at the beginning of the code, the lights go out on time in order. So again I am confused by this atomic thing since the code works just like old BASIC. The only one doing random things is the Bedtime program, and it hasn't gone wonky in 10 days now. It ran very slowly last night, taking about twice as long as normal. The place I am watching to see if I have a code error is if it is "Night" and the house isn't occupied and it becomes occupied. The value of "sOccupied", "sGuest" and "sNight" changes the lighting in the house. If no one is home, only the lights which are visible through windows on the outside of the house come on. If there are guests, a couple more lights in that section. When we come home and the house was empty a couple more lights come on and the states all adjust. Last night we came home late, logged in from the driveway and verified the house was in Night Empty mode, and I watched it changed to Occupied mode when I opened the garage door. Bedtime worked fine, so I am still stuck as to why on occasion it acts like the alarm is set or someone is moving around the house downstairs. Disabling or Removing the ELK poly may be the next step. The other thing I want to dig deeper into is the autonomy of the eisy with Poly's. Is the eisy dependent on an internet connection? Once I pay for a poly is the eisy autonomous or connected? If it is connected, why not just use Alexa or Siri which both control my Matter blinds just fine as well? I started with HAI and moved to the ISY because I wanted to build an "Autonomous" smart house, not a "Connected" house dependent on an outside service. One other possibility is that the internet connection was not working when the "bedtime" program went wonky. All of this goes back to my original thread about wanting the logs to see what programs run when.

@larryllix, and @dbwarner5 I too mark all of my variables with an "s" or "i" prefix as @dbwarner5 saw in the "Auto_Late_Arrival" program that started this part of the discussion. After reading @dbwarner5 other post, about atomic and re-evaluation, I will agree like the others, with a IT degree and programming background, this is odd logic. It implies that I should remove the waits and just use other programs to delay the lights turning off like old BASIC subroutines. If UDI chose to do this "atomic" re-evaluation at each point for some reason, that is their choice. It seems like a lot of extra work for UDI to make this happen since I don't think this is a core Linux feature. The part that really throws it off is that both programs below do exactly the same thing except for when the $sLate_Arrival is changed to "0". The lights go off +-2 minutes of the program no matter where I put the state change. Either way this isn't helping find the randomness problem I have with the bedtime program that works 98% of the time. Auto Late Arrival Auto Off - [ID 0010][Parent 0001] If $sLate_Arrival is 1 Then Wait 10 minutes $sLate_Arrival = 0 Set 'Garage Drive Spots' Off Wait 20 minutes Set 'Kitchen Under Cabinet' Off Wait 10 minutes Set 'Downstairs Office Lamp' Off Auto Late Arrival Auto Off - [ID 0010][Parent 0001] If $sLate_Arrival is 1 Then Wait 10 minutes Set 'Garage Drive Spots' Off Wait 20 minutes Set 'Kitchen Under Cabinet' Off Wait 10 minutes Set 'Downstairs Office Lamp' Off $sLate_Arrival = 0