gregkinney

Are the programs enabled?

Sure @IndyMike, here's the rundown of how I fixed this issue: I had three devices stop communicating consistently. Sometimes they would work when I tried to operate them from the admin, sometimes they wouldn't. Two of them were on/off modules in the theater closet and had gotten inadvertently plugged into a UPS so that was an easy fix. I unplugged them from the UPS and plugged them into the wall, then went ahead and put the UPS on a Filterlinc to be safe. The third was a 2477d dimmer switch in our home office. I ordered the Filterlinc and while I was waiting for it to arrive, I had learned that UPS's were notorious for noise. There is a UPS in our home office so I unplugged it and then plugged the PC that was plugged into the UPS straight into the wall. Still had inconsistent commuinication with the 2477d. I then unplugged everything in the room and then had consistent communication with the 2477d. After that, it was a matter of plugging things back in one at a time and testing until I found the culprit which was the PC. A few days later, the Filterlinc arrived and I plugged the PC into the UPS and plugged the UPS into the Filterlinc and voila! All is well now.

Just wanted to report back that I finally received my Powerline Noise Filter and I have fixed the issue. First, I misunderstood how UPS's contribute to noise. I thought that noise was created only if the Insteon device was plugged into a UPS, not simply having a UPS on the circuit. This circuit does have a UPS. Strangely, that wasn't it. It was a PC. For anyone reading, this PC has been plugged in for years with no changes. As @Michel Kohanim said in a similar forum post, "I used to be able to run 5 miles a day and do 15 pull ups. As I aged, things rapidly deteriorated. The same is true for electronics especially power related, but with one difference: they start creating noise. So, please never ever count on 'things used to work for n years'." Thanks everyone for your help.

Currently investigating into the potential noise issue. Is it likely something that's on the same circuit as the offending Insteon device? Or could the noise be coming from a different circuit breaker?

I experienced other issues last night. I would turn off a scene in a room and 5 of the 6 lights would turn off and one would stay on. The status of that light would say "off" but the light would be on. It's all very intermittent. I'm going to unplug the HDHomeRun and the new LED grow lights and do some testing today. Also the new PLM should be here next week. Again, I'm replacing that to be proactive, I understand it's likely a noise issue. Regarding the blinking red light on the original suspect wall dimmer: it would blink red a handful of times when I turned it on or off by hand - nothing to do with the 4 tap test. Also very intermittent. Sometimes it would blink red and sometimes it would not blink red. I found this post where @Brian H says that the blinking red light means a communication error, likely to noise. That seems to be the consensus here so that's where I'm going to start.

I might not completely understand the 4 tap test so I did it two ways, hopefully someone can teach me. I did the 4 tap test from an on/off module near the PLM. The on/off module did the chirp per second and I saw a nearby device flashing red, however, the PLM showed no difference. And, in case I misunderstood the exercise, I went to the room with the offending wall dimmer and did the 4 tap test on a nearby lamplinc. The lamplinc chirped and a nearby on/off module flashed red but the offending wall dimmer did nothing. Additionally, I turned the offending wall dimmer on and then off, and after it was turned off, the red light flashed a handful of times and then stopped.

Ok well then, the plot thickens. I tried the 4 tap test and nothing happened. The PLM made the audible chirping sound once per second, but regarding other Insteon devices: no lights blinked, no lights brightened, no changes. I have probably 12 dual band devices within 20 ft of the PLM, two of which are around 3ft from it.

Everything in my home is dual band. I'm racking my brain for any new sources of noise. I've never had issues with signal so I've never had to explore this path before so I'm not exactly sure what the offending devices are. I'm assuming UPS, appliances, motors. I replaced my AirTV with an HDHomeRun recently. These devices takes local channels from an antenna and streams them through the house via the Internet. But it's not new - I just replaced one box with a different brand that does the same thing. My wife added some grow lights in the garage for her Spring plants, but they are just 110v LED shop lights, nothing special. I can understand the two on/off modules acting up as they are plugged into an extension cord, but it's the hard wired Insteon 2477d wall dimmer that's really throwing me. That has been there for 8 years without one single issue. And even then, I replaced it and had the same issues with the new (used) wall dimmer. With all of that said, I've had zero problems the last 72 hours. It's been problems every day for 10 days, and then no issues for the last 3 days. I'm an overkill guy so I'm still going to replace my PLM. It's about 6 years old and is the one that goes bad so I would rather be proactive than reactive. I guess the next step is to sit and wait and if it keeps happening, start down the noise rabbit hole. Thank all of you for your time.

@paulbates and @Techman thanks for the help. I can't think of any new electronics I have added. The PLM is 6+ years old so I'm hoping it's as easy as replacing that. I have ordered a new one from Insteon so I'll get that replaced and fingers crossed it fixes the issue.

All of the sudden I'm getting "Cannot Communicate With..." on two on/off modules. Plus one dimmer switch in my wall is not turning on or off with the scene and program. I replaced the dimmer switch with a new one and the behavior did not change. Hundreds of Insteon devices with my Polisy. Had it for 6-7 years, no recent changes. Any thoughts?

@apostolakisl very interesting. I also use nodelink. Wonder if that's what it was for me.

I was able to fix the problem by upgrading to PG3X. Well, at least so far. 3 days now and no disconnects.

Just go to each device and query it in the admin console and see if the status changes from OFF to ON (if they are indeed still on).

After reading through these posts, it seems there are a couple front runners for replacement - Yolink and Ratgdo with Ratgdo being preferred. Can someone please offer a comparison of the pros and cons of each and why Ratgdo seems to be preferred?

@Kentinada What happens if you query the devices?

@PB11 Did you start a ticket? Please do so hopefully something gets done about this.

Thought I would share my updated ticket: Michel Kohanim replied 22 minutes ago Hi Greg, the first thing you need to do is to disable HA for a day and see whether or not you still get these issues. As far as I remember, your HA was bombarding IoX with traffic. Although we may have fixed the crash, it does not mean that Polisy can handle the traffic. View less! Greg Kinney replied 31 minutes ago Yes the last runtimes are correct. Yes I am on 5.7.1. When I was on 5.7.0 and I would get a disconnect/reconnect notice on my phone from the UD app, it would be 5-10 minutes before any devices would respond because it was loading everything (I assume it had restarted or crashed). Now on 5.7.1, when I get a disconnect/reconnect notice, my devices are still immediately responsive. So if it's a network related issue, is that on my end or on your end? View less! Michel Kohanim replied 56 minutes ago Thanks Greg. So, the last/next runtimes are correct? If so, the issue is network related. What's your IoX version? Is it really 5.7.1?

I'm not confident I'm having serious issues anymore. Before updating to 5.7.1, I would notice 2-4 crashes per day and I would confirm it indeed was crashing because it would be 5-10 minutes before things would respond again. After updating to 5.7.1, I'm getting notifications that it has disconnected and reconnected 1-2 times per day, however, I don't think it is crashing this time. Things are immediately responding after I get the notifications. It might be exactly what Michel said - that it just loses connectivity with the portal temporarily. So we might be having different issues, I'm not sure. Are you on 5.7.1?

Michel said he was making changes on the ISY side to be able to handle HA so I would keep to that logic at the moment. I'm excited for you to share all of the above with them in your ticket. Please let me know what happens, I'm going to wait to do anything until you hopefully get somewhere with the above info.

Please report back and let me know if it helped 🤞

I did not validate anything with my logs so I don't know.

Yes, I have had the same issue. Below is the text from my ticket a couple weeks ago. It was supposedly fixed in 5.7.1, however, I am still having disconnections. I have opened another ticket but Michel thinks that it's just portal network connectivity. Michel Kohanim replied 17 days ago Hi Greg, Recent updates to Home Assistant have caused dramatic bombardment from HA to Polisy causing it to either crash or consider it DOS attack. We are currently working on a solution that will handle these attacks more gracefully. We'll hopefully have a solution by the end of the week. View more! Greg Kinney replied 17 days ago Yes I have Home Assistant Michel Kohanim replied 17 days ago Hi Greg, do you have any of the following: 1. Home Assistant 2. Home Bridge 3. ELK or Harmony Node servers

I've never done it so this is all theoretical, but you could schedule a python script to run that would SSH into the Polisy and execute that command line. This could be done via a PC that is kept on 24/7 or through a Raspberry Pi.

Thank you @dbwarner5 for confirming that is the best way to go. That is the path that I chose and it's working great. @PB11 basically, each variable has an initial value for when IoX starts up. Since my $evening variable is 0 with the exception of sunset to 10pm, I have it's initial value set at 0. So if, and when, IoX reboots, it will load this value of 0. The problem I was having was if that reboot happened from the hours of sunset to 10pm, then the $evening variable was being loaded as a value of 0, which would be incorrect. I changed my program similar to @dbwarner5's above so when the variable changes to 1 during evening time, it also changes it's initial value to 1. This way, if IoX reboots during this time period, it will be loaded as a value of 1. Then, at 10pm, when I tell the variable to go back to 0, I also change it's initlal value to 0 so that if IoX reboots, it will load the correct value of 0.

Thank you both for the suggestions. @PB11 I didn't know the functionality of specifying a program to run at startup existed, that's a great idea. @BamBamF16 setting the init value at the same time - I've been thinking through the logic and I think it would work perfectly. Brilliant idea - I think that's what I'm going to try. I hope someone else chimes in who has experience with either of these ideas to determine if one is better than the other.