upstatemike

Any estimate on when IES will be ready to support this release?

I just printed an updated copy of my topoology (got it shrunk down to 24 pages) and would also like to print out my programs but I don't see any print or export options available. How is everybody printing out their programs?

If Control 'kitchen Light' is switched On Then Set Scene 'Kitchen light' On Else -No Actions- Create a scene called "Kitchen light" and put the Kitchen Light switch into it as a responder. Make the ramp and level for the scene the same as the local settings for the Kitchen light switch. When the switch is off and you turn it on the local settings will apply. The scene setting will be applied immediately after but you won't see anything because the scene setting is the same as the already active local setting. When the switch is On at a different level due to the double tap scene a single tap will again initiate the Kitchen light scene and restore things to normal.

What if you create a scene that duplicates the manual setting and have it triggered by by pressing the switch once? In normal operation the switch would get set twice (once manually and once by the scene being triggered) but you would not see any difference. When the switch is set to any other scene setting, a single press would bring it back to normal.

For one thing I think they operate in a different frequency range.

I would make the default level for the switch 50% with a moderate ramp rate of 2 seconds. I would then create a scene with the light at 100% and a ramp rate of 2 seconds. Change your program to trigger during the daytime and have it activate the 100% brightness scene.

The only thing missing in this example is some code to disable the timer program whenever the mud room light is turned on manually from the switch, and enabled again when the switch is turned off.

I am planning to use this with "Control" triggers where I expect the trigger to be a switch being turned On but also want to allow for an accidental double tapping of the switch Fast On.

Thanks Darrell. For some reason I failed to notice that there was another drop down menu under "is". Pretty obvious!

Sorry if this is already covered in an earlier post but I couldn't find it. I need to test for a condition where a light is "NOT Off", in other words "On at any level". It looks like just using On only works if the light is On at 100%. How do I test if a light is "On at any level" or "NOT Off"?

I don't know the answer but I got one a while back for my Birthday that I have not had time to set up yet. I'll be giving it a try in the near future (maybe even this weekend.) I know the touch screen is going to be officially supported in a future ISY software release but I'm not sure how well they are going to play together in the mean time.

I think you might find that would be problematic since there are times in the GUI that you might need to operate a switch independently regardless of its scene associations. Remember the GUI is an admin environment so it needs to be able to do stuff that you might not do in day-to-day physical operation of the switches.

I have 175 devices and no issues. I don't think your problem is due to the number of devices.

Just to confirm... You used option 1 to delete existing links when you added your devices to the ISY right? Reason I ask is you say things get messed up when you factory reset your devices and then restore the links. If you told the ISY to retain Houselinc information when you added the devices then any incompatible data would have gotten added to the ISY database and that data will always get put back into your Insteon devices when you do a restore. Maybe that is not the issue you are having but the symptoms sound like what would happen if HouseLinc data was retained in your Insteon modules.

Option 1 will ensure no HouseLinc stuff gets left in your device tables and stored in your ISY to haunt you later.

Maybe Jon (author of the current Insteon Plugin for Homeseer) will be able to convince Rich to do a Homeseer supported ISY plugin.

Jim- I'm curious how you are currently managing your device to device links with Homeseer? Are you also using something like PowerHome? Are you trying to manually tap-tap manage them? I ask because I think this is the weak part of the current Homeseer plugin strategy. Homeseer does not want to provide a general tool for managing the Insteon environment and yet they let their plugin blunder around in the link tables of individual Insteon devices causing potential conflicts with whatever is used to manage the device to device link structure. Managing your environment with an ISY and then using an ISY plugin as the gateway from Homeseer to Insteon would likely solve those problems but would the cost of developing such a plugin be of sufficient benefit to UDI for it to be worth pursuing? Even if you and some others would purchase an ISY based on the availability of this plugin, how many other Homeseer/Insteon folks would be willing to do so? Also how would such an animal work? Homeseer maintains a device database that needs to be coordinated with the ISY device database. I know I make changes to my Insteon environment at least once a week... how much of a pain is it going to be to re-sync the two system's device tables that often? How much editing of Homeseer scripts and events will have to happen each time you change devices around with your ISY? (or any other link management tool) Also what is the value added from having a Homeseer plugin? Once you have an ISY, you will want to put any scheduled or sunrise/sunset Insteon stuff directly into the ISY. If you want to trigger from motion sensors, you can use X10 translation for X10 RF stuff or the existing Elk M1/ISY integration for hard wired detectors. Putting Homeseer into the middle of either of these situations does not add any value. If you have other triggers interfaced to Homeseer you can easily use an X10 transmission or an Elk M1 rule to facilitate Insteon operation. There is perhaps some value in being able to trigger Homeseer events with Insteon triggers, but I think there is already a way to do that if you use the Elk M1 interface. A direct ISY plugin might make this a little more direct but is it really worth the significant development and support effort from UDI as well as the added complexity to the end user of keeping the two systems in sync? I'm not saying there is no case to be made for an ISY plugin for Homeseer, but I think some of these things need to be analyzed before UDI can justify the development and support effort. Maybe it would be better if a third party were to take this on?

I probably made it more "long and winding " than it needed to be but I came out with a better understanding of how things work. I learned (or finally came to understand) that: 1- A factory reset does not = zeroing out the registers of an Insteon device, but rather it means setting the first byte to 00 or 22. Knowing this will reduce confusion when viewing a device link table with some kind of troubleshooting utility. (Hopefully I will not need to do this anymore anyway.) 2- Foreign links that are preserved by using the third option when creating a device MAY NOT BE DISPLYED IN THE ISY if the link is not understood, but WILL always be written back to the device during a restore. Knowing this makes it clear why problems might not get fixed by doing a factory reset and then restore... you might be restoring an invisble problem link! 3- Oddball links can cause a number of problems that you might not expect to be link related including "self activation" triggered by random traffic or intermittent communication errors. 4- If you need to use option 3 to discover your existing topology and get it into your ISY, you may want to print the topology and use it as a guide to remove and re-install your devices using option 1 (delete existing links) at some point, to ensure you have a clean Insteon environment. If your environment is small enough, it is better to use option 1 and do a clean install from the start. 5- The idea of preserving existing links for coexistance with unsupported devices sounded good in theory but now I have to back away from it as a priority since my own experience has shown me what issues it can raise. Clearly I was wrong in promoting that approach. 6- Don't go chasing theories about X10 or signal strength, or whatever, until you try removing the device and re-installing it cleanly using option 1. This should be the first step to set a baseline in any troubleshooting situation. The second step should be to do this with all devices that are a Controller of the device that is giving you trouble. Chances are good that you won't need a third step.

I have had no further problems since removing and re-adding the switches and keypad on Friday using the "remove existing links" option. Going forward I will make this my 1st step in troubleshooting problems and eventually I will perform this procedure on all of my remaining 150 devices to ensure that I maintain a stable Insteon environment. Now that these mystery problems are behind me I can finally move forward with trying out my new Insteon touch screen!

Yes I agree. Manual linking is not only harder, but if things don't go right you can be left with broken links and no way to see what really happened. Over time I am eventually going to remove and re-install all of my devices in the ISY to ensure no old manual links are gumming up the works. It would have been better to do that to start with but my Insteon installation is just too large to crash it all and rebuild it from scratch at one time. Now that you have it working, don't forget to back up your ISY. I do that after adding any new devices or making any other major change.

Steve- I would suggest the following: Since you only have 4 switches I would make note of the Insteon addresses on them and then remove them from the ISY. Add them back by selecting new device and entering the Insteon address for each. Be sure to use the default selection to "remove existing links" to ensure your manual linking is cleared from the switches memory. Create your 2 scenes for your 3 way setups (or use the ones you have if they already exist.) Add each switch to the scene it belongs to AS A CONTROLLER of the scene. (Putting 2 switches in a scene as controllers is the same as cross linking them). Hopefully this will get you going.

Yes I think we did discuss situations where ISY needed to co-exist with unsupported Insteon devices. Perhaps a checkbox where you can choose to clear unsupported links or not when you start a restore? Or a different "Clear Device" menu option that is specifically meant to clear all links, known and unkown, just like a factory reset? Anyway, I just deleted and re-installed the entire 3rd floor/attic area. Hopefully this will end those issues once and for all.

OK this cleaned things up. The key to the puzzle was learning that Restore Device will put back links that are not represented in the ISY GUI. This explains why my cycles of Factory Reset/Restore Device was not getting me anywhere. I am now going to apply this to my attic light problem to see if I can solve that once and for all. I will delete the keypad and all 17 associated switches and add them back using option 1. Fortunately I have my 21 pages of topology to refer to, so re-entering everything should not be that bad.

Thanks Michel- I will try doing that with these devices and see if it resolves my problem. The only truly painful part will be the ControLinc. Question: If option 1 will clean the junk out of a switch programmatically, can't the device restore function be made to do the same thing? Maybe restore should automatically delete and then add back a device using the option 1 code?

No amount of factory resetting is resulting in an empty link table for some reason. I can manually delete the individual links that should not be in the switch and get things working correctly. For some reason though, doing a restore on the switch from ISY will add back the incorrect links. (I checked again to make sure these links are not reflected in the administrative console.) So now I am wondering if some old scenes that I have deleted are coming back to haunt me? Do I need to reset and restore the PLM? I think I will leave it alone for a couple of days and then take a fresh look.