upstatemike

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.

I thought of that but the LEDs on the switch confirm when the button is in and when it is released. I just looked at the link table of the entry switch using PowerHome and it is definitely a mess. I am now looking for some confirmation that a factory reset is supposed to completely clear the link table? I am going to clear the switch again and then take another look at the link table before restoring the switch.

While I am waiting to see what happens with the Attic lights I need to troubleshoot another issue. In this configuration I have 4 switches, 3 lamps, a controllinc, and 3 scenes. I will refer to the switches as switch 3, switch 4, switch 5, and entry switch. The scenes are: controlinc button 5 scene, switch 3 scene, switch and switch 5 scene. Contrlinc button 5 scene is controlled by controlinc button 5 AND entry switch. This scene controls all switches and lamps. Switch 3 scene is controlled by switch 3 AND switch 4. It controls switch 3, switch 4, and the lamps. Switch 5 scene is controlled by switch 5. It controls switch 4 as a responder only. (Switch 4 does not control switch 5.) PROBLEM: All switches work as expected EXCEPT switch 4. Switch 4 should act exactly the same as swithc 3 and control the switch 3 group. This should only operate switch 3, switch 4, and the lamps. INSTEAD, switch 4 acts like it is operating the controlinc button 5 scene because ALL lights and lamps operate when switch 4 is pressed. I have reviewed the associations within ISY to confirm that I have not overlooked any links. I have restored switch 4 to make sure it has a clean link table. I have restored switch 5 and entry switch to ensure no stray responder links remain in their tables. Despite these steps, switch 4 still operated all the lights and lamps. I did a factory reset of entry switch and then restored it again (just to be really really sure there is not responder link for switch 4 still in it). Entry switch still goes on when I operate switch 4! What else can I do to troubleshoot this? Clearly there are links persisting even through a factory reset!

It has now been 24 hours with the keypad disabled using the airgap switch. No lights have turned themselves on during this period. I am going to restore power to the keypad now and see what happens.

Good idea. I'll disable it tomorrow and see if I can go a couple of days without the lights coming on.

OK. At 20:42 the attic lights turned on by themelves. The ISY has been unplugged for the last 23 1/2 hours so I guess it is off the hook for being the cause. Only 2 of the 7 linked switches came on but the Keypadlinc button D LED DID light up. All devices have been through a factory reset so it should not be related to X10 traffic. My best guess at this point would be that a demon or poltergeist is actually pressing buttons in the attic to turn these lights on. Tomorrow I am going to replace the keypadlinc to see if that does anything.

Yes the Stargate listens to the powerline and waits until it is clear before transmitting. It does not understand Insteon but will see it as line noise and will avoid collisions with Insteon traffic. To learn more about Stargate check out jdstechnologies.com ISY is now unplugged.

I'll unplug the ISY shortly and then we will see. I don't think we have enough information for a diagnosis yet, but maybe by tomorrow we will know what needs to be done.

Hardwired motion sensor connected to Stargate triggers an X10 ON from Stargate based on rules (time of day, is the light set to stay on and ignore motion, etc.) I have tried to manually trigger the switches with X10 commands but have not been able to reproduce the problem. I do not think any X10 address is set in any of these devices, but only a peek at the switch's local settings can confirm that 100% (An invalid value in the X10 register could produce unpredictable results from general X10 traffic without responding consistently to any specific X10 command.)

No, stargate should not be able to control these switches. It is X10 only and there should not be any X10 address in these switches at this point. (I need to find a tool that will let me confirm this as I have come to distrust the factory reset procedure). There are no other Insteon controllers. PowerHome is disbled and the PLC is unplugged. I have not set up my touch screen yet so it is not a factor. My Elk panel is not yet installed. I need the evening actions to work today so I will power the ISY off around 10PM and leave it off for 24 hours, or until I get an indication that the attic lights have turned on by themselves (whichever comes first).

The attic lights went on again at 7:18 this morning (per the Stargate log) ISY did NOT reflect that they had turnrd on. All of the attic lights turned on even though I had removed all but one of them from the scene. The ones removed are NOT part of any other scene. The keypadlinc button LED is NOT on. Even though I did a factory reset on these switches, they are acting like they are still linked to each other somehow. This is an example of where I wish I had a way to query the local X10 address to confirm that there is not one set in these switches (or if there is, what address it is). I may have to shut off the ISY for 24 hours to see if the switches still go on by themselves. I also had another pair of linked switches in another area turn on yesterday evening.

No. All Keypadlincs are 1.4 Driveway and mailbox are relay switches.

1 program ran at 17:44 yesterday. It was: Mailbox On If Time is Sunset + 20 minutes Then Set Scene 'Mailbox Scene' On Else -No Actions- The mailbox scene has the following devices in it: Laundry Keypad Button C Outside Driveway Display Outside Mailbox Light All logged events at 17:44 yesterday- Scene:Mailbox Scene On 255 2/9/08 17:44 Scheduler Log Laundry Keypad Btn C Status 100% 2/9/08 17:44 System Log Outside Driveway Display Status 100% 2/9/08 17:44 System Log Outside Mailbox Light Status 100% 2/9/08 17:44 System Log Scene:Butler Keypad Grp D On 255 2/9/08 17:44 Scheduler Log Scene:Butler Keypad Grp D On 255 2/9/08 17:44 Scheduler Log So now I will watch for the next activiation and see if any of this information is common to more than one event.

I have reviewed the topology and I don't see anything unusual. The attic switches are only associated to the third floor keypad button D scene and nothing else. I am simplifying things by removing all but one attic light from the scene so it is now simply 1 keypadlinc button and one switch. (This will save me electricity if it goes on in the middle of the night until I can get this resolved).

I checked the Elk configuration and all is blank. According to the Stargate log, the last time the attic group went on was 17:44 yesterday. (Stargate is monitoring via hardwire connection to the loads so there is no interaction between it and ISY). The ISY log shows that the D button scene in the butler pantry keypad activated at 17:44. This scene is normally activated by a program triggered from a motion sensor. It is in a high traffic area and probably cycles 15-20 times per hour. It is interesting to note that the attic scene that is giving me a problem is 3rd floor keypad button D but I'm not sure that it being the same button on both keypads has any significance. I would also need to see a second log entry relating the two scenes before drawing any conclusions. Here is the ISY log for that time window: Scene:Butler Keypad Grp D On 255 2/9/08 17:44 Scheduler Log Scene:Butler Keypad Grp D On 255 2/9/08 17:44 Scheduler Log Could there be a problem with the PLM link table such that group 84 (the problem scene) has some junk in it? Perhaps deleting the scene or restoring the entire PLM to clean things up?

I have factory reset everything and reloaded the keypad and all of the switches but it is still happening. I guess the next step will be to remove all but the keypad and 1 switch from the scene. If that 1 switch continues to go on then I will have narrowed it down to the keypad or the ISY as the source.

I planned my PLM install in advance of getting my ISY and so far I have not had any communication problems. I installed two accesspoints at the breaker panel so I have coupling and signals repeated on both legs right at the panel. My PLM is about a hundred feet from the breaker panel on a dedicated circuit that only feeds the single outlet that the PLM is plugged into. The Accesspoints repeat everything and ensure that signals from distant devices are nice and strong going into the dedicated PLM circuit so nothing gets missed.

The KeypadLinc is a version 1.4 and the links look pretty clean. Button D (keypad group 6) is linked to the correct switches plus ISY group 84. The switches linked to the scene have some odd links in tyheir tales. They are linked to each other in switch group 0/button 1, but also have several duplicate links with no level or ramp values that are listed as buttons -1, -2 etc. Maybe these are old links flagged as unused? In any case, restoring these switches does not remove these ghost links so I will probably delete the devices and then add them back so that the link tables can be re-written from scratch. This is probably not related to my problem however since the entire scene goes on by itself. My next step is to remove the devices from the scene (delete the scene) and start monitoring the switches independently.

That might fix it but it won't help me understand why it broke... I am scanning the raw link tables of the switches now with PowerHome to see exactly what is in there. Next I will remove all the devices from the group and watch them separately for any unexpected activation. Later in the week I will create the group again and see if I still have the problem.

Rand A Stargate is a Home Automation Controller. You can get details about it at http://www.jdstechnologies.com/ or at Coccoontech. Briefly it is a hardware based controller that has been around for a long time but still has a lot more features than most modern controllers. I continue to use it because it does a lot of things that the Elk can't although I plan to use the Elk for fire, security, and motion controlled lights.