TexMike

For me it was eliminating the AC-DC-AC-DC and eliminating the need and potential failure of the wall-wart AC-DC converter. Plus small form factor.

Thanks again and I'll update when the little UPS arrives and I've tested.

Thanks, much food for thought as usual from you. One more question, if you don't mind, answer at your leisure, Amazon is predicting May 3 for the UPS delivery. When I install the UPS, I will have the opposite problem, ISY will be up but all powered devices and sensors will be offline. Any gotchas to be aware of in that scenario? Thanks, Mike

Yes, exactly. If I'm home I know what needs to be done, but if gone I could tell someone to open/close some things. If all away I would need to disable my away mode to prevent unwanted conditions. When I get the UPS it won't be such an issue, but it's also a curiosity since I can't figure out how to detect the uninitialized status.

Exactly, but I'm looking for a way to tell which sensors have not been initialized and still have no status.

Storms rolled through last night causing crazy power issues. Looks like it's time to get https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WLD32RP/?coliid=I3TR56MLH2SZLS&colid=26A7L23SNB5ML&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it mentioned in https://forum.universal-devices.com/topic/29351-no-lights-on-isy/ Additionally, does anyone know how to tell when a sensor has no status from a program? Specifically a battery operated Z-Wave open close sensor will have no status after reboot. I tried not on and not off and that doesn't work. Not responding doesn't work and I didn't expect it to on a battery operated device. Any way to tell from a program? Thanks, Mike

Thanks, good to know what was going on.

I got many alerts last night from ecobee bouncing up and down. Had to reauthorize ecobee and Ring this morning to get them back online.

No remotes for iBlinds and as a matter of fact there is no manual control. The price is pretty good on the kits, but that's one downside, only way to control after retrofit is through Z-Wave.

Tested several times and most of the time all 4 are nearly synchronized, scene or program. Roughly 20% of the time one is late, but not the same one every time, so again I think Z-Wave traffic causes the delay. If it happens too often and bugs me, I could go with delays for a cascade effect. I know new Insteon devices are dual band, but I guess I had a bias against power line signals from my X-10 experience and decided to go Z-Wave, maybe the wrong choice, but sort of committed now.

Thanks for the clarifications. So if I understand correctly, for purposes like controlling four blinds together I can create a scene for simplicity, but there is no real advantage as far as response time or anything else. Assuming as in my case, all are Z-Wave. Thanks, Mike

Thanks @Teken. I thought only Insteon supported direct linking, i.e., the scene being stored in the device. Doesn't a scene containing Z-Wave devices still have to go through a controller (ISY)? Or I'm I misunderstanding?

Background: I got my ISY a few years ago to support my legacy X-10 devices and decided to use Z-Wave for all new devices. Currently have about a dozen X-10 devices that still work fine for basic functions and have added about 30 Z-Wave devices. During my initial learning curve, I took a cursory look at scenes and thought it was targeted at Insteon and never looked back. I've been able to do everything I've wanted in programs. I recently got four iBlinds Z-Wave blind controllers and because I always want to open/close them together, I put them in a scene and it works great. Sometimes they operate nearly simultaneously, other times not, I assume based on Z-Wave traffic. This got me to thinking if I should be using scenes more and would like pros/cons from those with more experience. Will a scene be more responsive versus a program issuing the same commands? Other pros/cons for using scenes for non-Insteon devices? Thanks, Mike

There seems to be a lot of variability in results for Android. I gave up and just used WiFi presence detection. Locative geofence works well on the kids iPhones. Looking back I should have done testing with my wife's Pixel 3, it may have just been issues with my older Moto X4.

I think this is a dead app, see Michel said they were looking at a replacement, but no news since. You may also be interested in

Yes, I think that's mentioned in the Wiki. It hasn't been a problem for me that I know of. Have you tried using multiple variables to get around the restriction?

In the portal you define a motion detected setting for each value of the variable.

@asbrilAh yes, I remember reading some of your posts about be variable challenged. The Wiki covers all the steps in detail and I'll try to summarize below. You only need one variable, I call mine Alexaspeak and use 1 for front door unlocked, 3 for garage door open, etc. I have about 25. Then go into portal and expose the variable to Alexa as a motion sensor. Then create an Alexa routine where motion detected = 1 and action is Alexa says "The front door is unlocked", rinse and repeat for different variable values. Then you can use ISY's fantastic logic to set the variable, for example I only want Alexa to announce the garage door is open during certain hours. Below are the programs used to check the garage door at sunset. Hope it helps. GD open at sunset - [ID 0007][Parent 0004] If Time is Sunset And 'GD Sensor' Status is On Then Wait 10 minutes Run Program 'Recheck GD after wait' (If) Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') Recheck GD after wait - [ID 0005][Parent 0004][Not Enabled] If 'GD Sensor' Status is On Then $AlexaSpeak = 3 Send Notification to 'SMS Mike' content 'GD open at night' Send Notification to 'SMS Karen' content 'GD open at night' Wait 5 seconds $AlexaSpeak = 0 Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')

I also use both and recently implemented a kludgy way to get Alexa to turn guard off since it can't be done in a routine. I have Alexa say "hey google repeat after me alexa guard off" as part of my arriving home program. Not elegant, but it works. @asbril see this wiki on setting up Alexa says, it's not that difficult once you get the hang of it. https://wiki.universal-devices.com/index.php?title=ISY_Portal_Amazon_Echo_Integration_V3 I haven't found a similar way to get Google home to make announcements which is one of the reasons I continue to use both.

It sets the volume for everything, you could set volume, make announcement, then set it back. I also use some time based routines to set volume throughout the day.

It's there, I use it in some of my announcements including my "intruder alert" notification at max volume.

In your Alexa routine that makes the announcement you can set volume before the Alexa says command.

@Michel Kohanim I know things are hectic now after the Polisy release, but at some point can we start having a changelog for Polisy like we do for ISY. Alway nice to know what's being fixed and when new features are rolled out. Thanks, Mike

Turns out the .txt file is tab delimited and imports just fine into a Google sheet.

I have moved away from Micro$oft Office and find I can do most of what I need with Google Docs. However, I'm no longer able to analyze an ISY log file. I can generate a .txt log file, but it is not as easy to analyze as a spreadsheet. I have the Excel viewer installed, but when I try to send the log file to Excel it opens the viewer, but doesn't populate. I assume this is because the export process want to run a macro that is not supported in the viewer. Is there a way to export the log to an Excel file so I can analyze with the Excel viewer or Google Sheets? Thanks, Mike