slimypizza

Looking for a little help. A simple scene to turn on/off the kitchen light no longer works when speaking to Alexa. It’s a scene consisting of a 3-way switch arrangement. Worked fine for a couple of years but now Alexa says “Kitchen doesn’t support that” when we say “Alexa turn on the kitchen light”. Same thing if trying to verbally turn it off. I can control the light just fine from the ISY admin console page or manually. I have removed and the added the scene/device from alexa.amazon.com. This happened out of the blue. No updates or additions to the network. Any ideas or advice on how to restore this functionality – the ability to control the kitchen light via spoken command? Thanks.

This (flashing red light and error mode) has happened to me every time I've ventured to try out ver 5.x and then gone back to v4.x. My solution each time was to pull the memory card from my IYS994i, reformat it, and then reinsert and reinstall v4.x. It's a pain.

Can you VPN into your home network from your office? If so you can access your ISY that way and your employer doesn’t have to support Java.

It said dimmable on the box. I made sure of that when I bought it. I agree a non-dimming bulb might cause issues but this wasn't the case. Like you said, it could have been just a bad bulb.

I’m using 2457 dimming lamp modules. It has to be the bulb. The problem moved from one lamp to the other when I swapped bulbs and then disappeared completely when I put a different bulb in.

I have two couch lamps (one on either side of the sofa). One of the LEDs had begun to flicker (yea these don’t last 20 years like they say) so I bought a 100w replacement bulb, Cree, soft light, dimmable. After replacing the bulb I gave Alexa commands to test turning the lamps on to check brightness, hue, etc. Looked good so I had Alexa turn the lamps off. Then, a few seconds later, the lamp with the new bulb came back on. That’s strange. I told Alexa to turn it off and then the same thing happened again. Alexa and I repeated this several times. Then I switched the bulb to the other lamp. Then that lamp started acting the same way, coming on a few seconds after turning it off. Seeing the odd behavior was isolated to the new bulb, I replaced that bulb with a 100w soft light, Philips LED bulb and all was well again. Has anyone heard of such behavior with a Cree bulb? FYI, the bulb I replaced was also a Cree but larger and had been in the lamp a couple of years. The new Cree was a 100w but an overall smaller bulb (both have an A19 base). I guess I’ll stick with Philips from now on. I'll be taking the Cree LED back to HD.

Thanks oberkc. I got it sorted out now thanks to you and to Brad at Universal Devices. In my rush to get things back to order here, I forgot the need to add a spoken for each device. Programs were intact but the devices were not named and so they were not detected by the Alexa app. Your comments and screen shot were much appreciated.

I do not see a red X next to each device in Portal. In fact, while in Portal, the only place I see my devices listed is when I go to: Select Tool/Connectivity/Amazon Echo and then got to Device and then the My device drop down menu. This is where one would add Spokens and there are no red X’s. Does this indicate something wrong with my Portal setup? To further troubleshoot, I created a new profile for my Alexa app and enabled the ISY V3 skill. Then I had Alexa discover new devices but it found nothing. I’m reaching my wits end with this but cant help but feel this has something to do with my Portal account. I’m open to suggestions as to what to try next. The goal is to have the Alexa app discover the 30+ Insteon devices I have installed. They all worked fine prior to my router failing and taking down several other services. All is restored now except ISY/Alexa functionality. Alexa works with my wifi thermostats, Ambient Weather Station, and Sonos system but will not reload my Insteon devices.

Thank you. I have unlinked and linked already the ISY skill. Deleted and reinstalled the Alexa app as well. I can delete spokens from the Portal but I don’t see how to delete devices. Do I have to go back and delete them in the ISY and add them back !? I do not see why removing devices from the Alexa app and then trying to have it re-discover those devices does not work. I will make a backup of the ISY and then add a few devices back as a test to see if Alexa can find them.

Through a series of ridiculous and unfortunate events, I lost use of my ISY994i for a bit and in the process removed it from the UD Portal. It’s all back now; the ISY functionality and my portal account is active. However, although all devices are listed in the Alexa app, they each say “Device is unresponsive. If its no longer in use, tap “Edit” to remove from Alexa app.” I have removed devices (rediscovery does not bring them back), unlinked and then linked again the ISY Smart Home V3 skill. and anything else I can think of to make active the Insteon devices in my home. Alexa is responsive in all other areas. Sonos speakers are working just fine, etc. Does anyone have suggestions on how to fix this? I cannot control any Insteon devices through Alexa. Thank you in advance.

If you're concerned about the Relay being energized for long periods (I was) then you could incorporate a short program to turn it off. Here's what works for me:

I “echo” larryllix’s praise on the usefulness of dots and similar voice operated smart devices. I was hesitant at first to add these to our home system and am amazed at how quickly we all adapted especially my wife. She adds items to the grocery list, sets multiple cooking timers, asks for conversions, weather reports, and much more. We play a variety of music on our Sonos in whatever rooms we ask for. (“Alexa play Bod Seger in the livingroom”) And now instead of pushing insteon switches to turn on various lights or toggle the garage door, we just ask Alexa. I always said I didn’t want to walk around talking to my house but I do that frequently now and don’t even think about it.

Honestly. I just use a browser from my iPhone. I have my ISY bookmarked on FireFox.

We have 2 Honeywell TH9320 which I put in in Aug 2015. Still working fine (fingers crossed).

My Alexa goodnight routine says good night to each family member, waits 10 secs and turns the downstairs lights off, turns on the upstairs master bedroom light to 60%, starts the bedroom ceiling fan, and sets the downstairs and upstairs thermostats (Honeywell) to their bedtime temperatures.

The status for my Garage programs are always True as well. This is not an indicator of the garage door open/close status. So if you look at your Sensor status on the isy994 Admin page it changes appropriately from ON-Off when door opens or closes? If you go to your browser and login to the isy994 Admin page program tab, or I think you said you use Mobilinc, and RUN your Small_Garage_Open program, it works correctly? It makes no sense at least from what I can tell, that the program works when RUN manually but not when Alexa runs the program.

Yes, it does look like your IF statement is not being evaluated or rather its always TRUE. On my system my IF statement is: Garage_Open - [ID 003A][Parent 0001][Not Enabled] If Status 'Garage Door-Sensor: ON=Closed' is On Yours is: Small_Garage_Open - [ID 0011][Parent 0013][Not Enabled] If 'Garage_Gate / SmallGarage' Status is Off I’m assuming that ‘Garage_Gate/SmallGarage’ is your SENSOR? I see a little difference in the way the program statements are worded. Maybe this is a difference in v5.x firmware vs v4.x? I’m using a 2450 IOLink v.41 and I’m running v.4.7.5 firmware in my ISY994i. What happens when you run your Garage Open program from your Admin console (ie not using Alexa)? Same result? Opens when it should but closes when it should not?

What are you clicking on when you say “Says Power On - and I click on it. Nothing happens. When I click on Power Off, the door opens.” ? I have 2 devices relative to the garage door which show up when I log in to UD normally through my cell phone (not my Alexa app). See picture below. Note: I added the text “ON=Closed” to the ISY device description so myself and my wife would know by looking at this if the door was opened or closed if we’re away and want to check on the status. Your configuration may be different, eg OFF=Closed. Therefore the two possible views for my configuration are: Garage Door-Sensor: ON=Closed On And Garage Door-Sensor: ON-Closed Off To toggle to garage door, click Garage Door-Relay “ON”, assuming its OFF to begin with. I always make sure the Relay is OFF to begin with using a small program to return the Relay to the OFF state 1 minute after the garage door is opened or closed. I forgot to mention this earlier. Without this I would have to turn the Relay OFF and then back ON to open/close the door. Having it return to OFF automatically makes things much simpler at least for me. My Alexa garage door routines are simple. Here is the routine to Open the Garage Door. Note: the reference to “Open the Garage Door” at the bottom is the same program I posted previously in this thread. It’s an ISY994 program not a scene. That’s just the way the Alexa app stores it.

You’d have to test it I supposed but I don’t believe this is quite what you want. It’s close though. When your “Movie Program Start” program branches to “Run Program ‘Movie Program’ (IF)” I don’t think the program flow would ever come back to finish the (THEN) portion of “Movie Program Start”. What you could do is run your “Movie Program” and at the end of it’s (THEN) section you’d additionally type: Run Program ‘Programs Disable’ (THEN) In the new “Programs Disable" program THEN section you’d have: Stop program ‘Driveway Start’ Disable Program ‘Driveway Start’ Etc Wait 4 hours Enable ‘Outside Motion Start’ Enable ‘Driveway Start’ Nothing would go in the (IF) section. “Programs Disable” would be a new program. Call it what you want. This program itself should be disabled and will only run when called by “Movie Program”. At least this might be a good start.

Program enable/disable is on V4 too.

What oberkc said is exactly correct and has worked perfectly for me for a couple of years now. For the IF part of the program, key on the garage door sensor STATUS and its appropriate state (On/Off) when the garage door is open/close. THEN bump the garage door relay. As stated, disable both of these programs since they will be triggered only by Alexa. My simple programs to open/close the garage door are below. Just add spoken commands in the portal for Alexa.

AH! Thank you !!

Thank you. I understand the flow but its the part of ISY Portal MS stateVAR ----> Alexa vocal that I'm not getting. Will keep at it. Not really necessary, just a cool thing to have Alexa do (talk based on ISY status that is) so I hope to get this running.

I have ISY programs and Alexa routines to open, close, and open part-way (for pets), my garage door on verbal commands using an Insteon 74551. Works great. I want to add a verbal announcement from Alexa to say "Garage door is already Closed" or "Garage door is already Open" if the wrong verbal command is given by mistake. And I can think of other times/routines I’d want Alexa to provide verbal feedback based on ISY status. I can’t seem to find any examples of ISY programs and associated Alexa routines that provide for custom verbal responses based on ISY IF/THEN/ELSE programming. Somehow I’m missing that. If someone has an example of how to accomplish this I’d appreciate it. Thank you!

That was me. I had to go back to v4.7.3 because of the incompatibility. I haven't heard anything new on the forum that might suggest Locative now works with V5 sans Portal but I have some free time on this coming holiday weekend and may try it out. I did however recently purchase Portal since I am now delving into Alexa which is so far so good. BTW I am not forwarding ports even without Portal. I'm using a reverse proxy.