Am I doing programs and scenes right?

[greensha]

I'm not sure if I am doing programs and scenes correctly. Here's what I want to do... I have a bunch of lights that I want to come a little before sunset and slowly decrease in brightness thoughout the night.

 

I had been using the Insteon PLC with the free program that came with it. Overall it worked very well but I want a little more control over my lighting so I thought the ISY-99i would do the trick. So far I have made little progress in even matching watch the PLC would do for me.

 

Currently I have several scenes that adjust the brightness of the lights to the desired level. Each scene is triggered by a program that runs at the specified time. Either as an offset to sunset or at a given time. The lights come on as expected, but most of the lights don't repsond to subsequent commands to dim. I have one program per scene, but I wonder if I should have a bunch of nested if-then-else conditions in one program.

 

Another issue that I have is that communication between the PLM/ISY and the Insteon devices seems sporadic. Some of this may be due to the placement of the PLM on a UPS. However, when I moved the PLM to a regular outlet things got worse in this regard. I was away for the weekend and I had to resort to the PLC since I was unable to reach *any* of my devices via the PLM/ISY the morning I was leaving. The outlet had previously worked fine.

 

Comprehensive documentation is desperately needed for this device. It would help people troubleshoot a problem before having to clog the forum up with questions like this.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Andy

[greensha]

I rearranged my office furniture a little so I can plug the PLM into a regular outlet. It seems that I have two devices that do not respond to commands issued to them in scenes but respond normally to commands issued manually by the ISY. Strange...

 

Update: Even when one of these devices is in a scene on its own it still does not respond. They still respond when addressed individually though. I have tried a reboot of the devices but with no luck. The ISY does not generate any error messages.

[Michel Kohanim]

Andy,

 

We are dealing with two problems here:

 

1. Communication problems

2. Managing scenes

 

Is it possible to login remotely to your ISY and checkout what scenes you have? If so, please send the remote access URL to support@universal-devices.com with your credentials.

 

In most cases - and in the absence of communication errors - it is possible that either the on level is set to 0 or the ramp rate is set to 9 minutes for those devices in scenes.

 

As far as dimming a scene, each time you dim by 3% so, in effect, you would have to repeat a dim about 30 times to get to off. This is not a good solution.

 

As far as PLC/Timer Software vs. ISY/PLM, my only comment is: ISY reports comm errors as they happen while most of those are ignored by the Timer Essential/PLC.

 

As far as documentation, we are working on it. Our Scenes tutorial is one of the most comprehensive documents found with regards to INSTEON scenes/groups anywhere. We are working on documentation for programs.

 

And, finally, please do not hesitate to call us and thus make it easier to diagnose and resolve all problems that you are experiencing with ISY/scenes/programming.

 

 

With kind regards,

Michel

 

 

I rearranged my office furniture a little so I can plug the PLM into a regular outlet. It seems that I have two devices that do not respond to commands issued to them in scenes but respond normally to commands issued manually by the ISY. Strange...

 

Update: Even when one of these devices is in a scene on its own it still does not respond. They still respond when addressed individually though. I have tried a reboot of the devices but with no luck. The ISY does not generate any error messages.

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi Andy,

 

I already responded to your post in the other forum which I hope you'll find useful.

 

If a device does not respond to a scene command - and if there are no comm problems, then in all likelihood we have one of the following two cases:

1. There is no PLM link in the device (unlikely)

2. The on level is either 0 or ramp rate is 9 minutes for that device in that scene

 

Is it at all possible to login remotely to your ISY? This would make everything much easier.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

 

I rearranged my office furniture a little so I can plug the PLM into a regular outlet. It seems that I have two devices that do not respond to commands issued to them in scenes but respond normally to commands issued manually by the ISY. Strange...

 

Update: Even when one of these devices is in a scene on its own it still does not respond. They still respond when addressed individually though. I have tried a reboot of the devices but with no luck. The ISY does not generate any error messages.

[greensha]

I'll call tech support tomorrow to see if we can resolve the issue.

 

Thanks,

 

Andy