sorka Posted January 4, 2014 Posted January 4, 2014 I posted this in the 4.1.1 beta thread, but I'm so desperate to find out what happened and prevent it from happening again, I needed to post here too. Ugh! Just wasted the entire night on my motion sensors. They all stopped working some time last night. I have 10 exterior motion sensors around the house. I have 6 access points and multiple new dual mode switches throughout the house. I could probably get rid of the APs now. Anyways, all the motion sensors stopped working. I brought them all into the house and set them next to various APs including the one next to the PLM and pressed the internal button. The status on the ISY page continued to show blank neither on nor off. Each time I pressed a button on the motion sensor, the AP would blink and the PLM would blink so I know something was getting through. I tried other wireless devices like my remote lincs and they all worked fine even from a good distances outside the house. Finally, I did a restore on one of them and it started working perfectly. I did a restore on the rest and they are all now working perfectly too. I've put them back in their positions outside and they are all working fine now from that distance. So the question is, what happened??? This was a critical failure. We have houses getting robbed left and right(literally). We've had 10 nigh time home invasion robberies in my neighborhood in the last 6 weeks.....that we know about. These motion sensors are critical for running occupancy simulation cascade lighting events during the night so anyone approaching our house from any direction will believe someone is present plus giving me advance notice. Nothing like this has ever happened before and I'm really upset about. Granted, I know I'm using beta software (4.1.1) but it was sort of necessary to add the door and water sensors.
LeeG Posted January 4, 2014 Posted January 4, 2014 It sounds like the PLM lost some link records. Since the motion sensors sleep it is impossible for the motion sensors to have lost anything. The Restore Device along with rebuilding the motion sensor also restored the PLM link records. You will not like this but if these are that important to security they should be part of the security system, not part of an Insteon system. Insteon is not rated for such activity.
sorka Posted January 4, 2014 Author Posted January 4, 2014 I won't argue with about what insteon is intended for or not. If I made these part of my DSC alarm system, it would go off far too frequently with false alarms and dispatched law enforcement. Are my 12 hidef video day/night cameras also not rated for security. I see you have a lot of posts, but I have found insteon to be reliable enough for this particular purpose. I'm not sure why you would claim that insteon is not suitable for secondary security tasks. This is the first time anything like this has ever happened. I made not recent changes except upgrading to the ISY994 about a month ago. I find it inconceivable that the PLM lost all link records for all motion sensors and nothing else, so I'm not buying that explanation. Perhaps someone else has another?
PurdueGuy Posted January 4, 2014 Posted January 4, 2014 I have a DSC system with DSCLink. DSC has a zone definition (26 I think) for Home Automation. That won't trigger an alarm, but you can have it trigger chimes, etc. Then with DSCLink, it can trigger events in ISY. If you have an EnvisaLink to run your DSC connection, you can setup zone followers for some key motion sensors.
sorka Posted January 4, 2014 Author Posted January 4, 2014 Thanks for the suggestion. However, I'd like to stay on topic here. The system has worked well for me for years. I've never had the PLM suddenly lose links. I don't think it's a coincidence that I upgraded to a 994 and installed 4.1.1. I suspect it's related to that. Maybe something in the ISY freaked out the PLM and caused it to drop just the motion sensor links. Who knows. But the fact that it just happened without any good explanation is seriously making me consider going back to my 99i and just giving up the door sensors and water leak sensors. I've already got 64 zones across 2 partitions on my DSC. I'm maxed out for zones and for current draw on the panel. The insteon motion sensors aren't meant for an alarm system. They're meant for home automation lighting and I've done a lot more than just triggering lights. They run a bunch of other functions many of them specific to each motion sensor. My camera setpoints are controlled by each motion sensor. When a motion sensor is triggered, all video cameras that cross the motions sensors field of view, have their setpoints for that location triggered. I could go on and on. It's quite an extensive setup that I spent years tuning. I need it to work as reliably as it always has. I would like the developers to at least consider there's a bug in 4.1.1 that caused the PLM to drop the links.
oberkc Posted January 4, 2014 Posted January 4, 2014 I've never had the PLM suddenly lose links. Stranger things have happened. This is not totally unheard of, based on my time spend following these forums. Maybe something in the ISY freaked out the PLM and caused it to drop just the motion sensor links. Who knows. But the fact that it just happened without any good explanation is seriously making me consider going back to my 99i and just giving up the door sensors and water leak sensors. No...I would not go back to the 99i. It is my experience that, sometimes, things happen for reasons that we can never discover. I agree, however, that it is a strange coincidence that it happened to all your motion sensors. My suggestion is to fix it and move on. Try restoring the motion sensors. I don't think it is overly difficult. Hopefully, that is all there is to it.
Michel Kohanim Posted January 5, 2014 Posted January 5, 2014 I must totally and wholeheartedly agree with oberkc ... moving to 99 is NOT going to fix the issue. With kind regards, Michel
sorka Posted January 5, 2014 Author Posted January 5, 2014 I've never had the PLM suddenly lose links. Stranger things have happened. This is not totally unheard of, based on my time spend following these forums. Maybe something in the ISY freaked out the PLM and caused it to drop just the motion sensor links. Who knows. But the fact that it just happened without any good explanation is seriously making me consider going back to my 99i and just giving up the door sensors and water leak sensors. No...I would not go back to the 99i. It is my experience that, sometimes, things happen for reasons that we can never discover. I agree, however, that it is a strange coincidence that it happened to all your motion sensors. My suggestion is to fix it and move on. Try restoring the motion sensors. I don't think it is overly difficult. Hopefully, that is all there is to it. I know my post was kind of lengthy, but I did mention that I had already done a restore on them to get them back up and running. In the other thread in the 4.1.1 section, I also mentioned that it turned out it was all wireless devices. 1) Motion sensors. 2) Door sensors. 3) Wireless contact closures. 4) Remote Lincs. I had to do a restore on all of them.
Michel Kohanim Posted January 5, 2014 Posted January 5, 2014 Hi sorka, There have been reports of PLMs losing links. Please send an email to support@universal-devices.com and I'll hook you up with our contact at SmartHome. With kind regards, Michel
oberkc Posted January 5, 2014 Posted January 5, 2014 All wireless. More to the point, I suspect: all battery operated. Perhaps I can speculate..... New PLM has a new insteon address. Restored PLM from ISY, no problem. This, however, breaks the links in connected devices. Hard-wired devices are always in listening mode, and restoring PLM automatically fixed these broken links. Battery operated devices, however, have to be put into linking mode in order to write updates. When you restored the PLM, did you put the battery devices into linking mode? I wonder if your battery devices had a little colored icon next to them before you restored them? Again, speculation. But that is my theory and I am sticking to it.
sorka Posted January 5, 2014 Author Posted January 5, 2014 I haven't done a restore on the PLM. I only restored the wireless devices that apparently were lost.
oberkc Posted January 5, 2014 Posted January 5, 2014 I haven't done a restore on the PLM. I only restored the wireless devices that apparently were lost. Yes. Sorry. (I am following too many posts.) Perhaps when you upgraded to the -994 something similar happened. I still think the common denominator here is battery devices.
sorka Posted January 5, 2014 Author Posted January 5, 2014 Could be. I suspect that you're right in the sense that something happened and that the PLM tried to write updates to the wireless devices and gave up triggering some bug or internal "I couldn't find these guys after enough retries so I'm going to remove them" behavior.
LeeG Posted January 5, 2014 Posted January 5, 2014 Unfortunately the PLM does not have any logic like that. It does not remove links for devices it cannot communicate with.
sorka Posted January 6, 2014 Author Posted January 6, 2014 Unfortunately the PLM does not have any logic like that. It does not remove links for devices it cannot communicate with. I think you mean fortunately It's either that or random corruption occurred. I don't by latter. I think this was done on purpose whether it's a bug or not. I don't think it was just random and the the plm "just lost it's links".
Toddimus Posted January 6, 2014 Posted January 6, 2014 I had this same thing happen to me this weekend. All of the events from my motion sensors stopped being received by the ISY 994 (and 2413S PLM). I noticed that my timers that are triggered by the motion sensors weren't running (so the lights stayed on). I power cycled the ISY and PLM but this didn't fix it. I eventually did a PLM restore which fixed everything, but I will agree that this is weird. Made me wonder if my PLM is going bad. It's an older version (V1.4 I think). Strange stuff started happening when I added a new dimmer switch. Most of my Insteon stuff is the older i1 protocol, and the new dimmer is presumably the newest i2cs protocol. I'm having issues with that too, but haven't had time to track down exactly what's going on. I'll start a new thread on my dimmer scene issue.
sorka Posted January 6, 2014 Author Posted January 6, 2014 Odd. So I previously said that I hadn't changed anything, but I too just added 3 of the newer dual mode dimmer switches right before this happened. I spaced it because I installed them about a week before this occurred and then went on a 4 day trip, came back, and then several days later boom.
sorka Posted January 6, 2014 Author Posted January 6, 2014 Hmmm. OK, so it appears now there were a few things other than wireless that were also broken. I had 3 switches which I capture the double fast off to turn off all lights in the house. These were also busted. I hadn't tried them in a few days. I know they worked at least last week but last night noticed they didn't. These 3 switches were not getting the status into the ISY. I did a restore on them and they started working again. When I get back home in a few days, I'll go ahead and do a PLM restore. I didn't want to do it yesterday in case something went wrong and I didn't have time to fix it before leaving on my next trip.
sorka Posted January 19, 2014 Author Posted January 19, 2014 It happened again tonight about 20 minutes ago. Links were lost between then and about an hour before that when it was still working. I had just made some changes to some of the ISY programs like I had the first time when I lost the links. I really think this is a 994 bug. On Friday morning, we had a robbery attempt. The security cameras got the license plate of the truck, and the face of the thief in one of the other cameras. All of which worked because the motion sensors turned on lights and rotated cameras. The thief was identified as a guy who had just been released on bail for home invasion burglary on December 15th. If it had not been for the system in place, we would not have been able to catch him. This is really really serious issue and I've lost confidence in Universal Devices. I will remove the new door sensor and water leak detectors and go back to the ISY99i until this issue is resolved. It's totally unacceptable and I don't believe for an instant that the PLM just decided to go bad as soon as I upgraded the to the 994.
oberkc Posted January 19, 2014 Posted January 19, 2014 Yes, it could be a bug in one of the newer versions of software for the ISY. i do not recall any earlier problems reported like this, but perhaps nobody has yet to notice any relationship between lost links and program changes. Can you demonstrate the problem consistently? Can you recreate the scenario that resulted in your missing links? I must admit that the idea that a program change would have an affect on link records is hard for me to imagine, but my knowledge of the detailed relationship between the ISY and PLM is conceptual at best, and based on assumptions and knowledge from others around here. My sense is that the folks at universal devices would be more than happy to investigate the possibility, but that this will be a little difficult without being able to reliably demonstrate a problem.
Teken Posted January 19, 2014 Posted January 19, 2014 Some perspective with respect to the odds of a failing ISY device. You can go to any forum you wish and you will find threads about any Insteon device failing. You will find thousands of such threads. You will also find dozens of threads about dying PLM's. In contrast you will be hard pressed to find multiple threads about the ISY mechanically failing. The ones I am familiar with has to do with the memory card, IR sensor, or power supply. All of which are third party devices which UDI purchased but did not make. Now, with any Beta software there will be bugs and with the assistance of the membership they can be identified and resolved in the next firmware releases. While all of this is going on I would ask you to consider doing a PLM link table compare. This will determine what is missing from the two devices. If you perform the said compare during the next few weeks and it shows missing links. It's safe to say the PLM is end of life. Insteon does not have the same reliability factor when compared to the ISY. I would consider the most likely scenario that the PLM is failing. Teken . . . Encrypted By: Phoenix Security Solutions
LeeG Posted January 19, 2014 Posted January 19, 2014 Unfortunately there is no Compare for the PLM. The ISY does not know where the PLM writes the link records (as far as which link record) so it cannot Compare the Show PLM Links Table results. sorka How wide spread is the problem in terms of what devices have been affected. The last time it was determined that the issue was across various device types. Is that the case this time?
Teken Posted January 19, 2014 Posted January 19, 2014 LeeG, Isn't the purpose of the compare is to see the difference between the PLM vs the ISY? It has been a very long time since I had to do this soy memory if the intended purpose may be wrong. Insight Teken . . . Encrypted By: Phoenix Security Solutions
LeeG Posted January 19, 2014 Posted January 19, 2014 The Compare function compares the content of each actual device link record against what the ISY believes should be in that specific record. Works on individual devices because the ISY controls where each link record is written with individual devices. The PLM link database management is done by the PLM itself. The ISY sends a Serial command to the PLM with the functional information that goes into the PLM link record. The PLM is responsible for knowing where available space is located, whether an existing link exists and the link record is being updated, etc. Since the ISY has no information about where a given link record is written in the PLM link database it is impossible to do a Compare. When the Show PLM Links Table reads the first record from the PLM the ISY has no idea what is actually in that record as the PLM manages where each record is written. Without knowing what should be in PLM link record 1, 2, 3 etc the ISY cannot say if PLM link record 1 or 2 or 3 is correct.
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