Modem died, restore not working, could use some help

[marvel]

Hi folks,

 

My 2413S modem died exactly two weeks past the two year warranty. I bought a new one and followed the modem restore procedures. Turned off ISY, plugged new modem in, waited a bit, then booted ISY. Chose File, Restore Modem. It seemed to work, but none of my programs or scenes would run and device status wasn't being reported back to the ISY. I tried a second time, same result.

 

So then I did a File, Restore Devices. This ran for a solid hour but only made things worse. Now all of my devices have a red exclamation point next to them. I've tried to manually restore the single switch closest to the modem with no luck, both using "Write updates to device" and "Restore device." Neither function works. The ISY says it's writing to the device and takes a good minute or two, but when the progress bar gets to 100%, it says it can't communicate with the device.

 

Help would be most appreciated.

 

edit: There seems to be some amount of limited communication going on. I'm able to turn devices on and off from the ISY. It takes several seconds for the device to respond, but it does eventually respond and also throws me a "Cannot communicate with (device name), please check connection" error. Then it goes back to having a red exclamation point in the device tree.

 

edit 2: I'm running a 994i Pro with Z-Wave module installed. At firmware v4.1.2.

[Quasmo]

Hi folks,

 

My 2413S modem died exactly two weeks past the two year warranty. I bought a new one and followed the modem restore procedures. Turned off ISY, plugged new modem in, waited a bit, then booted ISY. Chose File, Restore Modem. It seemed to work, but none of my programs or scenes would run and device status wasn't being reported back to the ISY. I tried a second time, same result.

 

So then I did a File, Restore Devices. This ran for a solid hour but only made things worse. Now all of my devices have a red exclamation point next to them. I've tried to manually restore the single switch closest to the modem with no luck, both using "Write updates to device" and "Restore device." Neither function works. The ISY says it's writing to the device and takes a good minute or two, but when the progress bar gets to 100%, it says it can't communicate with the device.

 

Help would be most appreciated.

 

edit: There seems to be some amount of limited communication going on. I'm able to turn devices on and off from the ISY. It takes several seconds for the device to respond, but it does eventually respond and also throws me a "Cannot communicate with (device name), please check connection" error. Then it goes back to having a red exclamation point in the device tree.

 

edit 2: I'm running a 994i Pro with Z-Wave module installed. At firmware v4.1.2.

 

 

I am having a similar issue with 4.2.1 (not 4.1.2). I upgraded to 4.2.1 two days ago, and now nothing works. I have added a GFCI outlet to a circuit in my house, but it not on the same circuit as the PLM or ISY. Very confused by this.

[apostolakisl]

It sounds like you did things correctly

 

And my modem also died just after the warranty. I have read this same thing many many times.

 

Based on what you are saying, it sounds like your devices do not have the correct address for the PLM written into them and the plm doesn't have the right device addresses written in it. When you did restore modem, it should have written the link between each device and the PLM. So each device should have the PLM address and the PLM should have each device. The process of restoring the PLM can take a long time depending on how many devices/scenes you have because it is not only writing the links in the PLM, it is also erasing and rewriting the links in the device that reference the PLM. If it didn't take a while, then that would indicate a problem. Mine took I think like 2 hours.

 

If you can manage to bring up the links tables on your individual devices, you should see your plm address in there. Also, you can bring up your PLM links table and you should see the addresses of all your devices in there plus a whole bunch more relating to all the scenes. For example, I have 366 links in my PLM and about 60 devices.

 

You can check your "tools" "diagnostics" "plm info/status" and see if it lists the PLM as connected and also what the address is.

[marvel]

Thank you for the replies.

 

I checked the PLM links table and it's full of addresses. I checked the links table for the nearest device and it has the PLM address on it, but nothing else. That's wrong, though - the device responds to other switches that were previously configured - so I suspect it's just unable to get the data over to the PLM when queried. Similar issue when trying to write updates or restore the device, it runs for awhile, seems to be working, then fails.

 

I wonder if I don't have an errant device on my network that's spewing messages and making communications difficult? My previously configured scenes do take awhile to execute, whereas they used to be instant. Any way to find out short of pulling the air gap on everything and reintroducing them one at a time? I have a fairly large network & almost everything is dual band.

[apostolakisl]

So you are saying that querying the links table from a device is yielding only 1 link, despite the fact that the device currently functions properly as a member of one or more scenes? That I don't quite understand. It seems that the links must be there or it wouldn't work in a scene. But how a query from ISY is only showing one link I don't know. It seems to me that it should either show all of the links or fail to show any.

 

I assume you have installed the new PLM in the same spot as the old one? This would make me think that a comm issue is not the problem. However, you might try putting the PLM onto a power splitter (just a plain splitter, no other surge suppressors as they can create comm issues) behind an Insteon noise filter and check the communication and ability to write links between the plm and that device. If that all works, it would seem that some sort of comm issue is the problem.

 

You might also just have a bad PLM.

 

ELA mentioned in a thread that he had an RF device that was jamming his system. It doesn't seem like that is what you have, but it would be worth reading.

[Michel Kohanim]

Quasmo and marvel,

 

If you are still having technical issues, please do not hesitate to contact our tech support team (links below).

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[marvel]

So you are saying that querying the links table from a device is yielding only 1 link, despite the fact that the device currently functions properly as a member of one or more scenes? That I don't quite understand.

Correct. It would get the first link, then as best as I can tell communications on the network would fail. I was experiencing the same thing attempting to restore devices - they would start to restore, but would fail.

 

I think one of my devices was misbehaving and flooding the network with traffic. I followed up on my hunch to pull the air gaps on all devices (that I could easily get to). I've been bringing them back online and restoring them in the ISY one by one and things appear to be working now. The device that only showed the one link previously, I brought it up first and was able to restore and query it and it showed all 8 links this time.

 

Insteon has been great. Far better than X10 ever was. However, the quality control on the hardware needs to be improved... for that reason alone I think it will remain primarily a hobbyist's toy. As often as I have to debug things, I couldn't imagine having to hire a pro to do this. I'm a tech geek so I don't mind it so much, but I think Joe Average Homeowner would quickly become frustrated.

[apostolakisl]

Glad to hear you have it going in the right direction.

 

I would be curious to know what device ends up being the problem.

[marvel]

Well, I struck out. I was able to restore a few devices, but most wouldn't restore no matter how many others were turned off. All of my previously programmed scenes that don't require the ISY to do anything are still working. Sometimes they're slow, but they're working.

 

I decided to try a full ISY restore from my most recent backup. After coming back up, the "System Busy" progress bar ran for a long time, from 0-100% over and over again, and slowly tossed out "Cannot communicate with (device)" errors for about half a dozen devices that are powered up and otherwise working & responding to existing scenes. I attempted to turn on & off some of the devices that didn't have red exclamation points. Some worked, but took several seconds to receive the command. Others didn't respond at all and the ISY timed out and said "Cannot communicate with (device)."

 

The entire network is intermittent. Sometimes commands work, sometimes they don't. Long operations, such as Restore Modem or Restore Devices, completely fail and mark all devices with red exclamations.

 

Things I don't understand: When selecting "Restore Device" on a problem device, I'm asked if I want to proceed and after hitting Yes, nothing happens. The dialog box just goes away and that's it. When selecting "Write Updates to Device" on the same one, I get a "System Busy" dialog and it appears to be writing to the device, but before getting to 100% the box just closes and the device remains with a red exclamation.

 

I'm frustrated. Not sure how to proceed. Going to file a request with ISY support.

[Quasmo]

I was able to get my PLM up and running again. I will know the full extent of the situation around 11:30 today when my dog sitter opens my front door. I was able to restore my PLM and the links table is showing correctly now.

[SteveL]

Marvel,

 

One thing I didn't see and maybe I missed it in some of the responses was the restore of the PLM was done.

 

I did see your trouble ticket and I will be contacting you today.

[apostolakisl]

I'm thinking bad plm. If your regular, non-isy, scenes are all working, then a noise issue is low probability. I doubt it is the ISY.

[marvel]

Everything is working now. Huge thank you to Steve for all of your help.

 

The issue as I understand it was as follows:

 

I have a large home with two separate electrical meters feeding a pair of panels. My primary lighting & circuits are fed from one panel, while the second handles higher powered stuff - HVAC, water heating & pumping, oven, dryer, etc. This second panel also feeds a pair of garage subpanels for large shop loads (welder, air compressor, 50 amp RV hookup, etc). Nearly all of my Insteon devices are on the first panel.

 

My PLM is in my office, which is electrically noisy with computers, printers, etc. Also, it turns out the office electrical comes from one of the garage subpanels. Best as I can tell, the previous owners needed some more power in here and that was the easiest place for the electrician to grab it. As a result, getting powerline only Insteon signals from the office to the rest of the house is problematic at best, as they need to hop through the garage subpanel, to the secondary high voltage panel, then transfer over the utility's infrastructure to get to the primary panel feeding my lighting circuits.

 

Why was this never a problem before? I created a rock solid Insteon network by only purchasing dual band devices when possible, so 95% of my devices are dual band. However, the dual band devices apparently have some sort of security mechanism and don't like to talk over RF and/or repeat signals from non-linked devices. (I may be fuzzy on the technical details, Steve, feel free to chime in and correct me here). When I attempted to restore all of my devices, the dual band communication wasn't involved due to the security issue and so communications fell flat on their face. At Steve's suggestion, I connected the PLM to an extension cord from a kitchen outlet which is on the main panel with the rest of my lighting. After doing so, the restore went flawlessly and full dual-band communication was re-established. I was then able to move the PLM back into the office and everything is working great now.

 

Even though it's working, I already have plans to relocate the ISY and PLM out of the office and onto a different circuit. Just need to get up into the attic and run a network cable to the new location.