Communication and other problems

[Michel Kohanim]

nanckekr,

 

You are right!

 

1. We already have the requirement to provide a graph based on the number of successful/unsuccessful attempts which we are working on. This said, however, unlike PLC/PowerHome/HomeSeer/Life|ware/MControl/etc. ISY does not poll devices and thus the extrapolation become a little more difficult

2. At the inception of ISY, we decided to hide all the INSTEON specific things from the user. i.e. ISY tries to abstract that information up and thus the user wouldn't have to worry about it. We have not received many requests to open this information up to the user

 

And, finally, PowerHome is an excellent product which targets a different segment of INSTEON user base.

 

Thank you for your feedback,

With kind regards,

Michel

I am using powerhome http://www.myx10.com/download.asp for debugging the Insteon traffic and links. It is using the PLC and thus it does not give the same insight as we need for ISY. However, it can help you create graphs of the communication quality for any of the devices, sometihng I have not yet found out how ISY can do.

 

Secondly it can show you the existing links between the devices, and it can verify if the links are broken and if so, reprogram them.

 

I am still to find this is in ISY, although I am fairly new in ISY.

[nanckekr]

I think the community of insteon users are desparately in need of better Insteon debugging communication tools. My experience using a couple of different software products, some based in PLC, others based on PLM is that no matter what control software you are using, all fall into the same problems: How to understand the quality of communication between Insteon devices.

 

The first company to develop that Insteon-Communication-Analyzer-tool will be very succeful I think, as it can be used universally between any of the other control programs.

 

Of course such a program will need to be able to get a KPL to initiate a command and then monitor how that command is communicated throuout the network. The tool would also need to have the PLM or PLC (which ever used) to create traffic that is send out to the network with the only intend to analyze the communication weaknesses. Then by adding SignalLinc's at different places, the user would then better know what impact the added devices had. Also the users could try to remove devices and see what impact that has on the communication pattern in the network.

 

I assume such a tool must be very hard to implement or that the Insteon protocol do not lend itself into traffic analysis - at least that is the only explanation I have why this tool is not yet available.

 

BR,

Anders

[Michel Kohanim]

Anders,

 

You are 100% correct. As a matter of fact, this has been one of our inputs/requirements to SmartLabs. Alas, no news yet. In short, we do need the same tools as those available for X10 and UPB (which will be supported in 11.2007).

 

Till then, we have to work based on assumptions (there's no way to get the signal strength out of an INSTEON packet): the ratio of number of successful communications attemps and unsuccessful ones. This ratio may not be very accurate, since it does not take into consideration the situations where the device itself is "not responding".

 

Thanks again for your feedback,

With kind regards,

Michel

 

I think the community of insteon users are desparately in need of better Insteon debugging communication tools. My experience using a couple of different software products, some based in PLC, others based on PLM is that no matter what control software you are using, all fall into the same problems: How to understand the quality of communication between Insteon devices.

 

The first company to develop that Insteon-Communication-Analyzer-tool will be very succeful I think, as it can be used universally between any of the other control programs.

 

Of course such a program will need to be able to get a KPL to initiate a command and then monitor how that command is communicated throuout the network. The tool would also need to have the PLM or PLC (which ever used) to create traffic that is send out to the network with the only intend to analyze the communication weaknesses. Then by adding SignalLinc's at different places, the user would then better know what impact the added devices had. Also the users could try to remove devices and see what impact that has on the communication pattern in the network.

 

I assume such a tool must be very hard to implement or that the Insteon protocol do not lend itself into traffic analysis - at least that is the only explanation I have why this tool is not yet available.

 

BR,

Anders