I think my new PLM is dead, please help

[EricK]

I had smarthome switch out my nearly 2 year old PLM since I was having all on events, hoping this would help.  I got the new PLM, v 2.1, about 6-8 weeks ago and got it set up fine.  

I got home from work late today and things were not right in the house.  I noticed that a program did not trigger from a double tap of a switchlinc.  Some lights were on that were obviously trigger by programs, but the shades in our bedroom did not close on a program.  I got a message that a garage door was open when it was closed.   I logged into the ISY and there were a number of devices that the isy was not able to communicate with, mostly single band KPLs.  I then realized that several other programs were not working.  

I restarted the isy and it went into safe mode saying that no plm is connected and verified this under plm status.  I have unplugged the isy and plm, plugged in the plm, then the isy, and still it shows that no plm is connected.  I tried a new network cable with the same result.

Can i even try to restore the plm since the isy does not see it.  The soonest I could get a new plm is 5 days from now thru amazon, given the holiday.  Huge bummer for me and for my kids because now I cannot do light on for 10 minutes.

Advice would be appreciated.

Eric

[paulbates]

Eric, sorry to hear this. It does sound like it. The refresh won't work if the PLM can't be communicated with.

 

I would however, try a factory reset of the PLM (steps below), and then attach and start the the ISY, and then Restore Modem, ... (Do not use Delete Modem)

 

To reset PowerLinc Modem to its original factory settings, unplug from wall outlet and wait 10 seconds. Press and hold Set button; while continuing to press and hold, plug back in. A long beep will sound; continue holding Set button until beep stops, then release.
After several seconds, status LED will turn on to indicate reset is complete

 

Good luck!

Paul

Edited January 1, 2016 by paulbates

[EricK]

Paul,

Thanks for the advice.  I tried the reset of the PLM and no dice.  I did check more closely on Amazon and can get a new PLM, which I just ordered on Sunday.  I'll them RMA mine for a new one with Smarthome as a back-up.  

Not sure how things will go without timers and I may also get a bunch of notifications due to incorrect statuses.  Maybe I should just unplug the ISY until i get the new PLM. 

[paulbates]

Eric

It does sound dead.  Unplugging the ISY could depend... do you have programs that use the network or other modules with no insteon? You may want to consider a backup PLM. I have had my surprises with PLMs as well

 

Paul

[EricK]

I was thinking about getting a backup, but considering I just got a brand new one I thought I had some time. The admin console shows safe mode and I cannot access programs now so I don't think any will try to run. When I first went to the admin console tonight I was able to see programs. I don't have any non site on modules. Thanks for your help.

[Brian H]

You did unplug the PLM and power down the ISY Interface.

Then plug in the PLM and wait for it to totally initialize.

Then power up the ISY Interface.

The ISY Interface only checks for a PLM at boot up or reboot.

[EricK]

You did unplug the PLM and power down the ISY Interface.

Then plug in the PLM and wait for it to totally initialize.

Then power up the ISY Interface.

The ISY Interface only checks for a PLM at boot up or reboot.

Yes, I followed this procedure a couple of times.

[Brian H]

From your tests. It does appear it has failed.

6-8 weeks is an unbelievably short time for a new unit to just fail.

2.1 was supposed to be the fixed power supply version. Oh well!

 

I don't have much faith in Smartlabs's or Smarthome's Engineers and QC department to get things right anymore.

I bought a few 2635-222R refurbished On/Off modules. They claim that they are tested 100%. One had no screws in the PCB and it was floating loose in the case. Another one the Green part of the LED does not work. Only the Red and unused Blue parts worked.

Edited January 1, 2016 by Brian H

[ronvond]

A while back I too lost communication with my PLM.  I tried unplugging the PLM, 994i and restarting in the proper order.  Nothing worked.  All indications were that it was dead.  Of course programs didn't work since the PLM seemed to have failed.  A day later, without making any changes, everything returned to normal.  Notice the sigh of relief.  I did post the problem and learned that it's possible for the PLM to be influenced by noise on the circuit.  The most likely culprits being transformers / power supplies.  I don't know why this should be a problem since nothing has changed in the last few months.  Since it started working on its own I made no changes.  Two days ago the PLM "died" again.  I went through the same routine of powering down / up without success.  I have a long power strip in my basement that supplies power to the ISY, PLM, telephone and a couple external hard drives.  I removed everything from the power strip except the ISY and PLM and am happy to report no further problems.  My guess is that one of my power supplies is getting noisy creating the problems.

[Teken]

It would have been interesting to see if the capacitor fix would have resolved this issue? I don't believe a 2.XX 2413S PLM would have been impacted by a failed capacitor issue and believe more this is a power related matter.

 

Its too bad you don't have any kind of power logging to determine how clean / bad the power line is in your home. Its safe to say if you had the time to replace the caps and it brought back the PLM it would offer the forum members another data point. If on the other hand it didn't it would affirm my thoughts that this device is still not designed properly to sustain moderate amounts of voltage swings and surge events.

 

Most common electronics appliances are built to sustain 89 - 150 VAC for short duration's. More commonly electronics are designed to operate in a range of 90 - 132 VAC. As I have indicated many times here and in other forums most electrical surges happen with in the home which is self induced and rarely caused by outside factors like lightning etc.

 

The most common devices which cause in band surge events are sumps, fridges, HVAC, etc. Anything with a motor and large start up current will inject large and very brief micro surges in the home. This is why its so important that as many large appliances such as these are placed on dedicated and isolated breakers.

 

This limits the amount of injected line noise and micro surges impacting the rest of the home.

 

As stated here and many other forums its important to use all three types of SPD's. That is from Type 1, 2, 3 in all areas of the home in hopes of reducing surge currents from impacting those sensitive electronics.

 

Having said all of this it should be noted unless you have a some serious AVR systems in place none of the SPD's will resolve a voltage sag (brown out) or frequency drift. This is important to note because again depending upon circuit design which most reputable engineer would follow anyways.

 

Can't say Smartlabs falls under that label . . .

 

When voltage drops, current rises and unless the PSU is purpose built and designed to regulate such lulls it will blow out IC's in short order. Its a often misconception that a device which incorporates a regulated PSU is in fact tuned to respond to voltage sags when that isn't the case at all.

 

You will note 99% of all PSU designs indicate voltage rise (limit) protection - no where does it say it protects the hardware against voltage sags, ever.

 

The only place you will see that stated and written as the SOP is in aerospace, military, and industrial applications.  

[EricK]

My plm is still not seen by the ISY. My landscape lights are plugged into an appliance linc that runs on an ISY timer program. They were on last night, but off this morning. The only way to turn them off is to go into the garage a press the button on the appliance linc. I also noticed that a kpl button for our hallway lights came on which also had to be triggered by a timer program. The load and another kpl button did not turn on. Strange things are afoot.

[paulbates]

I had a case where a line noise killed my PLMs. My PLM is plugged in at the panel, and one of my furnaces is right there,  a few wire feet from the panel. My old furnaces fan motor would literally kill PLMs at the panel after a week or so. It was hard to diagnose, but once a filter was applied to the motor, it was fine.

 

Furnaces, motors and low voltage lighting transformers (indoor or out) can cause problems for insteon devices and either cause them to "lock up" or actually be destroyed. I've had both of these cases.

 

Paul

[EricK]

Scary to think that they could just stop making the plm. They dropped house linc support (I still have my sub modem for that) and Have their hub. It would be a silly decision but you never know.

To reiterate, my nearly two year old plm was working fine. Something could have happened in the house, but everything else is working just fine. I exchanged to hopefully stop my all on events which I'm not sure had anything to do with the plm. For all I know they sent me a refurbished model.

[mwester]

Scary to think that they could just stop making the plm. They dropped house linc support (I still have my sub modem for that) and Have their hub. It would be a silly decision but you never know...

I'd love to be a fly-on-the-wall in the SmartHome/SmartLabs conference rooms when the topic comes up -- I'd also love to know the gory details of the discussions with UDI regarding the PLM chips that they won't sell to UDI...

 

I imagine the conflict must be significant - on the one hand, SmartHome is almost certainly looking at all the ISY's sold and realizing that all those customers are not "captive" (i.e. are not beholden to SmartHome for their servers to do their automation, and thus not potential revenue generators when SmartHome inevitably starts charging a monthly service fee for "premium" hub support). On the other hand, they must realize that they really don't have anything that competes with the ISY in any real fashion, and that they would lose those device sales. On yet a third hand they probably look at the addition of Z-Wave support in the ISY as a major threat to their device sales anyway... and there's probably a fourth hand that Iv'e not considered.

 

No matter how you look at it, Joe has some tough decisions ahead. But after getting to know SmartHome/SmartLabs a bit better, I predict that the decision will be this: make no decision at all, just slog ahead with more half-baked ideas, hoping that the market will magically transform itself and SmartHome/SmartLabs will reap huge benefits simply by the luck of having made no *bad* decisions... rather than the hard way, like most other companies, which is to make the *hard* good decisions!

[Teken]

I'd love to be a fly-on-the-wall in the SmartHome/SmartLabs conference rooms when the topic comes up -- I'd also love to know the gory details of the discussions with UDI regarding the PLM chips that they won't sell to UDI...

 

I imagine the conflict must be significant - on the one hand, SmartHome is almost certainly looking at all the ISY's sold and realizing that all those customers are not "captive" (i.e. are not beholden to SmartHome for their servers to do their automation, and thus not potential revenue generators when SmartHome inevitably starts charging a monthly service fee for "premium" hub support). On the other hand, they must realize that they really don't have anything that competes with the ISY in any real fashion, and that they would lose those device sales. On yet a third hand they probably look at the addition of Z-Wave support in the ISY as a major threat to their device sales anyway... and there's probably a fourth hand that Iv'e not considered.

 

No matter how you look at it, Joe has some tough decisions ahead. But after getting to know SmartHome/SmartLabs a bit better, I predict that the decision will be this: make no decision at all, just slog ahead with more half-baked ideas, hoping that the market will magically transform itself and SmartHome/SmartLabs will reap huge benefits simply by the luck of having made no *bad* decisions... rather than the hard way, like most other companies, which is to make the *hard* good decisions!

 

Mwester,

 

Sometimes I wonder if you're in my head reading my inner thoughts?!?!

 

Ha . . .

 

I am sure what you wrote is a combination of things; first if this issue was really important to them you would have seen real change and interaction with the general public. This has not been scene since the SH forum was created and back in the good old days they had actual people who worked there taking on feed back and relaying the very same.

 

Then the Chinese wall was erected and the company policy was say nothing, ever . . .

 

From time to time there have been some random attempts to engage the public as was seen by the new Wish List and Isaac who asked that people select the *Like* button in any idea to help them gauge interest and need. Sadly people like Isaac, Carlos, have no say as to what is going to happen etc.

 

On a related note I was shocked to hear one of the best people who I knew there *Carlos* is no longer in the Beta program or not with the company any longer?

 

I can literally count on one hand the amazing people that I have engaged with. These people were the heart and soul of the company and to see people who really want to make a difference get moved or leave.

 

Wow, all I have to say is its just dumb luck this company is still operating on all cylinders.

 

With respect to the PLM chip my feelings are this issue is more about two things. One that they have not 100% narrowed down the ALL ON / ALL OFF issue and Smartlabs (Joe Dadda) as we have read here have not given UDI the means to flash the chips should it ever be required.

 

I find this part extremely amusing and irritating at the same time . . .

 

Lets all speak plainly here shall we there isn't one global vendor in the free market that is interested in taking on Insteon as a HA protocol, none!

 

That ship has sailed away like it did in the VHS vs Beta wars. This same war was fought in the Blue Ray DVD standards and ironically it was funny to see Sony finally wake up and smell the coffee as they finally relented in accepting the porn industry would and has changed the balance of which standards would ultimately win.

 

Porn is king and Sony had to accept that fact or see the infamous Beta loss be seen again with respect to the Blue Ray.

 

Back on topic: Of all the (active) vendors which there are only 3 UDI has been the Insteon champion that has made many products OK to be excellent and bearable. I have to gather the thread I created which indicates at least three new global PLM's are either all Smartlabs or one is being assigned for the 994 Series Controller but who really knows.

 

This is the problem with signing a NDA because lots of this information can't be shared to the general public etc. It would be great to know from UDI at least if there project is still in the works and simply waiting for the chips to be sold and they are given the rights to flash them should the need arise.

 

I hope 2016 will see a global PLM in any iteration for those across the pond though. As this will help everyone in the big picture as the extra revenue will help each company grow and hopefully obtain more resources to complete random projects.

[paulbates]

 I predict that the decision will be this: make no decision at all, just slog ahead 

Agreed, and we have to be realistic from a business perspective.

 

For instance, I wonder how many hubs (of any kind) have been purchased in the last 2 years vs Serial PLMs? What's the forecast? The new IoT remote control audience is the market that's growing and paying right now, and they're buying hubs. SH have a foot in HomeKit, Alljoyn and their own solutions to support whatever way this goes.. all new markets with new buying users of Hubs, switches, sensors, etc.

 

If we were in the meeting, what do we think their perception is of the serial PLM audience? How many of us would run to our web browsers and buy a new Hub packaged serial PLM if it was released today? Realistically, probably not that many.

 

To your point, the flip side is that they can just keep slogging along selling us PLMs at $80 for what costs them less than $20 delivered to the warehouse. And, we'll keep buying replacements at what is probably a predictable rate.

 

Their focus is on products that support the new IoT market. The new Alert Module is further evidence, they are plugging holes in the Hub product line for new IoT buyers.

 

Paul

[EricK]

Thank you Amazon!.  New PLM arrived Sunday morning.  Restore PLM in progress.  I have about 8 or 9 leak sensors stashed around, will be a pain to restore.  

[paulbates]

Glad to hear Eric!

 

Paul