What to do when you have more than 1000 links?

[Mdf]

I have an insteon network with about 225 devices of various sorts (a fair number of 6 and 8 button keypads) and what appears to be about 1200 links (I calculate this by looking at the place where I start consistently getting "15" response codes during a "restore" PLM operation. And there appear to be 990 links before this point that have "06" response codes, which seems about the right number).  

 

Mostly things work fine as is, for reasons that make sense, namely the ISY connected to the PLM isn't involved in most operations. And further, most devices have proper links in the PLM, and as it turns out the devices that don't are "mostly" responders, which, It would seem,  don't actually need control links in the PLM. 

 

However, I tried  adding some hidden door open/close sensors and while I can add them into the iSY, the ISY never actually sees open/close events (or Heart beat events) because, it would appear, the PLM doesn't have a proper responder link for these devices. Iindeed, when I do a restore PLM, I get at "15" response code (and to be clear, these are in a block of 200+ MNG-LNK-RSP messages at the end of the restore, all of which have a "15" response code. These are not the 100 or so random "15" response code messages that occurred while restoring the first 990 entries.)

 

Sun 01/03/2016 08:20:07 PM : [MNG-LNK-RSP ] 02 6F 41 A2 01 2C 6F 1D 10 11 43 15  Sun 01/03/2016 08:20:08 PM : [MNG-LNK-RSP ] 02 6F 41 A2 03 2C 6F 1D 10 11 43 15  Sun 01/03/2016 08:20:08 PM : [MNG-LNK-RSP ] 02 6F 41 A2 04 2C 6F 1D 10 11 43 15 

 

The PLM firmware is V9E. It is a V2. PLM (my V 1.5 died).

 

I "know" the door sensor works because: (1) The ISY is able to link to them. (2) I can program a scene (via the ISY) into the door sensor and the door sensor  happily controls the scene. (3) on a separate ISY/PLM that has very few devices on it (at our weekend home) the ISY happily sees open/close events from this exact same sensor (and, yes, I did a factory restore on the sensor before adding it into the network where I'm having troubles).

 

A few Questions:

(a) Am I correct that the PLM/ISY won't see open/close events given that it would appear there is no responder link in the PLM table for this device? I.E. even though I "know" my door sensor works, am I perhaps experiencing some other issue? 

 

( If I'm careful, is it plausible to add a second ISY/PLM on which I put a few of the devices that absolutely need the ISY to participate?  Some of these  would only have to talk to the 2nd ISY/PLM as they just cause email to be sent. The door sensor, would need to control lights that are nominally connected to the primary ISY/PLM. I would think I could make this work by being careful when I add those lights to the 2nd ISY/PLM to make sure that I select "Add devices found in links and keep existing links"  when adding devices that need to be controlled by both ISY/PLMs.

 

© Is there something different about how leak detectors work (doesn't seem to be from all the message formats I see in the developers guide)?  For reasons I don't quite understand I have two leak detectors that appear to be working fine (i.e. ISY sees Heartbeat, and wet/dry events) even though there were "15" response codes when restoring the PLM

 

Sun 01/03/2016 08:17:36 PM : [MNG-LNK-RSP ] 02 6F 41 A2 01 28 16 1A 10 08 00 15  Sun 01/03/2016 08:17:37 PM : [MNG-LNK-RSP ] 02 6F 41 A2 02 28 16 1A 10 08 00 15  Sun 01/03/2016 08:17:38 PM : [MNG-LNK-RSP ] 02 6F 41 A2 04 28 16 1A 10 08 00 15 

 

(d) are there any plans for a PLM that has a lot more links (2000+)? 

 

(f) any other way to hack this?

 

Thanks in advanced for any wisdom and advice. Please let me know if I can provide additional information. 

 

Ed

 

[Teken]

I have an insteon network with about 225 devices of various sorts (a fair number of 6 and 8 button keypads) and what appears to be about 1200 links (I calculate this by looking at the place where I start consistently getting "15" response codes during a "restore" PLM operation. And there appear to be 990 links before this point that have "06" response codes, which seems about the right number).  

 

Mostly things work fine as is, for reasons that make sense, namely the ISY connected to the PLM isn't involved in most operations. And further, most devices have proper links in the PLM, and as it turns out the devices that don't are "mostly" responders, which, It would seem,  don't actually need control links in the PLM. 

 

However, I tried  adding some hidden door open/close sensors and while I can add them into the iSY, the ISY never actually sees open/close events (or Heart beat events) because, it would appear, the PLM doesn't have a proper responder link for these devices. Iindeed, when I do a restore PLM, I get at "15" response code (and to be clear, these are in a block of 200+ MNG-LNK-RSP messages at the end of the restore, all of which have a "15" response code. These are not the 100 or so random "15" response code messages that occurred while restoring the first 990 entries.)

 

Sun 01/03/2016 08:20:07 PM : [MNG-LNK-RSP ] 02 6F 41 A2 01 2C 6F 1D 10 11 43 15  Sun 01/03/2016 08:20:08 PM : [MNG-LNK-RSP ] 02 6F 41 A2 03 2C 6F 1D 10 11 43 15  Sun 01/03/2016 08:20:08 PM : [MNG-LNK-RSP ] 02 6F 41 A2 04 2C 6F 1D 10 11 43 15 

 

The PLM firmware is V9E. It is a V2. PLM (my V 1.5 died).

 

I "know" the door sensor works because: (1) The ISY is able to link to them. (2) I can program a scene (via the ISY) into the door sensor and the door sensor  happily controls the scene. (3) on a separate ISY/PLM that has very few devices on it (at our weekend home) the ISY happily sees open/close events from this exact same sensor (and, yes, I did a factory restore on the sensor before adding it into the network where I'm having troubles).

 

A few Questions:

(a) Am I correct that the PLM/ISY won't see open/close events given that it would appear there is no responder link in the PLM table for this device? I.E. even though I "know" my door sensor works, am I perhaps experiencing some other issue? 

 

( If I'm careful, is it plausible to add a second ISY/PLM on which I put a few of the devices that absolutely need the ISY to participate?  Some of these  would only have to talk to the 2nd ISY/PLM as they just cause email to be sent. The door sensor, would need to control lights that are nominally connected to the primary ISY/PLM. I would think I could make this work by being careful when I add those lights to the 2nd ISY/PLM to make sure that I select "Add devices found in links and keep existing links"  when adding devices that need to be controlled by both ISY/PLMs.

 

© Is there something different about how leak detectors work (doesn't seem to be from all the message formats I see in the developers guide)?  For reasons I don't quite understand I have two leak detectors that appear to be working fine (i.e. ISY sees Heartbeat, and wet/dry events) even though there were "15" response codes when restoring the PLM

 

Sun 01/03/2016 08:17:36 PM : [MNG-LNK-RSP ] 02 6F 41 A2 01 28 16 1A 10 08 00 15  Sun 01/03/2016 08:17:37 PM : [MNG-LNK-RSP ] 02 6F 41 A2 02 28 16 1A 10 08 00 15  Sun 01/03/2016 08:17:38 PM : [MNG-LNK-RSP ] 02 6F 41 A2 04 28 16 1A 10 08 00 15 

 

(d) are there any plans for a PLM that has a lot more links (2000+)? 

 

(f) any other way to hack this?

 

Thanks in advanced for any wisdom and advice. Please let me know if I can provide additional information. 

 

Ed

 

Hello Ed,

 

Its not possible to have two PLM's connected to the ISY Series Controller. There is no idea if a 2000 link PLM will ever be made again. Your only real recourse is to either delete a few items or have another ISY and PLM combination in place.

 

NOTE: The Admin Console can accurately tell you how many links simply by using the PLM Link count tool.

[Brian H]

If there is any Insteon Messages sent during the Link Count. It maybe inaccurate. Most try two or more counts to see if they match.

[Techman]

If your modem link count is high you could try a factory reset / restore modem which will clear out any old unused links that may be in the modem.

[Mdf]

I did a factory reset before I did the last restore. So my link count of 1200 is accurate I believe.

 

I understand I would need a separate ISY+PLM, not just another PLM. It sounds like there is nothing that would prevent this from working then (as long as one is careful about cross linking devices that are "shared' between the two ISYs?

 

Is there a good explanation of what generates links in the PLM? above and beyond an A2 record for each addressable entity in a device,

 is there an E2 record  generated by each scene for each device in that scene?

[MWareman]

Hopefully soon, UDI will publish details on how one v5 ISY can be a node server to another, and have the devices on one seamlessly operate across multiple ISYs. One we know how to do this, well be able to expand in this way seamlessly and cross protocol (think zigbee on one and zwave on another).

 

Until then, I advise getting the network module on both ISYs, configuring devices and scenes all on one or the other as necessary, and use network rules for any needed ISY<=>ISY communication needed. I'm doing this very successfully between my production and test ISY.

 

Michael.

[Teken]

If you decide to follow this path as a solution and ensure there is no cross links from the other PLM / ISY combination you will be just fine.

 

Is it safe to assume the 225 devices were slowly added over time? I am rather surprised you got past 1000 links before you saw this kind of issue?

[larryllix]

That would be an interesting project.

 

At first glance I would use one ISY/PLM pair for lighting nd live operations while the second one I would use for house states, like Away, Vacation, HVAC etc..

 

Next I would use the Network Module to control state variables, in the first,to indicate those house states, HVAC status, etc.. The first ISY could use these states for conditional processing in events. Not too much information should need to go back to the second ISY/PLM.

 

Of course if UDI gets it's multi ISY environment on the table this could be simplified a fair bit.

 

My rough guess is that 10-15 variables one way and 5-10 variables back should be plenty.

 

ISY event processing is fast and efficient. As a guess I would hazard a guess that one ISY seeing an event (MS, temp change, etc.) could send a network to rest variable change, register in the second ISY and cause a light to turn on in less than 0.5 seconds.

 

This would be cool to prove if anybody wants  to disclose a temporary port, user and password for their test ISY we could echo an event back and forth to test this.

[Mdf]

In reply to Teken's comment about why I've not seen this issue before. The devices were added over time, but I think the reason the issue is generally not seen is that by and large it is only an issue if one needs the ISY to respond to an event "from" the insteon network. I have relatively few instances of this, in the sense of I have few programs where the program is initiated by a change outside the ISY (the door sensors are one example. The leak detectors are another).  Most of my ISY programs are driven either by the Time of Day, or by my setting variables from my phone via the Mobilinc App.  That being said, I do have all the bathroom fans on "timers" that are initiated by pressing the "fan" button on a KP in each bathroom, and i have noticed on occasion that sometimes the fans don't turn off. This may be an instance of the ISY not getting the event (need to go check on this). Indeed, I may have seen this in the past, and not realized the root cause that I finally spent hours digging into this weekend (what else are the holidays for . 

 

 I suppose it's both a charm (and sometimes a curse) that the basic  Insteon control is distributed among all the devices, and thus the ISY doesn't need to get involved.  

[Teken]

In reply to Teken's comment about why I've not seen this issue before. The devices were added over time, but I think the reason the issue is generally not seen is that by and large it is only an issue if one needs the ISY to respond to an event "from" the insteon network. I have relatively few instances of this, in the sense of I have few programs where the program is initiated by a change outside the ISY (the door sensors are one example. The leak detectors are another).  Most of my ISY programs are driven either by the Time of Day, or by my setting variables from my phone via the Mobilinc App.  That being said, I do have all the bathroom fans on "timers" that are initiated by pressing the "fan" button on a KP in each bathroom, and i have noticed on occasion that sometimes the fans don't turn off. This may be an instance of the ISY not getting the event (need to go check on this). Indeed, I may have seen this in the past, and not realized the root cause that I finally spent hours digging into this weekend (what else are the holidays for . 

 

 I suppose it's both a charm (and sometimes a curse) that the basic  Insteon control is distributed among all the devices, and thus the ISY doesn't need to get involved.  

 

Unless I am mistaken the 1000 link count has some wiggle room. But having said this the ISY should have cried long ago where if you tried to add in say link 1100 which is way off. My expectation is that the system would have thrown an error code and not allowed any other devices to be added to the PLM / ISY combination.

[Mdf]

I've not seen an error message from the ISY. Indeed, quite the opposite, as it happily adds the device to the ISY's list of devices, and happily programs the device will all the correct links, and happily has it's copy of the links (which match). The "only" thing that is "broken" is that the PLM doesn't end up with responder links for the devices (so it would appear), and in general this "doesn't matter" as discussed above.

[Mdf]

just bit the bullet. Ordered another ISY+PLM. Will let you all know how this works out.  I expect to spend many hours in hacker hell the weekend trying to get this all to work

[Amigo]

Hopefully soon, UDI will publish details on how one v5 ISY can be a node server to another, and have the devices on one seamlessly operate across multiple ISYs. One we know how to do this, well be able to expand in this way seamlessly and cross protocol (think zigbee on one and zwave on another).

 

 

 

Yes, this would be pretty cool.

cheers.

[larryllix]

I remember back  in 2027 when ISYnet became self-aware and that's when my group of ISY9998i units HA wouldn't disable some of the programs I gave it, just to protect itself. It reported in some scary voice it wasn't logical.

                                             

[Mdf]

So I've started to play with sending REST commands from one ISY to another as a means to have two ISYs talk to each other by setting variables.  

While the following works wonderfully when run from my browser:

http://username:password@10.x.x.x/rest/vars/set/2/1/99

[where username and password are the username and password of my ISY at address 10.x.x.x, and in the example above I'm setting state variable 1 to the value 99]

I can't for the life of me figure out how to provide a user name and password when setting up a network resource on my ISY (so that I can issue the rest command from a program on the ISY).

In particular, if i do the "obvious" and set the hostname to "username:password@10.x.x.x" I get a DNS error when i try to test the network resource. 

I've look through as "all" the documentation I can find online about setting up network resources, and have not found the answer on how to do this. Anyone know?

thanks,

Ed

[MWareman]

Don't put the username and password into the URL or hostname. Instead, add an 'Authorization' header (you'll be prompted for the username and password).

 

This is what browsers do automatically when you adjust the URL with the username and password. It's not ISY specific - its part of the HTTP standards (which is why its not documented separately by UDI)

[Mdf]

You da man MWareman. Thanks for your help. That being said it wouldn't hurt for the documentation to mention this

[cgd]

I had the problem of too many links several years ago. I have well over 300 Insteon devices plus 40 thermostats, and over 100 temperature sensors on a RS485 Modbus network.

The problem is that the PLM is too slow searching its link database. I have some PLMs that will take 2000 links. But, all of them start to have problems when the number of links

goes over about 700. The ISY worked great for me until the number of links went over 700. If I remember correctly, the ISY puts links in the PLM for scenes in addition to

the minimum number required for PLM - device communication. I solved my problem by writing my own software that runs on a Windows PC. It supports any reasonable number

of PLMs (I currently have four in use.) Multiple PLMs provide 700 links each, enough to handle every device and provide some redundancy too. If I need more I just attach another PLM.

For important devices like Leak Detectors I link them to all four modems. If a modem fails I get a text message on my phone and everything continues to work.

I would love for UDI to make the ISY do this. I would like to hear from others that have very large systems. What problems have you had and how have you solved them?

[larryllix]

Sounds like we need to wait for the multicore CPU PLM to come out with a fully pre-indexed link library and dedicated search core.

[Guitartexan]

And the onboard 6tb NAS larryllix!

 

 

GT

[ScottAvery]

I hope this issue is in the requirements defined for the mythical UDI PLM that seems to be forever waiting for Smartlabs to release a chip.

[cgd]

An ISY that supports multiple PLMs via USB would be great. 

Or, ISY software that allows multiple ISYs, each with one or more PLMs would be fantastic.

I own two ISYs (one old and one new) but can't use them now.

Multiple ISYs could also provide redundancy. Maybe redundancy is low priority since ISYs are very reliable.

[ScottAvery]

An ISY that supports multiple PLMs via USB would be great. 

That works, too, and would not rely on new hardware.  I think my PLM is serial over RJ45 so I have no concept of how you connect an ISY to a USB PLM.  Would it be trivial to put a USB hub in the chain?

[MWareman]

Two ISY PROs with 5.x will be able to work with each other as node servers, all nodes on one being represented in the other. Each can have its own PLM. Problem solved.

 

It's supposed to work in the betas now, but I'm waiting for things to get more stable and feature rich.

[cgd]

ScottAvery,

I don't have an ISY in my system now due to limitations on number of links. My software runs on a PC with Windows 7.  The software sees everything as a serial port via one USB port on the PC to a 4 port USB hub. 1st port on the hub has an Insteon USB Stick modem, 2nd port a USB PLM, 3rd port a USB to RS485 for Modbus networks, 4th a USB to four RS232 serial ports. Two of the RS232 port have Serial PLMs. Two RS232 ports are available for future use. I may use one for RS232 to RS485 to RS232 to a Serial PLM at the location near the most distant Insteon devices. Now those devices often require three hops in each direction for messages to get through. If an ISY could handle this I could put my efforts into the user interface.