How to use a keypad with scenes?

[Jay M]

I know I should know this by now.  I've had an ISY for many, many years.  At home, I just lived with it not doing exactly what I want.  Now at work, it needs to be right.

 

Here's what I have:

6 button keypad and 18 lights in the ceiling using the Insteon ballast dimmer.

 

I want the ON button to turn all the lights on bright.

I want the OFF button to turn all the lights off.

 

I want buttons A-D to trigger different scenes:  

Scene A -  all lights at 50%

Scene B - all light lights at 30%

Scene C - most lights at 30% but a few off and a few bright.

Scene D - like C, but another variation.

 

How do I do this?

 

What I've been doing was including the scene "A" button in the scene.  

The problem I have is that the ON button stays lit.  Then pressing the Scene "A" button again turns the lights off.  

If I want to go to Scene "B", then the "A" button remains illuminated. 

 

What's the proper way do do this?

I think of ON and OFF as two different scenes- all lights on, or all lights off.  When I press button "A", I want the ON button's LED to turn off.  If I press "A" again nothing should happen unless it failed the first time.  The second press of button "A" would be my attempt to get all the lights as they should be for that scene.  Currently the second press turns all the lights off.

 

Thanks for your help!

~Jay

[stusviews]

You need to create a separate scene for each button. Each scene should have all buttons as reponders and one button as a controller (any button that's a controller is also a responder). Set the controller button to the On-level you want and all other button to off (0%).

[oberkc]

I would actually do this with a single scene.

 

How many dimmers do you have? Is each of the 18 lights connected to a dimmer?

 

Assuming I understand what you want to happen....

 

-first configure buttons A-D as non-toggle-ON.

-create a single scene with Main and A-D buttons as controllers and the dimmer(s) as responder.

-for each of the five controllers in the scene, set the dimmer ON levels (full, 50%, etc...) you want to associate to that particular controller button.

- for each of the five controllers in the scene, set the ON level of the other four buttons at zero.

 

Understand that, for the main button, one (either ON or OFF) will be lit always. WDoes it make sense for the OFF button to be lit when one of your A-D buttons is on, or does it make more sense for the ON button.to be lit?

 

Give it a shot!

[Jay M]

Let me make sure I understand....

 

You put all of the buttons in every scene?  

Scene "A" would have button "A" as a controller, then B, C, and D are responders, and set to zero to turn off their status LED?

[stusviews]

Correct.

[oberkc]

You put all of the buttons in every scene?

 

Only one scene is needed, should you choose to take my earlier advice.

[Jay M]

Thanks, I have it working properly now.  Oberkc, I used what you spelled out in your reply.  It took some trial and error, but I got it sorted out. There's just so many parameters that can be controlled, that it makes it confusing for a non-programmer like me.

 

The ballast dimmers are fairly complex little devices and we have 18 of them in every scene.  

 

The good news is that thanks to your help, I was able to make it work as I imagined it should!

 

Now, I need to go home and reprogram my house. :/

 

~Jay

[oberkc]

18 separate dimmers!!!???  Wow.  Yes, that can take a little time to get all the details properly input.

[Jay M]

As if that's not bad enough... now we are trying to add a second keypad with all the same scenes.  I'm sure it will work, but it's taking some trial and error.

 

Is there a way to mirror a keypad?

 

~Jay

[oberkc]

Not that I remember.  Replace, yes.  Copy, don't think so. 

 

Maybe someone else knows different.

[Jay M]

I have not tried this, but to copy a device, could you just replace it, which will program the new device with old device's settings while removing the old device from the ISY.  Could you then add the old device back in as a "new" device, but not overwrite the programming?

 

~Jay 

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi Jay,

 

Yes. But, it's no longer a copy because everything else is moved to the new device (including all programming).

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[steveng57]

While its true that both methods will work (stusview and Oberskc), I have tried both and found the former to be the better method.  Multiple, Individual scenes is a less error prone way to go, doing all that with a single scene in my world just got weird and they kept stepping on each other.  Also, with individual scenes, you can set them programmatically from the ISY, but there is no way to tell the ISY to "set scene XYZ per the C button levels"