ISY won't reset, won't speak to PLM

[to_lighter]

Hi to_lighter,

 

Your assumption is correct. It basically means that you are not bridging all the phases. Going back to FilterLincs, would you be amenable to trying some?

 

With kind regards,

Michel

 

Hi Michel,

 

The problem is definitely not FilterLinks.

 

I started trouble shooting with the 8 button KLM in the kitchen. I tried restore, reset/restore, factory reset/restore, with no success.

 

Tonight I removed the device from the ISY, factory reset it, then readded it to the ISY. Now it works perfectly.

 

Given the number of non-functioning devices in my house, I am now looking at the daunting task of removing devices one-by-one and readding them to the ISY.

 

The problem is definitely the ISY. I unplugged the PLM, and now the ISY seems to be impossibly corrupted.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks.

[MikeB]

Not sure if this will help, but you might try factory resetting a problematic device, then doing a Restore on it and see if it helps.

[Michel Kohanim]

Hello to_lighter,

 

I am so very sorry to hear this. What does "incredibly corrupted" mean?

 

As Mike suggested, can you factory reset another one (without removing from ISY) and then do a restore?

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[to_lighter]

Not sure if this will help, but you might try factory resetting a problematic device, then doing a Restore on it and see if it helps.

 

Hi Mike,

 

Thanks for responding. As mentioned above, I have definitely already tried the factory reset/restore method. That approach does not help. Removing the device and reinstalling does. I haven't had time to try any more of the problematic devices (a very large number) so I will wait until I have tried the usual restore methods on other devices.

 

Thanks.

[Michel Kohanim]

Hello to_lighter,

 

Is the issue only status updates or do we have other issues. I can think of one scenario when removing devices from ISY and then adding them back in will get the status to work for that device BUT they will make some other device not to report status. That case is if your PLM has around 400+ links.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

Not sure if this will help, but you might try factory resetting a problematic device, then doing a Restore on it and see if it helps.

 

Hi Mike,

 

Thanks for responding. As mentioned above, I have definitely already tried the factory reset/restore method. That approach does not help. Removing the device and reinstalling does. I haven't had time to try any more of the problematic devices (a very large number) so I will wait until I have tried the usual restore methods on other devices.

 

Thanks.

[to_lighter]

Hello to_lighter,

 

I am so very sorry to hear this. What does "incredibly corrupted" mean?

 

As Mike suggested, can you factory reset another one (without removing from ISY) and then do a restore?

 

With kind regards,

Michel

 

Hi Michel,

 

Thanks for responding. "Impossibly corrupted" means that my perfectly functional system became largely corrupted after unplugging my PLM. I am currently working on restoring functionality to one switch before moving on ...

 

I have a strong interest in making sure that the ISY/Insteon combo works well together, so I hope we can figure out what has happened, and why many of my switches are no longer recognized by the ISY. However, my detective work so far has demonstrated that the problematic switches do generate LED activity at the PLM, but not in the activity log of the ISY. Removing the first problematic switch from the ISY and then reinstalling it has resolved all of the communication problems. I think this is sufficient to rule out electrical noise as the issue, and so I think the future focus should not be upon FilterLinks, especially given that I have a bunch of them in place, and none of them changed at the time of the fatal unplugging of the PLM. Somehow, a simple unplug and replug of the PLM has made my ISY99i unable to respond to a large number of my devices. Worst comes to worst, I guess I will remove them and reinstall them one-by-one, a process akin to starting again from scratch. Given the very large number of switches that I have, I certainly hope that this will not be necessary every time the PLM loses power.

 

As per your suggestion, I have started with a switch that participates in multiple scenes and programs. Once I get that switch working reliably, I will move on to other problematic switches.

 

 

Thanks

[Michel Kohanim]

Hello to_lighter,

 

Thanks so very much for the detailed response. And, so am I very interested in getting to the root cause of this since if it happens once, it wills surely happen again. To this end, I still need to understand what "corrupted" means: is it devices do NOT report their status? is that they do not respond to scenes? in short, what are the symptoms?

 

As far as the PLM blinking but ISY not seeing traffic, this still does confirm the problem is a corrupted ISY simply because:

1. For each event received by the PLM, the PLM's LED blinks

2. For each event, the PLM has to go find a record for this device as a slave without which the event is NOT passed on to ISY. Now there are two cases:

--- a. If your PLM has more than 400 links, then - in some cases - the PLM will NOT be able to find the record and ISY will not get the notification. This will require a PLM replacement

--- b. The record is NOT in your PLM in which case the problem might either be the PLM (got corrupted) or when you restored all your devices, then some devices did not get programmed properly into the PLM

 

I strongly believe the problem is the PLM (with more links than 400) and even more so because removing the device and adding it back in helps. The reason is that when you remove a device from ISY, you are also removing it from all the scenes it belongs to ... so, in short, you will be FREEING n number of links in the PLM. I bet you if you start adding the device to multiple scenes, you will start having the same issues either with the same switch or with some others.

 

If I know more of the symptoms of the "corruption" you refer to, then I'll be better able to help out with the diagnosis.

 

 

With kind regards,

Michel

Hello to_lighter,

 

I am so very sorry to hear this. What does "incredibly corrupted" mean?

 

As Mike suggested, can you factory reset another one (without removing from ISY) and then do a restore?

 

With kind regards,

Michel

 

Hi Michel,

 

Thanks for responding. "Impossibly corrupted" means that my perfectly functional system became largely corrupted after unplugging my PLM. I am currently working on restoring functionality to one switch before moving on ...

 

I have a strong interest in making sure that the ISY/Insteon combo works well together, so I hope we can figure out what has happened, and why many of my switches are no longer recognized by the ISY. However, my detective work so far has demonstrated that the problematic switches do generate LED activity at the PLM, but not in the activity log of the ISY. Removing the first problematic switch from the ISY and then reinstalling it has resolved all of the communication problems. I think this is sufficient to rule out electrical noise as the issue, and so I think the future focus should not be upon FilterLinks, especially given that I have a bunch of them in place, and none of them changed at the time of the fatal unplugging of the PLM. Somehow, a simple unplug and replug of the PLM has made my ISY99i unable to respond to a large number of my devices. Worst comes to worst, I guess I will remove them and reinstall them one-by-one, a process akin to starting again from scratch. Given the very large number of switches that I have, I certainly hope that this will not be necessary every time the PLM loses power.

 

As per your suggestion, I have started with a switch that participates in multiple scenes and programs. Once I get that switch working reliably, I will move on to other problematic switches.

 

 

Thanks

[to_lighter]

Hello to_lighter,

 

Thanks so very much for the detailed response. And, so am I very interested in getting to the root cause of this since if it happens once, it wills surely happen again. To this end, I still need to understand what "corrupted" means: is it devices do NOT report their status? is that they do not respond to scenes? in short, what are the symptoms?

 

As far as the PLM blinking but ISY not seeing traffic, this still does confirm the problem is a corrupted ISY simply because:

1. For each event received by the PLM, the PLM's LED blinks

2. For each event, the PLM has to go find a record for this device as a slave without which the event is NOT passed on to ISY. Now there are two cases:

--- a. If your PLM has more than 400 links, then - in some cases - the PLM will NOT be able to find the record and ISY will not get the notification. This will require a PLM replacement

--- b. The record is NOT in your PLM in which case the problem might either be the PLM (got corrupted) or when you restored all your devices, then some devices did not get programmed properly into the PLM

 

I strongly believe the problem is the PLM (with more links than 400) and even more so because removing the device and adding it back in helps. The reason is that when you remove a device from ISY, you are also removing it from all the scenes it belongs to ... so, in short, you will be FREEING n number of links in the PLM. I bet you if you start adding the device to multiple scenes, you will start having the same issues either with the same switch or with some others.

 

If I know more of the symptoms of the "corruption" you refer to, then I'll be better able to help out with the diagnosis.

 

 

With kind regards,

Michel

Hello to_lighter,

 

I am so very sorry to hear this. What does "incredibly corrupted" mean?

 

As Mike suggested, can you factory reset another one (without removing from ISY) and then do a restore?

 

With kind regards,

Michel

 

Hi Michel,

 

Thanks for responding. "Impossibly corrupted" means that my perfectly functional system became largely corrupted after unplugging my PLM. I am currently working on restoring functionality to one switch before moving on ...

 

I have a strong interest in making sure that the ISY/Insteon combo works well together, so I hope we can figure out what has happened, and why many of my switches are no longer recognized by the ISY. However, my detective work so far has demonstrated that the problematic switches do generate LED activity at the PLM, but not in the activity log of the ISY. Removing the first problematic switch from the ISY and then reinstalling it has resolved all of the communication problems. I think this is sufficient to rule out electrical noise as the issue, and so I think the future focus should not be upon FilterLinks, especially given that I have a bunch of them in place, and none of them changed at the time of the fatal unplugging of the PLM. Somehow, a simple unplug and replug of the PLM has made my ISY99i unable to respond to a large number of my devices. Worst comes to worst, I guess I will remove them and reinstall them one-by-one, a process akin to starting again from scratch. Given the very large number of switches that I have, I certainly hope that this will not be necessary every time the PLM loses power.

 

As per your suggestion, I have started with a switch that participates in multiple scenes and programs. Once I get that switch working reliably, I will move on to other problematic switches.

 

 

Thanks

 

Thanks Michel,

 

Good reply. I'm learning a lot about these systems along the way. This morning some switches were working that I'm pretty sure weren't working before. It may prove that removing and re-adding one switch has fixed others as well.

 

So you suspect that the PLM is the issue, which may well be the case.

 

I haven't tested this systematically, but in general, it would appear that affected switches can be queried, can be restored and can be controlled by the ISY, but keypresses from the switch are not showing up in the Event Log. I haven't done a lot of scene testing from the ISY.

 

I have a lot of devices and a lot of scenes, so I suspect that I have a lot of links.

 

My PLM is E.DC.9 v72. I wasn't getting a reliable link count from the PLM previously, but today it progressed further than before. According to the PLM the link count is 869.

 

You had said that I may need to get a replacement PLM if the link count is greater than 400. Does this mean a version of the PLM that has more memory or something?

 

Finally, I had factory reset the ISY, which there is now a post warning not to do that. Is there a way to check to make sure that the ISY is still OK post-factory reset?

 

Thanks as always for your help.

 

Cheers!

[to_lighter]

More strangeness, but in a good way this time.

 

It appears that removing one problematic switch and then adding it back into the ISY fixed not only that switch, but all of the other problematic switches as well.

 

Also, it looks like I am now getting a consistent link count from the PLM.

 

The one thing that has me a bit worried is that when I use the Scene Test in the ISY, it will often report that some/many/most switches failed the test, despite the fact that they all turned off when Scene Test began. These scenes seem to work fine when I click their controlling switch. In other words, it looks to me like the scene is working fine, but the ISY doesn't always seem to think so.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Cheers!

[Sub-Routine]

Glad to hear you got things going again. How many links do you have now in the PLM?

 

The scene test uses a worst case scenario.

 

Please see Scene_Test in the Wiki.

 

Rand

[to_lighter]

Glad to hear you got things going again. How many links do you have now in the PLM?

 

The scene test uses a worst case scenario.

 

Please see Test_Scene in the Wiki.

 

Rand

 

Thanks Rand,

 

The link was very informative, thank you. I now feel better about the Scene Test results differing from what I was seeing with my own eyes.

 

My link count on the PLM is 1748.

 

I'm going to run it a few more times to see if it is consistent.

 

Cheers!

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi to_litgther,

 

If you have 1700+ links, and if you have PLM v72, then I strongly recommend getting a replacement PLM. Also, I strongly recommend that you try and merge some of your scenes. 1700 is A LOT of links and I do not think you are going to have consistent behavior.

 

Factory reset is not a problem if yours worked.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

 

Glad to hear you got things going again. How many links do you have now in the PLM?

 

The scene test uses a worst case scenario.

 

Please see Test_Scene in the Wiki.

 

Rand

 

Thanks Rand,

 

The link was very informative, thank you. I now feel better about the Scene Test results differing from what I was seeing with my own eyes.

 

My link count on the PLM is 1748.

 

I'm going to run it a few more times to see if it is consistent.

 

Cheers!

[to_lighter]

Hi to_litgther,

 

If you have 1700+ links, and if you have PLM v72, then I strongly recommend getting a replacement PLM. Also, I strongly recommend that you try and merge some of your scenes. 1700 is A LOT of links and I do not think you are going to have consistent behavior.

 

Factory reset is not a problem if yours worked.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

 

Glad to hear you got things going again. How many links do you have now in the PLM?

 

The scene test uses a worst case scenario.

 

Please see Test_Scene in the Wiki.

 

Rand

 

Thanks Rand,

 

The link was very informative, thank you. I now feel better about the Scene Test results differing from what I was seeing with my own eyes.

 

My link count on the PLM is 1748.

 

I'm going to run it a few more times to see if it is consistent.

 

Cheers!

 

Hi Michel,

 

I have obtained a new PLM v7A. Is this a sufficiently new version?

 

As an FYI, after restoring the new PLM, the ISY has stopped seeing my KPL switches again, same issue as the start of this thread. When I get home, I'm going to try the removing a switch - reinsert a switch trick and see if that works. Is this a symptom of something larger being wrong with my system?

 

Cheers!

[Sub-Routine]

Hi Michel,

 

I have obtained a new PLM v7A. Is this a sufficiently new version?

 

As an FYI, after restoring the new PLM, the ISY has stopped seeing my KPL switches again, same issue as the start of this thread. When I get home, I'm going to try the removing a switch - reinsert a switch trick and see if that works. Is this a symptom of something larger being wrong with my system?

 

Cheers!

 

to_lighter,

 

Please try to Query any switches the ISY is not seeing before remove/re-add. We have discovered an issue involving an unsuccessful Query. v2.7.2 will include some additional procedures to resolve this, we hope to release this version very soon.

 

Rand

[Michel Kohanim]

to_lighter,

 

You will need PLM v.85 ... again, you will have to somehow reduce the number of links (or number of scenes) you have otherwise you are always going to have status problems with the devices you linked "last".

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[Brian H]

Gee my BRAND NEW PLM from Smarthome is a HW 2.95 with 7A Firmware! This is not a swap for a problem one but a newly purchased one.

[Michel Kohanim]

Brian H,

 

Please do give a couple of days to get to the bottom of this ... I do have PLM 85 but it may have been Beta and the production/shipping is 7A. I shall keep you posted.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

 

Gee my BRAND NEW PLM from Smarthome is a HW 2.95 with 7A Firmware! This is not a swap for a problem one but a newly purchased one.

[to_lighter]

Brian H,

 

Please do give a couple of days to get to the bottom of this ... I do have PLM 85 but it may have been Beta and the production/shipping is 7A. I shall keep you posted.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

 

Gee my BRAND NEW PLM from Smarthome is a HW 2.95 with 7A Firmware! This is not a swap for a problem one but a newly purchased one.

 

Hello Michel,

 

I am interested in your answer, as I think my supplier of Smarthome equipment was quite skeptical about your response.

 

The issue has been reproduced on two occasions. A reset of the PLM leads to none of my keypad programs working. The first time was due to a power outage. This time was a deliberate reprogramming of the PLM based on your advice. The result was exactly the same both times. I am wondering whether you guys at ISY have tried this scenario with your equipment on a large setup like mine. It feels like I have been given advice that feels very definitive (i.e. swap your PLM for a version .85) when it seems that this advice is more conjecture than fact.

 

Have you guys at Universal Devices tested a scenario like mine and determined that it can only be solved by a PLM v.85? If I insist that my supplier take back another PLM and provide me with a v.85, will it solve the issues that I am having?

 

I feel like I am heading down a dead end here, and that there is something wrong with my ISY setup. So far my supplier has been very helpful, but there is a bit of silence happening since I forwarded some of your replies.

 

Thanks

PMC

[MikeB]

Firmware v85 does correct an issue cause by a high # of links. Given the fact that you had upwards of 1700 links in your PLM I'd say replacing w your PLM with a v85 is solid advice.

 

That being said Michel has suggested you find a way to reduce the # of links you are creating in your PLM. The ISY is more than capable, but you MAY be reaching a limit to what the PLM can handle. To be honest, I'm not sure I've seen reports of anyone with that high # of links.

[to_lighter]

Firmware v85 does correct an issue cause by a high # of links. Given the fact that you had upwards of 1700 links in your PLM I'd say replacing w your PLM with a v85 is solid advice.

 

That being said Michel has suggested you find a way to reduce the # of links you are creating in your PLM. The ISY is more than capable, but you MAY be reaching a limit to what the PLM can handle. To be honest, I'm not sure I've seen reports of anyone with that high # of links.

 

Thanks Mike,

 

Part of the issue is that I can't get a reliable PLM link count. Last night I did it when there was no activity. I got 700 twice, and over a thousand once. In any case, I have put in a request for a v85 PLM.

 

I'm really stuck now. Most of my devices don't respond to my KPL buttons. In the event log the button press is noted, and the scene activated, but then the devices don't respond. Here is an example of a scene that has 5 devices (4 switchlinks and one outletlink). On the KPL keypress, the scene is supposed to be activated. Here is what happens:

 

2009/03/13 09:19:43 : [iNST-SRX ] 02 50 0B.F7.5A 0C.00.02 C3 11 00 LTONRR (00)

 

2009/03/13 09:19:43 : [standard-Group][0B.F7.5A-->Group=2] Max Hops=3, Hops Left=0

 

2009/03/13 09:19:43 : [iNST-SRX ] 02 50 0F.43.1E 0F.17.5A 62 11 02 LTONRR (02)

 

2009/03/13 09:19:43 : [standard-Cleanup Ack][0F.43.1E-->0F.17.5A] Max Hops=2, Hops Left=0

 

Only one of the lights comes on. If I activate the scene from within the ISY, all of the lights come on perfectly.

 

Any ideas?

 

Cheers!

[to_lighter]

For comparison sake, here is the ISY log when I activate the scene from the ISY rather than with the KPL button.

 

2009/03/13 09:46:15 : [iNST-ACK ] 02 62 00.00.2B CF 11 00 06 LTONRR (00)

 

2009/03/13 09:46:15 : [ F 17 5A 1] ST 191

 

2009/03/13 09:46:15 : [iNST-ACK ] 02 62 00.00.1E CF 11 FF 06 LTONRR (FF)

 

2009/03/13 09:46:16 : [iNST-ACK ] 02 62 00.00.64 CF 11 FF 06 LTONRR (FF)

 

2009/03/13 09:46:16 : [iNST-ACK ] 02 62 00.00.75 CF 11 FF 06 LTONRR (FF)

 

2009/03/13 09:46:17 : [iNST-ACK ] 02 62 00.00.49 CF 11 FF 06 LTONRR (FF)

 

2009/03/13 09:46:17 : [iNST-ACK ] 02 62 00.00.4F CF 11 FF 06 LTONRR (FF)

 

2009/03/13 09:46:18 : [iNST-ACK ] 02 62 00.00.77 CF 11 FF 06 LTONRR (FF)

 

 

 

I'm not an expert at reading these, but there are 6 INST-ACKs at the end of the output when triggered from the ISY, and only one when triggered from the KPL button.

 

Any ideas?

 

Cheers!

[Michel Kohanim]

Hello to_lighter,

 

I think perhaps now is a good time to schedule a call with our tech support. What I see and based on what you describe is something rather impossible unless you have discovered a bug.

 

With kind regards,

Michel