sorka Posted April 1, 2018 Share Posted April 1, 2018 6th or 7th PM replaced today(I've lost count). The restore went fine and everything is working except a keypadlinc 8, several switchlinc dimmers and several switchlnc on/off relays. When they failed to write the updates and reported communication failures with a red exclamation, I visited in person each of these and the lights were off and they were unresponsive. They would not physically turn on or off. I decided to factory reset them (pull air gap for 10 seconds then push all the way in until the beep) but the beep never happened. As long as I pushed the tab in, the led blinks a little faster than once per second. When I release, they remain dark and unresponsive. WTF??????? It's too many to be coincidence and they're all used daily including today so they WERE working before the PLM replacement and now they're 100% not working. I don't believe for a second they all just failed yet I can't seem to factory reset them and the new PLM can't communicate with them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larryllix Posted April 1, 2018 Share Posted April 1, 2018 I can't see it possible for a PLM to brick remote devices by sending them erroneous signals. I would suspect the new PLM or it's installation. It also seems very unlikely you should have had that many PLM failures but rather something else that is making them looks defective. Anything is possible but this sounds very unlikely. Have you checked the date of manufacturing on them? If they all have failed, you should assume you have some bad electrical noise on your wiring that is causing premature power supply capacitor failures. Find somebody with a good oscilloscope that knows how to use it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lilyoyo1 Posted April 1, 2018 Share Posted April 1, 2018 I agree with Larryllix. That many failures is indicative of a bigger issue. Most likely with your electrical. The fact that your switches appear completely dead also says that whatever is plaguing your plms is causing other issues to your system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sorka Posted April 1, 2018 Author Share Posted April 1, 2018 I think that would make sense if I had a steady failure rate, but these all happened at the same time, not spread out over months or years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larryllix Posted April 1, 2018 Share Posted April 1, 2018 Are you using one device to switch a very inductive load in the house? Like a motor of some kind? Furnace fan motor? Do your lights every go dim or extra bright for a few seconds? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sorka Posted April 1, 2018 Author Share Posted April 1, 2018 25 minutes ago, larryllix said: Are you using one device to switch a very inductive load in the house? Like a motor of some kind? Furnace fan motor? Do your lights every go dim or extra bright for a few seconds? I'm not driving any motor loads at all with Insteon. I'm not prone to brownouts or power fluctuations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwester Posted April 1, 2018 Share Posted April 1, 2018 I've encountered an Insteon device that wouldn't reset or even complete power-up, apparently due to excessive noise or other power-line problems. I suspect if the device is getting pummeled with non-stop Insteon traffic (due to a PLM going berserk, possibly? Or due to a bad device? Who knows with Insteon...) Unplug the PLM, and see if the failed devices suddenly can be reset. If that won't work, wire the failed devices up to a plug (I have a cut-up extension cord for that purpose), and plug it in somewhere in the house where other devices are working, or even better, take it to a neighbor and plug it in there -- see if works any better. If none of those make a difference, then something fried them, and it's unlikely to be anything a PLM can do... (But if it could, wow - I see a new IoT article: "The Attack of the Killer PLM!") Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sorka Posted April 1, 2018 Author Share Posted April 1, 2018 Unplugged. Made no difference. Wired into table top switch and plugged in to UPS which made no difference. Unfortunately, something else is going on now that wasn't before replacing the PLM. I'm getting about 25% communication failure rate right now with Insteon all over the house. Either I've had a source of noise introduced today or something is wrong with this 2.4 rev PLM. I'm going to swap back to the old old which still works but was losing all it's links about once a month starting a few months ago which is how all my prevous PLMs failed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sorka Posted April 1, 2018 Author Share Posted April 1, 2018 BTW, it's just these 5. I've tried factory resets and restores on others without any issues. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larryllix Posted April 1, 2018 Share Posted April 1, 2018 12 minutes ago, sorka said: Unplugged. Made no difference. Wired into table top switch and plugged in to UPS which made no difference. Unfortunately, something else is going on now that wasn't before replacing the PLM. I'm getting about 25% communication failure rate right now with Insteon all over the house. Either I've had a source of noise introduced today or something is wrong with this 2.4 rev PLM. I'm going to swap back to the old old which still works but was losing all it's links about once a month starting a few months ago which is how all my prevous PLMs failed. UPS? How big is the UPS and what does it power? Any PV panels close by in the neighbourhood or your roof? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sorka Posted April 1, 2018 Author Share Posted April 1, 2018 23 minutes ago, larryllix said: UPS? How big is the UPS and what does it power? Any PV panels close by in the neighbourhood or your roof? The UPS power my PC and surveillance system. There's a filterlinc on it. I've already unplugged it to see if that was the source. Just finished swapping back the old PLM and communication is back to normal. But now I have to worry about it randomly losing it's memory. The 5 devices that failed today are still dead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lilyoyo1 Posted April 1, 2018 Share Posted April 1, 2018 There's no way a plm can stop devices from completely working. All it is doing is sending out commands not electricity. At worse (if something did happen) it would send out multitudes of commands which would prevent devices talking to one another. Most likely the issue is electrical and plugging in the plm at that time simply was coincidence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Techman Posted April 1, 2018 Share Posted April 1, 2018 18 hours ago, sorka said: The UPS power my PC and surveillance system. There's a filterlinc on it. I've already unplugged it to see if that was the source. Just finished swapping back the old PLM and communication is back to normal. But now I have to worry about it randomly losing it's memory. The 5 devices that failed today are still dead. Try unplugging the PLM, then factory reset one of the switches that you're have a problem with. Can you now manually control the switch? Then, plug the PLM back in and reboot the ISY. Do a count PLM link tables from the ISY, how many links does it show? Do a restore device on the device you did a factory reset on. After the restore do a link table count, compare on that device. Do you show any mismatches? The chance of all those switches and PLM's failing is almost nil. It sounds like an electrical issue with your house wiring. What's the model # of the PLM and Switches you're having problems with. Can you measure the voltage on your house wiring? What model ISY are you using, What's the firmware and UI versions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.