Setting up 6 Button On/Off Keypad as 3 switches with LED Indicators

[miimura]

I have a new Insteon 2487S On/Off Keypad (6-Button) that I have just added to my ISY 994i system. The top and bottom On and Off buttons have mutually exclusive LEDs that indicate whether the internal relay is on or off.  That is the behavior out of the box.  I want the A/B/C/D buttons to form two more logical switches that behave in the same way with A indicating On mutually exclusive with C indicating Off. Same for B indicating On and D indicating Off for the second logical switch. When this is done, I want these logical switches to individually control the outlets on a 2663-222 On/Off Outlet. If someone presses the button on the outlet, I want the keypad to reflect the correct on/off state.

What I have done so far:

1. I used Buttons Grouping to make A & C Mutually Exclusive and B & D Mutually Exclusive

2. I set A, B, C and D to Non-Toggle. It doesn't appear to matter whether I choose On or Off at the time it is set to Non-Toggle.

After doing those two things, the keypad and its built-in LEDs do exactly what I want.  For example, when you press A, its LED illuminates and when you press C, its LED illuminates and A's LED is turned off.  Pressing a button that is already illuminated doesn't do anything because it's already in the desired state. However, it appears that in this configuration, when you press the buttons, no status changes are sent to the ISY at all.  I believe that this is what the Buttons Grouping warnings are about.

It appears that this approach is going nowhere and I will have to undo the steps above and implement the logic I want in Programs. This also seems too complicated for Scenes alone. Obviously, if I just added one button and one outlet socket to a Scene, both as Control-Sponders it would work as desired and the LED on that one button would indicate whether the one socket on the outlet was on or off.  However, then I will have two completely unused buttons and that seems kind of lame.

Am I missing something, or is this really how it is with Insteon and ISY?

[webminster]

You might have to do 2 scenes for each combo, one to turn on stuff and the other to turn off stuff.   For instance, for your A/C combo, create two scenes and include buttons A and C in both.   Turn on A and off C in one, and vice versa in the other.

[miimura]

1 hour ago, webminster said:

You might have to do 2 scenes for each combo, one to turn on stuff and the other to turn off stuff.   For instance, for your A/C combo, create two scenes and include buttons A and C in both.   Turn on A and off C in one, and vice versa in the other.

This is a good suggestion but since I'm new at this it took me a little while to figure out what it meant. I also didn't implement it exactly as stated by @webminster

What I have done so far:

1. Create a first Scene and add one button (A) and one outlet (top) both as controllers. This sets them up as synchronized Control-Sponders and they work as expected with the keypad LED and outlet turning On and Off in unison with repeated button presses.

2. Add the paired button (C) as a Responder to the first Scene and set its On Level to 0% in the Scene. Click on each Controller (A & Top Outlet) and set the On Level of button C to 0% for each.

3. Create a second scene and add one button (C) as Controller and the Outlet as a Responder with the On Level set to 0% in the Scene.

4. Add the paired button (A) as a Responder to the second Scene and set its On Level to 0% in the Scene. Click on the Controller (C) and set the On Level of both Responders to 0%.

At this point, alternately pushing A and C will toggle the LEDs and the outlet as desired.  However, they are still toggle type buttons, so repeatedly pressing the A button will also turn the load on and off.  So, one more step.

5. On the settings page for one of the keypad buttons, press the Buttons Toggle Mode dialog button and change the buttons to Non-Toggle [On].  Now repeatedly pressing the same button won't do anything and any press will set it to the On state.  To get it to the Off state you must press the paired button which turns it off.

From the keypad, everything works as expected and all the states are reflected in the ISY.  I just haven't gone out and actually pushed the button on the outlet to see if all the button states maintain synchronization with repeated pushing of that button. I don't see how to make the outlet a controller for both scenes, so I may need to add a program that triggers the second scene when the outlet is turned off.

One thing that I did notice is that if you initiate actions on a device in the ISY like toggling the state of the outlet or adjusting another switch that is set up as a 3-way, it's not the same as taking the action on the device itself and the linked devices go out of sync.

This setup now does exactly what I originally wanted. What a learning experience. I'm glad this is all done with Insteon device programming and not ISY programming.