Help with Insteon garage door sensor

[Bill Morrow]

I'm trying to install my Insteon garage door sensor, but it won't link with my ISY. The ISY console just gets stuck on 'System Busy'. Is this a wiring issue with the sensors or the relay? It's been a while since I wired up the Insteon TBH, as I had to do some electrical wiring in the garage to get this thing 'operational' I have the relay wired up to the connections on the Liftmaster per the manual.and I have one garage door wired up to the open/close sensors.

I wonder if the Liftmaster is putting out juice that's bothering the Insteon? I'll try without the relay, but I don't think that's the issue.

Thanks

 

[Bill Morrow]

Nope, the relay is not the issue. I double checked and it seems to be using the correct connections. Although pressing the set button does not open the door. Disconnecting the relay makes no difference to the linking process either. ☹️ The sense light is also on whatever that means. 

[Bill Morrow]

11 minutes ago, Bill Morrow said:

Nope, the relay is not the issue. I double checked and it seems to be using the correct connections. Although pressing the set button does not open the door. Disconnecting the relay makes no difference to the linking process either. ☹️ The sense light is also on whatever that means. 

OK, the set button does open and close the door. Yay! ? The sense light goes on and off with the door going up and down. But it STILL won't link. Why is linking this device crashing the Admin console? ?

[Brian H]

The I/OLinc is an older design. Power line only module. You may have a communications issue between the ISY994i and the I/OLinc. Do you have any other Dual Band modules in the garage?

As a test you may want to temporarily move the I/OLinc to an outlet closer to the ISY994i. If it links there you probably have a power line signal issue.

If the I/OLinc is powered by the same outlet as the garage door opener. You could also try linking it with the opener unplugged. That may show if the opener is making power line noise or absorbing the Insteon power line signals.

Edited June 26, 2018 by Brian H

[Bill Morrow]

14 minutes ago, Brian H said:

As a test you may want to temporarily move the I/OLinc to an outlet closer to the ISY994i. If it links there you probably have a power line signal issue.

I was afraid you were going to say that! ?

I think I have about five range extenders and the garage is on the main panel and not the sub panel. Although the GD Opener comes with it's own surge suppressor, so I suppose that could be sucking up the signal. Maybe I'll try plugging a range extender next to the I/O Linc if your suggestion works. I've also got a box of filters somewhere; I might try putting one of these before the surge suppressor.

[paulbates]

Bill

I had to put a range extender in my garage to get my garage door iolinc to work. Actually its the old school Access Point, which works with the older iolinc I have.

Picked an outlet that was close to line-of-sight with dualband devices in the house.. 

Paul

[Bill Morrow]

4 minutes ago, paulbates said:

Bill

I had to put a range extender in my garage to get my garage door iolinc to work. Actually its the old school Access Point, which works with the older iolinc I have.

Picked an outlet that was close to line-of-sight with dualband devices in the house.. 

Paul

Thanks,

There's a range extender about 30' from the I/O Linc. I could move it closer, but then it might get blocked by the fire door. Maybe I need another extender on the other side of the room, as this is closer to the I/O Linc.  

[mwester]

Physical proximity is hit-or-miss; the real issue is electrical proximity combined with the nature of the issue (signal being sucked out, or signal being obliterated by noise).  So don't get hung up on where things are plugged in so much, it may not help.

Modern garage door operators are all high-tech computerized machines, and as such they have the same switching power supplies that plague the Insteon protocol.  First thing to try is to get an Insteon FilterLinc, and plug the GDO into that -- see if that resolves much if not all of your issue.  (I actually had to also put a FilterLinc on my DeWalt battery charger to get everything in the garage working right -- Insteon is seriously vulnerable to the noise that even tiny switching power-supplies put on the power-line.)

[Brian H]

Have you tried the Range Extenders builtin communications tests? To see if it is communicating with any other Dual  Band device or Range Extender?

 

[Bill Morrow]

No, how does that work?

Some combination of button presses I gather.

[paulbates]

Starts on page 6

[Brian H]

For some of the other Dual Band modules you have. Consult their full manuals.

Some you can tap the set button four times {you may see it called the four tap test} and it starts the test. Some of the later ones have a flow chart in the manual. Where you observe the LED color and blink pattern to choose things.

[Bill Morrow]

Thanks Brian, my bad for being lazy.

I've got a few projects on the go from upgrading an old laptop to SSD (Grrr), upgrading the SSD in a new laptop (Yay), fixing my RPi sharing issues (damn Windows 10), rewiring the home theatre, debugging the fish's computer issues and DIRT. Sorry for the Blog.

I bought another Extender for the I/O Linc and I'm going to install a filter before the garage door opener.

[paulbates]

15 minutes ago, Bill Morrow said:

Thanks Brian, my bad for being lazy.

I've got a few projects on the go from upgrading an old laptop to SSD (Grrr), upgrading the SSD in a new laptop (Yay), fixing my RPi sharing issues (damn Windows 10), rewiring the home theatre, debugging the fish's computer issues and DIRT. Sorry for the Blog.

I bought another Extender for the I/O Linc and I'm going to install a filter before the garage door opener.

I updated a 5 year old Lenovo all-in-one to SSD.  It had an old HDD that was humming, getting slow and very noisy. I replaced it with a SAN disk SSD. Based on how the lenovo was designed, it took less than 15 minutes to swap the memory DIMM for more memory, and replace the HDD with an SSD.  

Before the swap, I used acronis, which is free when using a san disk ssd, to copy the HDD image to the SSD and make it bootable. Did the HW swap and turned it back on. It was one of the most painless upgrades, runs great and relatively cheap (compared to replacing an all-in-one)

[Bill Morrow]

I have an old ThinkPad, R32 with a PATA interface. It got so slow you would wait two minutes for a right mouse click to respond. A memory upgrade and some tweaking made this bearable. But it will not boot off my mSata card with PATA adapter.. I thought it might be the adapter or the image, so I bought PATA to USB adapter and I can see the disk and the image looks fine. But the laptop does not see the drive. If I try to boot off the drive plugged into the USB it will Blue-screen, so at least it sees the drive.

I bought another adapter (they are dirt cheap) and I noticed it has a jumper on the master/slave pins, but the original drive does not have this, so I assume it's hard code internally as Master.

I know someone else who used my first interface, so it could be some kind of incompatibility between the interface  and my choice of Sata cards, although it works perfectly with the USB interface.

Upgrading the new laptop was a PoC. I replaced an average SSD with one of the new Crucial MX500s and it boots instantly now. The ThinkPad was not my working laptop BTW; I just want an XP machine to play with. 

[Brian H]

I have found some of the present manuals show the flow chart Set Button, LED sequence. Don't work on the older hardware  modules of the same model number.