NewTech Posted May 5, 2009 Posted May 5, 2009 I have a scene I call "Goodnight" that puts the house to sleep for the night. When I press the KeypadLinc button “C†on the dining room KPL, any lights throughout the house that were on, turn off. Also included in this scene are a couple of lights that are supposed to be set at 10-20% to act as night-lights. My problem: The KPL’s that control individual lights (of lights that are set to go off when the Goodnight scene is activated) do NOT turn off. These KPL’s must be manually turned off. I want to know if there is a way to have KPL LED’s turn OFF when the ISY turns ON a scene. Am I maybe overlooking something in my programming? I have the respective KPL LED's included in my Goodnight scene. Any help is greatly appreciated. My apologies if this is already on the forum but I have not been able to locate it when I do a search. Thanks,
MikeB Posted May 5, 2009 Posted May 5, 2009 Any reason you are not turning OFF the scene, which should fix your KPL issue? If it's because the nightlights would not turn ON, I would consider putting them in a separate scene and turning that scene ON before (or after) you turn the other scene OFF.
NewTech Posted May 5, 2009 Author Posted May 5, 2009 Any reason you are not turning OFF the scene, which should fix your KPL issue? If it's because the nightlights would not turn ON, I would consider putting them in a separate scene and turning that scene ON before (or after) you turn the other scene OFF. Michael, I see where you're going with this. I should first turn OFF the scene that is activated by sunset trigger then turn ON the Goodnight scene. It's all in my getting to know the ISY. I can say there is a learning curve for me at least! Your idea will work and I guess I was just thinking too much into the problem to figure it out myself. Actually I have a lamp on our dining room buffet that turns on at sunset and then turns off when the Goodnight scene is activated. So, the KPL for this lamp is turned on at sunset and the KPL responds with the LED on. It's when I press the Goodnight KPL button that the LED for this lamp doesn't turn off because the ISY is telling the Goodnight scene to turn ON which sends an on command to the KPL LED. However, your idea of a separate scene to control the KPL's is exactly what I need! Thank you, Mike R.
MikeB Posted May 5, 2009 Posted May 5, 2009 Glad it will work for you. Please keep in mind you might have to put a WAIT command between your two SCENE commands in your program. Try a 1 second WAIT if you need it.
rocketraman Posted May 5, 2009 Posted May 5, 2009 There are several problems with this "simple" approach: 1) Its not always obvious which scene to turn "off" first before turning the desired one "on". One scenario where it becomes confusing is when lights are members of multiple scenes (not unusual) e.g. my movie scene also includes the nearby hallway lights. So now I would have to manually turn off *all* the scenes that include my hallway lights, before turning on the movie scene. Now multiply this by 20 or 30 or more scenes. Ouch. *And* I may or may not have even *wanted* to affect the actual level of the lights in the other scenes, other than the hallway light. 2) There is a serious delay between pressing the button and having the right room lights and buttons activate, as the various scenes turn off, and then there is a delay, and then the desired scene turns on. It would be much better if the desired scene was set immediately, and then all the buttons corresponding to other scenes that are now not set were turned off (ideally this would happen simultaneously, but some delay in the button lights is ok IMO). The approach I am trying to use that attempts to work around the above issues is to have "follow-me" programs that turn on/off keypad buttons that correspond to scenes based on whether the status of all the scene participants matches the scene settings. However, its *really* difficult to manage -- one minor change to scenes or lighting levels can mess lots of things up as all sorts of follow-me programs have to change as well. I think we really need the "scene and group status" functionality described here to do this: http://forum.universal-devices.com/viewtopic.php?t=1703 FWIW, managing scene/group status is really the one missing thing putting a crimp in my use of the ISY, which is otherwise wonderful. Cheers, Raman
NewTech Posted May 5, 2009 Author Posted May 5, 2009 I've read with interest all of these posts concerning the proper ON/OFF status of KPL's. I guess the reason I am (was) confused is because I am an old Plato HouseLinc user having used this system for well over 20 years. They say the it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks! In Plato, conditions (such as "if [light] is on activate this [scene] when this [button] is pressed, otherwise if [light (same as above)] is off then activate this [scene]. I used the above example in this type of Plato X-10 scenario: Scene Title: Mood Lighting. This scene would turn on certain lights throughout our home such as kitchen indirect, fireplace lights and other "accent" lights but would NOT turn on the table lamps in our great room or the foyer/hall lights. This scene was activated by the SINGLE press of a wall remote. A second press of the wall remote button (after the first scene had finished) would add lights to the scene already on (the same scene as above but would also turn on the lamps in the great room and foyer). The condition I set was, "If fireplace lights are already on then add great room table lamps and foyer/hallway lights when button [button number] is pressed. I also had to set up conditions where if a second press of the button on the wall remote was received do not change the light’s setting if it is already on because without this I had ALL lights in the scene dimming down then back up to their original level. This took far too much time because if you recall X-10 did one module at a time. Ah, yes, the good ‘ole days of X-10! I realize the ISY allows this using programs but being able to add individual conditions to individual lights IN THE SAME SCENE is a benefit to me! Insteon has much improved this since it already knows that if a light is already at 50% and another command to set the same lamp at 50% is received the lamp will NOT change. Now, it's very possible that I've overlooked something in the ISY as far as programming this so, if I have please direct me but, if I haven't overlooked something, maybe Universal Devices might look into this! One last question: What does ISY stand for? Are they the initials of something? Just curious!!! Mike R.
MikeB Posted May 5, 2009 Posted May 5, 2009 In Plato, conditions (such as "if [light] is on activate this [scene] when this [button] is pressed, otherwise if [light (same as above)] is off then activate this [scene]. I might be missing something, but you can certainly do this with the ISY right now. As a matter of fact, I use similar logic for IR control in my theater. I use a single IR code to turn a light ON or OFF depending on its current state, such as: If IR 'IR_005' is Pressed And Status 'TheaterDisplayCase1' is On Then Set Scene 'TheaterDisplayCase' Off Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') If IR 'IR_005' is Pressed And Status 'TheaterDisplayCase1' is Off Then Set Scene 'TheaterDisplayCase' On Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')
NewTech Posted May 5, 2009 Author Posted May 5, 2009 In Plato, conditions (such as "if [light] is on activate this [scene] when this [button] is pressed, otherwise if [light (same as above)] is off then activate this [scene]. I might be missing something, but you can certainly do this with the ISY right now. As a matter of fact, I use similar logic for IR control in my theater. I use a single IR code to turn a light ON or OFF depending on its current state, such as: If IR 'IR_005' is Pressed And Status 'TheaterDisplayCase1' is On Then Set Scene 'TheaterDisplayCase' Off Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') If IR 'IR_005' is Pressed And Status 'TheaterDisplayCase1' is Off Then Set Scene 'TheaterDisplayCase' On Else - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action') Yes, I am aware of this but to sum up what I was talking about: With Plato the conditions were a part of the actual scene and you didn't need to create a separate program. Oh, well, as long as the end result is accomplished all is well!!! Mike R.
MikeB Posted May 5, 2009 Posted May 5, 2009 I'm not familiar with the Plato software, but keep in mind we are limited by the limitations of Insteon. On the ISY, scenes are programmed into the individual Insteon devices and will operate independently of the ISY. It's not possible for us to program that type of logic into the Insteon devices themselves, so ISY Programs are needed to offer more advanced functionality like your example.
NewTech Posted May 5, 2009 Author Posted May 5, 2009 I'm not familiar with the Plato software, but keep in mind we are limited by the limitations of Insteon. On the ISY, scenes are programmed into the individual Insteon devices and will operate independently of the ISY. It's not possible for us to program that type of logic into the Insteon devices themselves, so ISY Programs are needed to offer more advanced functionality like your example. Thanks, Mike. I see your point. Case closed!!!
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