Unsure - upgrade issue, or Motion Sensor II Issue?

[SteveKlos]

OK - I have two ISY's in two different locations.  Once upgraded to 5.0.15A cleanly, the other - I've had a few more issues with.  

I've been having intermittent issues with not being able to communicate with various devices - will work through that - it may be the PLM, may be some comms interruption issues, may be an upgrade issue...

The reason I upgraded, I wanted to add an Insteon Motion Sensor II to my environment.  Seems I'm now struggling with the motion sensor.  Here's what's happening.

I've setup a new instruction that will turn the outside lights on if they aren't already on.  The variables are all working as expected (I have a Dark variable that indicates if it's after sunset and before I turn the front lights off (1) or after I've turned the front lights off for the night (2).  I also have a variable that indicates if any lights are on in the backyard area.

So here's the issue.  I setup the program (shown below).  The problem is every time the motion sensor indicates motion - "is switched on" (and Dark > 0 and BackyardLightOn = 0) I get a "System Busy" message - two in fact.  Why?  If I disable this program, I don't get the system busy dialogs showing up.  I don't understand why I'm seeing the "System Busy" - any idea from the wider community?

[lilyoyo1]

What device is showing (35.6f.26)

[SteveKlos]

Points me in the right direction - didn't think about looking at what the ID's were...

It appears that when the instruction is fired off - and the ISY is sending an on/off to one of the devices - if that device is part of a scene, it's appears to go through the typical scene processing that occurs when you drop a device into a scene.  Unsure why that would be - I'm simply sending an on/off command to the device, but when I do, it appears to process it as if I'm changing a scene.  The odd part - the lights never turned on.  It may be a bug, it may be expected behaviour, it may be I'm just doing it wrong, but when I use the admin interface of the ISY to set one of the lights to a % on, the device reacts properly and doesn't go through the processing phase.  Very bizarre!

I was trialing this approach as a test, but I'm now going to setup a scene that'll allow me to simply trigger the scene on or off and see if that works.  It seems like I should be able to send an on/off/on% instruction to a device (regardless if it's part of a scene, or not) and have that instruction change the state of that device (and if that device is a controller, the scene should kick in), but maybe I'm not thinking about the ISY interactions with Insteon scenes properly.

[SteveKlos]

I can confirm - if I set the lights to on using a scene, it works fine.  If I attempt to send an Insteon instruction directly to the device, the ISY appears to go into a scene configuration mode and it never sends the Insteon instruction (or at least, what I see on the screen with the various devices being written to).

I'm using Beta version 5.0.15A and this appears to be a defect in that version.

At least I can use the Motion Sensor II, so I'll work around the defects.  I think using the scene is a better approach anyway, so it's not going to hamper me - my initial effort at this was simply to test quickly without waiting for all that scene setup work.  It certainly wasn't quicker - should have just started by using scenes :-)!

[kclenden]

On 9/7/2019 at 1:04 PM, SteveKlos said:

I'm using Beta version 5.0.15A and this appears to be a defect in that version.

I don't think it's a defect.  I think you may have chosen the wrong command.  If you're trying to have each of the devices come on to a 50% level, then the command in your program should be Set "Entry / Backdoor light" On 50%.  What's actually in your program is a command that sets the device's ON LEVEL (i.e. what it does when you press the device's switch).  Setting a device's ON LEVEL requires writing to its internal memory and thus why you're seeing the busy messages.

[SteveKlos]

@KCLENDEN - you are correct - unsure I like the UX, but there is a button underneath the "on" command that allows for a % to be specified.  I'd never have noticed that and would likely have been frustrated many times over.

To UDI - Just a general UI/UX suggestions - I'm not a big fan of data entry fields that appear and disappear off the screen based on some actions.  This also isn't typically considered a very "accessible" design since (though, if done properly, this could be more usable to a blind person depending on what alt-text you add for the triangle).  As for the light grey text on a blue background - contrast simply isn't there to make it have the attention it should deserve.

[lilyoyo1]

51 minutes ago, SteveKlos said:

@KCLENDEN - you are correct - unsure I like the UX, but there is a button underneath the "on" command that allows for a % to be specified.  I'd never have noticed that and would likely have been frustrated many times over.

To UDI - Just a general UI/UX suggestions - I'm not a big fan of data entry fields that appear and disappear off the screen based on some actions.  This also isn't typically considered a very "accessible" design since (though, if done properly, this could be more usable to a blind person depending on what alt-text you add for the triangle).  As for the light grey text on a blue background - contrast simply isn't there to make it have the attention it should deserve.

This part would be personal preference. I personally don't mind it. 

[larryllix]

1 hour ago, SteveKlos said:

@KCLENDEN - you are correct - unsure I like the UX, but there is a button underneath the "on" command that allows for a % to be specified.  I'd never have noticed that and would likely have been frustrated many times over.

To UDI - Just a general UI/UX suggestions - I'm not a big fan of data entry fields that appear and disappear off the screen based on some actions.  This also isn't typically considered a very "accessible" design since (though, if done properly, this could be more usable to a blind person depending on what alt-text you add for the triangle).  As for the light grey text on a blue background - contrast simply isn't there to make it have the attention it should deserve.

I agree, in some cases like pulldown menus where text disappears and you spend hours looking for it. . OTOH I wouldn't want to see device selections that include every variable, devices, network resource, email notification etc.. etc.. for every type of command line.
I do like the changeable menus that are in your face to limit your selection to valid ones, as the ISY admin console, though. Better changeable selection boxes than magic functions on touch-screens where you just touch everything you see, to see what happen,s because the manufacturers are too lazy to write a 4,568 page manual that nobody can even understand.

Like all top notch software and things in life...the better ones take some time to learn.