How to handle 2 switches manually activated simultaneously

[AdamHLG]

I have an issue (among others!).

 

Our basement is fully Insteon enabled along with the rest of our house. At the top of the stairs leading to the basement, we have a 5 gang box with 5 switchlinks - load enabled. In the basement, there is another 5 gang box wiith 5 switchlinks (no load) and two other 2 gang boxes with switchlincs (no load). The switches are all linked as appropriate for 3 way and 4 way switching, as appropriate.

 

When one switch is activated at a time, everything works. The 3 way or 4 way switches track LED indicators properly.

 

The problem arises when the user presses 2 switches at the same time. For example, when i am at the top of the stair landing ready to walk into the basement, I (along with the rest of my family) have a habit of simultaneously pressing two of the switchlinks to turn on both the stairway lights and the bottom landing lights at the same time. Both lights turn on, however, only one of the LED status bars will track on the 3 way (non load)switches at the bottom of the landing. I assume this is because Insteon is trying to send out the commands at the exact same time. Only one 3-way switch gets the signal. Pressing the switch again gets the other LED status to track.

 

How should I handle this (other than pressing one switch at a time). Should I write a program that basically looks at the 3 way "scene" all the time and when one is on, all are on? How would I even do this to assure dim status is considered, as opposed to regular 'on' and 'off'. Also, this would require i write numerous programs for each 3 way 'scene' Would this be too much of a load on the ISY to run 5 of these programs sumultaneously to make sure the switches are in sync?

 

Thanks.

 

Adam

[fitzpatri8]

The problem here is, as you've set up your system you have to press two different buttons to activate the scene you want. That's not convenience, that's just extra work.

 

Have you considered swapping a KeypadLinc for the second SwitchLinc, so you have easy control of the main scene with the SL and flexibility on alternate scenes with the KPL?

 

Any solution that tries to readjust after an intentional signal stomping is going to give inferior results. You would need an ISY program that looked for either button pressed at each station, then it would have to manually query both SwitchLincs at that station, then if the status didn't match the expected status you'd need the ISY to retransmit the group command. Because of the extra signal traffic and program processing time, there'd be a delay between the manual query and the new group command being sent, and in the process, those signals would be competing for bandwidth with any intended dim/bright commands you might be trying to send from the switch at the same time.

[MikeB]

This is one of my biggest complaints about Insteon. Luckily this only happens in 1 or 2 areas of my home and, honestly, we just changed our habits to hit 1 switch per second.

 

Not bad once you get used to it, but something I wish Smarthome would account for.

[jamesx0]

I set up a query for all my multigang switches that runs every 5 minutes. This is one of the biggest shortcomings of insteon.