I think I'm having problems with signals colliding

[ryarber]

I'm trying to arm my ELK M1G system via a program. Here are the programs/rules that I have set up.

 

On my ISY I have scenes set up called "Away", "Night", and "Vacation". These are set up as KPL buttons as responders. When the buttons are on, the ELK senses the change in state of the button and arms to the appropriate mode. These are controlled by an ELK rule eg.

 

When Bedroom KPL.G is turned on by some external device

Then arm Area 1 "Night" mode immediately

 

The Bedroom KPL.G is set up as a responder to the "Night" scene. I have the following programs set up in the ISY.

 

If

Control 'Bedroom Read Lt' is switched Fast Off

 

Then

Set Scene 'Night' Fast On

 

Else

No Action

 

The "Beadroom Read Lt" is a icon relay switch. When I double tap the off switch on that Icon switch, the KPL button only turns on sometimes. Maybe once a week or so. When it doesn't, double tapping again doesn't seem to make the switch come on. However, the alarm always comes on as it is supposed to and is armed to night mode.

 

If I use the ISY to turn on the "Night" scene directly, it works always.

 

If I change the scene to add a 2 second delay before turning on the night scene, it seems to work.

 

My question is, is this a legitimate issue? Does signal collision occur and create these type problems? Because I have other similar problems as well.

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi ryarber,

 

First of all, yes, these are legitimate issues. You should not be having these problems.

 

The main question I have is:

In ISY's Admin console, does the status of KPL G reflect the status you expect? If so, it seems that the signal is not getting to ELK. If not, then we have to figure out why.

 

In the configuration tab, under System, please check and see whether or not Wait while busy reading checkbox is checked. If not, please have it checked.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[ryarber]

That box is checked.

 

The problem is not that the ELK is not seeing the signal. If what I'm understanding you to say is correct, the ELK is being communicated to over ethernet from the ISY. That part is happening fine. When I run the program, the ELK arms itself as it is supposed to, it is just that the device itself KPL G isn't seeing the signal over the powerline and the LED in the KPL button is not turning itself on.

 

I also want to turn off the lights when the system is armed. So I have another program that kicks in when the KPL button is turned on. That program fires as well, but none of the actions occur. My other program is something like

 

If

Control 'Bedroom KPL.G' is switched on

 

Then

Set Scene 'Inside Lights' fast off

Set Scene 'Landscape Lights' fast off

Set Scene 'Outside flood lights' fast off

 

When I look at the program summary tab, that program fires even though the KPL G button is not on, so the ISY thinks the KPLG button is on. But none of the other actions I have set on the secondary program occur either, even though the program says it executed.

 

It seems as though I'm having some sort of storm of activity on my powerline whenever I switch this Icon Relay switch fast off. It seems like nothing controlled by the powerline will work after I do this. Are there any know issues of devices behaving like this?

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi ryarber,

 

I am a little confused:

1. In the night scene, KPL.G is a responder so its status should reflect what happens to the scene

2. In the following program, you are checking the Control for KPL.G which will never run UNLESS someone actually and physically presses KPL.G. Wouldn't you want to use Status instead of control?

If
Control 'Bedroom KPL.G' is switched on

Then
Set Scene 'Inside Lights' fast off
Set Scene 'Landscape Lights' fast off
Set Scene 'Outside flood lights' fast off 

 

i.e. if KPL.G is used as a status indicator for your Night Scene, then you would have to use the Status in the above program.

 

This said, depending on the number of devices in your above scenes, this might actually not work because the PLM gets too busy and will probably miss some of these scenes you are trying to activate. May I humbly ask why you do not put all the devices in the scenes above as responders in the Night scene? This way, only one scene is being activated and the PLM does not have to maintain state between the activation of multiple scenes.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[ryarber]

I'm really new to this programming and have much to learn. I'll work on that and see if that will help my problems

 

This was something I just set up this weekend. I have tried a number of combinations and nothing seemed to be working. the previous way I had it programmed was to trigger everything off the "fast off" of my reading light. I had 4 scenes executing. The "night" scene was the last of them. I've tried so many combinations and different approaches that it's hard to remember them all.

 

I wasn't aware that too many scenes would create congestion like this. I also wasn't aware that the "control/switch" command would only work if you physically press the button on the switch.

 

This helps me a lot. Thanks. I'll continue to work on it by creating a single scene so that I can switch off all the lights I want to control via one command and get rid of that "control/switch" command. Thanks.

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi ryarber,

 

My pleasure. The most important distinction to be made is between Control and Status:

1. Control is issued every time someone physically does something to the device. So, if a device is On and you turn it On again, a program evaluating the Control for that device is re-evaluated

2. Status is the status of the device at any given moment in time. So, if a device is On and you turn it On again, the program evaluating the Status for that device is NOT re-evaluated again (the status has not changed)

 

With kind regards,

Michel