Phase Determination?

[Kentinada]

I had a cutover panel installed in my house for my portable generator.  Communications lately have gotten a little spotty.  I have a pair of Access Points that I knew were on different phases before and everything was working fine.  If I still have one AP on leg A (I'll call it) in the main box and one of leg B in the cutover box, how can I tell if A and B didn't get flipped coming into the cutover box thus having both APs on the same leg and doing no good?  Does that even make sense? 

[Kentinada]

I ask because I have a 2476D switch in my kitchen that I'm now having issues communicating with.  I have an AP very close to this switch but I keep getting a red ! in the Admin panel saying it can't communicate with the switch.  Should I just replace it with a dual band switch?  Things that used to work for a long time are not working well right now. 

I also noticed I didn't have my AP's added as devices in my Admin panel so I added the first one with no trouble.  I tried adding the 2nd one and got an error saying it was an unsupported device even though it's the same as the first one.  I'm confused.

[Kentinada]

I did a query on the switch and it went back to normal.  I brought up the Event viewer and did on Off which worked, an On which worked, and an Off which failed.  I'm not experienced with these logs.  Is there anything in this (attached) that helps me fix this?

ISY-Events-Log.v5.0.16C__Sat 2020.07.25 09.57.32 AM.txt

[mwester]

Sounds like a noise problem.

Time has marched on since the rise of Insteon, and the truth is that modern electronics do not play well with Insteon's technology.  Insteon requires a clean electrical signal with a single zero-crossing point that occurs within a very small period centered on 60 Hz.  Switching power supplies, as used in all of the wall warts, chargers, LED light bulbs, computer power supplies, and increasingly being used in energy-efficient appliances, central heating units, and even garage door openers disrupt the clean, simple zero-crossing point.  While some manufacturers of higher-quality devices take efforts to limit this disruption, it's no longer practical to even attempt to "buy" your way out of this problem (no matter what you pay for everything, it's less and less likely that you can keep your power clean).

Sounds like a situation ideally suited for those newer Insteon devices that have RF capabilities, right?  Alas, no.  It turns out that the RF portion of the Insteon protocol relies on the power-line zero-crossing point for synchronization -- so it really only works if your problem is that you have a signal-sucker (power strips with noise filters, UPS systems), but does little to no good for noise-generating devices (such as switching power supplies).

But, not all is lost -- there is a solution.  You'll need lots of power strips, and buckets of Insteon Filterlinc devices.  In a nutshell -- go through your entire house, find everything that is electronic (not just electric -- it has to have a switching power supply), unplug them from the wall, and plug them into a Filterlinc instead.  In certain locations, you'll find these devices in clusters -- I have a counter area with an echo, a couple phone/tablet chargers, and a laptop power supply for example -- in those areas a power strip plugged into a Filterlinc will economize a bit.  Do not over-do this, though -- trying to save costs by having one Filterlinc per room is noble, but not if one accomplishes that by means of half a dozen extension cords -- safety first!   (I'm sitting in my family room right now, and I can see four FilterLincs in outlets from this chair -- expensive, but safer and less ugly than snaking extension cords all over the place to a single FilterLinc/power-strip.)

Yep, that's a lot of Filterlincs.  I have at least a dozen (probably more), and I'm bidding on a few on eBay (can't run z-wave down to one of the out-buildings here, so I'm stuck with Insteon in that location, and it turns out my Ryobi charger is killing my reliability there...   I hate having to spend more money on Insteon...).  Filterlincs are also only available in 5-amp and 10-amp versions, so if you have higher-power devices, there are other (non-Insteon) filters that can be wired inline for major appliances... hopefully that won't be necessary for you though.

 

[larryllix]

9 hours ago, Kentinada said:

I did a query on the switch and it went back to normal.  I brought up the Event viewer and did on Off which worked, an On which worked, and an Off which failed.  I'm not experienced with these logs.  Is there anything in this (attached) that helps me fix this?

ISY-Events-Log.v5.0.16C__Sat 2020.07.25 09.57.32 AM.txt 1.31 kB · 1 download

Log is not a good indicator of problems like that. You can do the four tap test to identify phase matching. (See Brian's post below.)  I have never needed to do one. My PLM is very close to my main panel and I have an old passive X10 phase coupler very close, to connect my phases. The two 3600 Watt Outback inverters running are not a problem as my Insteon dual-band devices couple signals into those two phase islands also. My well pump signals running off the inverters do not have any control problems down a 180' long cable to control the pump speed.

I have only ever had noise problems with garage door openers. This gave me occasional problem with Insteon close to my first old Chamberlain mechanical unit. When I installed my second Chamberlain GDO with all the battery backup and myQ my Insteon died. Unplugging both of them made Insteon work 100% again so 2 FilterLincs were installed and no problems since. The problem is not when the motors run. Just on standby.

It does sound like they crossed your phases. Try some plug-ins around the devices to couple your phases better as a test. The new switch may have some dirty contacts. Operating it a few times could help wipe the contacts cleaner. Many manufacturers leave contacts greasy and it produces carbon that should be cleaned off.

[Brian H]

2476D is a power line only SwitchLinc dimmer. So it will not do a 4 tap test. You maybe able to do the tests on other Dual Band Modules on the same circuit.

Noise is not the only problem you may see. It can also be a signal absorber (Signal Sucker) in an electronic devise. I have some Vizio LCD TVs that have a AC capacitor across the AC input.  Keeps the internal electronics noise off of the power lines but also absorbs X10 and Insteon power line signals. Computer power supplies , AC line conditioning in many UPS units, some cell phone chargers.  Will also suck up power line commands.

[Kentinada]

Thanks for the info and sorry about not replying sooner. Was out of town the last few days.  So here's a couple other data points.

• I had moved my ISY - now with Z-wave - to be closer to an outdoor Z-wave motion sensor which was working. That's when this light switch stopped.
• I put the ISY back in it's original location and the light switch now works again BUT the Zwave motion sensor does not.  I have 2 Aeotec Range Extender 6's but that hasn't helped. 
• My ISY currently is in my basement close to my electrical panel and it's at one end of the house.  I put a Range Extender in my office which is directly above where the ISY is.  I added it to the ISY Admin panel. The 2nd extender is down the hall toward the other end of the house.  I put it there because the motion sensor is about 10' away from the extender thinking that would be close enough. 
• Maybe I need to take this back to the Zwave thread. 

I appreciate the info on the FIlterLinc but if I have to go through all that to make this work, I'll put the whole thing in a box on the shelf.  That is just too much to go through for my personal situation.