Not getting sensor status for any of my sensors, yet they are all available.

[greazer]

I'm at a loss.  For some reason all of my sensors in the house are no longer showing status. It's simply blank. This screenshot was taken right after I manually pressed the Set button on one of my original Insteon MS's. No events, no status. The linked devices do turn on and off though so it's not a battery problem. I can even make my hidden door sensors beep from the admin console, so communication is possible. I'm getting the same problem for Door sensors and motion sensors I have in the house. What am I missing? 

Note that I just recently started playing around with Homeassistant and it's integration with the ISY. Could that be the source of the problem? I know I futzed with a TLS setting somewhere. Otherwise, Homeassistant successfully found my ISY and all the connected devices. I can control lights and such with it just fine. 

[greazer]

Note that it's possible that this has been happening for a longer time than just recently and I didn't notice. I don't depend so much on programs for my motion sensors and typically my door sensors only matter when I'm not home and somebody opens a door that shouldn't. Therefore, it's entirely possible I just failed to notice until now. Here's the version of the firmware I'm using. Perhaps 5.3.1 is buggy in this regard?

 

[Techman]

I'm not familiar with Home Assistant but it's possible that there may be a conflict between your devices, ISY and Home Assistant.

Try putting one of your battery operated devices into the linking mode then do a restore device from the ISY as it's possible that your device link records got corrupted. The restore device should fix that.

 

[MrBill]

I use the HA ISY integration and I very sincerely doubt this is caused by that.   The UDI HA integration is actually fairly rock solid and actively developed, personally I've never had a problem.

Two observations:

  First, you didn't say you tried restarting the ISY... If you haven't that is the very next thing you should try.  Remember that after a boot no battery sensor will have a known status.  After reboot I always make a test walk and force them all to report once so that there status is again known.  Given that your event viewer window is all blue like that, I think that's further indication you need a restart.   Also verify via Help > About your firmware and UI versions are the same.

Second, you have a lot of unwritten instructions.  Those cause problems even with wireless writes turned off, like you have it.  I would put each device that has wireless writes that need to be written into programming mode and get rid of all those.  Then if your on a ver. 5 branch less than 5.3.3 get your firmware upgraded because that bug has been fixed and they should no longer accumulate via "adjust scene".  Before the fix, I was constantly having to restart the ISY, until I got rid of all the "adjust scene" situations then I could go months again without restart.

Finally, what does your ISY error log look like?  Any clues there?

[greazer]

Thanks for all the help here! After determining that I wasn't getting any events for ANY of my devices (including wired switches) I realized that this was more likely a problem on the PLM side. I found this article (INSTEON No Status Feedback From Devices - Universal Devices, Inc. Wiki (universal-devices.com) and followed the instructions. Lo and behold it found 0 links in the PLM. After restoring it all is working again.  I'm not sure what happened, but perhaps it had to do with what MrBill indicated about "adjust scene" events accumulating. The fact that I had had a power outage happen while I was on vacation AND I adjusted the TLS settings for HA were just red herrings.

I have updated to 5.3.3. So hopefully I won't see this again.

Thanks again!

Edited May 30, 2021 by greazer

[greazer]

One other thing though, MrBill, do you find yourself doing programming using HA exclusively now? Or are there situations where you still rely on programs in the ISY? I'm new to the HA world, but I'm thinking that it's likely going to support more devices than ISY will ever be able to support (even with the Polyglot stuff) and it can to integrate all of them. This question is totally off topic, I realize, but any pointers would be appreciated.

[hart2hart]

Thanks for all the help here! After determining that I wasn't getting any events for ANY of my devices (including wired switches) I realized that this was more likely a problem on the PLM side. I found this article (INSTEON No Status Feedback From Devices - Universal Devices, Inc. Wiki (universal-devices.com) and followed the instructions. Lo and behold it found 0 links in the PLM. After restoring it all is working again.  I'm not sure what happened, but perhaps it had to do with what MrBill indicated about "adjust scene" events accumulating. The fact that I had had a power outage happen while I was on vacation AND I adjusted the TLS settings for HA were just red herrings.
I have updated to 5.3.3. So hopefully I won't see this again.
Thanks again!

Watch it closely, when that happens it may mean a full PLM failure is imminent.

[hart2hart]

Thanks for all the help here! After determining that I wasn't getting any events for ANY of my devices (including wired switches) I realized that this was more likely a problem on the PLM side. I found this article (INSTEON No Status Feedback From Devices - Universal Devices, Inc. Wiki (universal-devices.com) and followed the instructions. Lo and behold it found 0 links in the PLM. After restoring it all is working again.  I'm not sure what happened, but perhaps it had to do with what MrBill indicated about "adjust scene" events accumulating. The fact that I had had a power outage happen while I was on vacation AND I adjusted the TLS settings for HA were just red herrings.
I have updated to 5.3.3. So hopefully I won't see this again.
Thanks again!

Watch it closely, when that happens it may mean a full PLM failure is imminent.

[Brian H]

I would also say. Watch the PLM carefully.

The 2413S PLM has a reputation of failing. After two years and a few months.

If you have any 2443 Hardware revision 2.0 and above Access Points. They are also on the base 2413 PLM main board and can also fail. I had two myself.

Some of the symptoms is Link Database is 0 or almost empty, works for a short time after a power cycle, Status LED is dimmer than you normally see.

There is a real long thread here on how we rebuilt ours along with symptoms reported. https://forum.universal-devices.com/topic/13866-repair-of-2413s-plm-when-the-power-supply-fails/

Edited May 31, 2021 by Brian H

[MrBill]

15 hours ago, greazer said:

One other thing though, MrBill, do you find yourself doing programming using HA exclusively now? Or are there situations where you still rely on programs in the ISY? I'm new to the HA world, but I'm thinking that it's likely going to support more devices than ISY will ever be able to support (even with the Polyglot stuff) and it can to integrate all of them. This question is totally off topic, I realize, but any pointers would be appreciated.

I have almost no automatons set up in HA.  Using it almost exclusively as a front end to the ISY.  I like that I can design my own screens for mobile. I like that I can control a scene but when it's on have the control change to a device dimmer (this requires a lovelace add-on from HACS and an understanding of how to use HA services directly). 

I've only had HA since about the start of this year and I have been expanding my usage slightly, but I have no intention of moving "programming" that's already working well to HA.  It does however provide a level of control that didn't previously exist.  It's also WA (or Wife Approved), she disliked both mobilinc and Agave she however enjoys HA as a user... it works like she expects, things are in the order she expects and she doesn't need to remember things like whether to use a scene or device for this or that.

As a footnote: I agree with what others have said, that PLM might be on it's way to failure.  PLM's are out of stock at smarthome, but there are still 16 available (as of 2 seconds ago) at Amazon.  You may want to order a backup.

Edited May 31, 2021 by MrBill

[greazer]

Good to know about the PLM! And thanks for the info about how you use HA. 

With regard to the PLM fail problem, one thought I had (but it's ugly), is to move away from the PLM and instead use HA integrated with a true Insteon Hub. I don't think the hub requires a PLM as it is one (I think). All the programming I've depended on in the ISY would have to move to HA though. That's the ugly part. 

But in theory is this a possible option? Hmmm... I suppose this is an inappropriate question for this forum, since it implies leaving ISY... The only solace is that I've really liked how well the ISY has worked for me over the years!

Edited May 31, 2021 by greazer

[MrBill]

55 minutes ago, greazer said:

With regard to the PLM fail problem, one thought I had (but it's ugly), is to move away from the PLM and instead use HA integrated with a true Insteon Hub. I don't think the hub requires a PLM as it is one (I think). All the programming I've depended on in the ISY would have to move to HA though. That's the ugly part.

There's an uglier aspect also, if you haven't thought of it.... deleting devices one by one, factory resetting, then re-adding to a hub or USB PLM.  I won't do that until I can't buy anymore PLMs, but I have like 100+ Insteon devices--If your system is smaller, maybe it's not a big issue for you.

Also Insteon hubs aren't immune from the power supply problem, my son uses one in his non-isy, Alexa as the brain set-up.  The hub failed once, the difference is that smarthome will replace it free of charge and they do some magic so that recovery using the replacement is plug and play. With shipping It took over a week tho.

All in all, I think the ISY programming is easier, and it's definitely rock solid, maybe that changes over time as one learns, but for the few HA automations I have written I find it difficult.  Comparing the communities, people here in this forum and much more helpful than the much larger in number HA community.  The few posts I've made on that forum have not brought any useful help.

[greazer]

Really great info, MrBill! Yeah, this community is just one of the best I've experienced for anything. Yeah, I didn't think of having to re-add all my devices. That would be a pain. For now I just ordered a new serial PLM. Hopefully that at least buys me a couple more years.