Not getting comms events from motion sensors after restoring a new PLM

[brandwidth]

My PLM was dying (frequent errors, etc.) so I bought a new one. I switched the ISY off, booted the new PLM, powered up ISY and did a restore PLM, then a restore devices (as I understand it, the devices wouldn't send updates to the new PLM, because all their links would be to the old PLM.)

Now my motion sensors won't send comms events to ISY. I've tried factory resetting them and restoring them, and I see the ISY link being sent in the comms window. However, pressing the button on the sensors doesn't trigger any communication from the sensor to ISY.

Any tips on how to get things working again? I can post logs of what's happening when I do a restore if that'll help.

[brandwidth]

And now I think I've confused myself. The motion sensor is controlling a scene, and it's working. However, I want to trigger program events (as I've successfully done before) based on motion sensor activity. I need the sensor to send an update to the ISY when it triggers... but I'm not seeing that in the event viewer ?

[ronvond]

Since your motion sensors are usually battery powered, did you put each one, individually of course, in linking mode and do a restore device?

[kclenden]

3 hours ago, ronvond said:

Since your motion sensors are usually battery powered, did you put each one, individually of course, in linking mode and do a restore device?

I think @ronvond probably identified the problem.  Your results are consistent with a battery powered device that hasn't had its Links Table updated after a PLM has been replaced.  The motion sensor can control a scene because the scene ID has not changed so the motion sensor Links Table has the correct information about the scene.  The motion sensor is not updating the ISY when it triggers because the PLM address has changed, but the motion sensor Links Table has the old PLM address.  When you look at your motion sensor in the device list of the Admin Console does it have a "1011" icon next to it?  If so, that means the ISY is waiting to write updates to the device.

[brandwidth]

Thanks for the suggestions - yes, I've gone through and done a singular update to each of the devices such that there's no 1011 remaining.

When I look at the links table, there's no PLM address in there  Any ideas on how to get that working again?

BTW, while I'm here I want to say thank you to this community for being so thoughtful and helpful. I had an amazingly automated home (almost never touch a light switch or ask Alexa to change things) that after switching to a new PLM has become very frustrating. I really appreciate folks chiming in to help me.

[Brian H]

When you changed the PLM.

Did you power down the ISY994i and old PLM. Change the PLM. Power up the PLM and ISY994i?

Then use the Restore Modem (PLM) function. To go out and change the old PLMs six digit Insteon ID to the new PLMs ID?

If you have a PRO version. You can turn off automatic updates to battery powered modules and then restore each on separately.

[brandwidth]

Yes - I used Restore Modem after switching to the new PLM and rebooting ISY. I have Pro, and I've been restoring the battery-powered modules separately.

I looked at the link table for a wired device - it has a link to the PLM. None of my battery devices show the PLM in their link table (hence they don't send any comms to ISY when they change state).

I'm going to try rebooting the ISY with the old modem (I have an ISY backup so not much can go wrong!), restoring the 'bad' PLM and then migrating to the new one again.

[Techman]

Did you follow the "replace PLM procedure" in the attached file?

 

Replace ISY PLM.pdf

[brandwidth]

Yes, I unplugged everything, then brought up the new PLM, then connected the ISY, then restored the PLM.

After some more sleuthing, I have found that when I look at the ISY links table for my wired devices, each of them contains the ID of the PLM.

For my wireless devices, there's no PLM ID. I have tried factory resetting the motion sensors, restoring them (with battery-powered device updates disabled, so I can can write the updates one-by-one) but it doesn't help.

Further info: even my devices with the PLM ID in their link tables aren't sending status updates (e.g. when I switch on a switch, I am sure I used to see a DON entry in the communications log... isn't that the case, that devices report their status on changes, and it's visible within the admin console?).

Any thoughts on how to overcome this? I have good ISY backups, so if a restore might help I can certainly do that.

Edited June 3, 2021 by brandwidth
New info to share.

[lilyoyo1]

10 minutes ago, brandwidth said:

Yes, I unplugged everything, then brought up the new PLM, then connected the ISY, then restored the PLM.

After some more sleuthing, I have found that when I look at the ISY links table for my wired devices, each of them contains the ID of the PLM.

For my wireless devices, there's no PLM ID. I have tried factory resetting the motion sensors, restoring them (with battery-powered device updates disabled, so I can can write the updates one-by-one) but it doesn't help.

Further info: even my devices with the PLM ID in their link tables aren't sending status updates (e.g. when I switch on a switch, I am sure I used to see a DON entry in the communications log... isn't that the case, that devices report their status on changes, and it's visible within the admin console?).

Any thoughts on how to overcome this? I have good ISY backups, so if a restore might help I can certainly do that.

After you did restore PLM, did you also do a restore devices?

[brandwidth]

Yes, I did a restore devices - I'm trying another one now.

One question I have that's related... since from reading around the topic I may need to delete devices and add them again... if I delete a device and add it back, do programs in the ISY still correctly map to it? I am guessing they will, because the device will have the same ID.

I'd rather move house (!) than have to rebuild more than a hundred programs from scratch! ?

Once my latest restore devices completes I'll report back - thanks for continued support here.

[larryllix]

14 minutes ago, brandwidth said:

Yes, I did a restore devices - I'm trying another one now.

One question I have that's related... since from reading around the topic I may need to delete devices and add them again... if I delete a device and add it back, do programs in the ISY still correctly map to it? I am guessing they will, because the device will have the same ID.

I'd rather move house (!) than have to rebuild more than a hundred programs from scratch! ?

Once my latest restore devices completes I'll report back - thanks for continued support here.

I found sometimes that would work but you can never trust it. Check each program involving the devices in question, select each line (so it shows up at the bottom)  and click update (to refresh the links behind the scenes) , then save the program. That will ensure that each line is linked to the proper device(s)

[Techman]

41 minutes ago, brandwidth said:

Yes, I did a restore devices - I'm trying another one now.

One question I have that's related... since from reading around the topic I may need to delete devices and add them again... if I delete a device and add it back, do programs in the ISY still correctly map to it? I am guessing they will, because the device will have the same ID.

I'd rather move house (!) than have to rebuild more than a hundred programs from scratch! ?

Once my latest restore devices completes I'll report back - thanks for continued support here.

If you delete a device the device will be removed from any program it's associated with.

If you factory reset a device then do a restore device the programs won't be affected.

[brandwidth]

I've concluded that this is probably a PLM comms issue. It *looked* like a wireless issue, but it's not... wired devices are equally impacted.

Since I've got good known backups, my plan is to try a reset of both the PLM and the ISY, and see if I can get a single wired device communicating with the ISY through the PLM when both devices are closely adjacent on the same circuit.  If that works, I will restore the ISY from the backup, do a PLM restore, and then restore individual devices one by one checking for success at each stage.

Given that this is brand new PLM, perhaps I'm just incredibly unlucky?! We'll see...

[kclenden]

On 6/1/2021 at 11:45 AM, brandwidth said:

I looked at the link table for a wired device - it has a link to the PLM. None of my battery devices show the PLM in their link table (hence they don't send any comms to ISY when they change state).

When you refer to looking at the link table for your devices, are you using "Show Device Links Table"?  If so then you should have to be putting the battery powered devices into communication mode by holding the "Set" button down for about 5 seconds.  After viewing the link table for one of your battery powered devices you should click the "Compare" button.  That will compare it to what the ISY thinks should be in the device links table.  If the comparison indicates the tables are identical, when you know the new PLM address isn't in the device links table, then you know that the ISY version of the device links table also doesn't have the new PLM address, and if that's the case no amount of "Restore Device" will fix things.

[kclenden]

3 hours ago, brandwidth said:

if I delete a device and add it back, do programs in the ISY still correctly map to it?

Behind the scenes of a program, a device is referred to by number, but that number is not the address of the device.  Instead it appears to be a sequential number that is incremented as devices are added to the system.  So even if the ISY doesn't automatically remove any lines referring to a deleted device from all programs when the device is removed from the ISY, it would probably be just luck if after readding the device to the ISY it was assigned the same sequential number.  I certainly wouldn't depend on it if it were me.

[brandwidth]

4 minutes ago, kclenden said:

Behind the scenes of a program, a device is referred to by number, but that number is not the address of the device.  Instead it appears to be a sequential number that is incremented as devices are added to the system.  So even if the ISY doesn't automatically remove any lines referring to a deleted device from all programs when the device is removed from the ISY, it would probably be just luck if after readding the device to the ISY it was assigned the same sequential number.  I certainly wouldn't depend on it if it were me.

That's very helpful - thank you. In the latest round of testing, my ISY has stopped responding on the web interface or via the admin console. I can telnet to it, so I know it's getting an IP address at least. Time for FR the ISY I think... that's not really scary since I have known good backups.

Sometimes this makes me reflect on the fact that ISY, amazing as it is, spends a lot of its time persuading Insteon devices to do things they weren't really design to do. As a long-standing tech Product Manager, I'm well aware that building a product on top of a set of APIs designed for other purposes is fraught with challenges.

ISY does an amazing job, almost all the time. Insteon, on the other hand, hasn't got much better in the last ten years ? The next house might need a different approach.

[lilyoyo1]

3 hours ago, brandwidth said:

That's very helpful - thank you. In the latest round of testing, my ISY has stopped responding on the web interface or via the admin console. I can telnet to it, so I know it's getting an IP address at least. Time for FR the ISY I think... that's not really scary since I have known good backups.

Sometimes this makes me reflect on the fact that ISY, amazing as it is, spends a lot of its time persuading Insteon devices to do things they weren't really design to do. As a long-standing tech Product Manager, I'm well aware that building a product on top of a set of APIs designed for other purposes is fraught with challenges.

ISY does an amazing job, almost all the time. Insteon, on the other hand, hasn't got much better in the last ten years ? The next house might need a different approach.

2 plms exhibiting the same exact issue...  Especially 1 being brand new= highly unlikely to be a PLM issue.

[brandwidth]

5 hours ago, lilyoyo1 said:

2 plms exhibiting the same exact issue...  Especially 1 being brand new= highly unlikely to be a PLM issue.

Yes - the original PLM is dead now, if I try to restart with it the ISY goes into safe mode. Focusing on trying to get to a known good state with the new PLM and ISY.

[xlurkr]

Sorry if this is irrelevant, but are you sure you're not having a problem of too high of an RF signal to the MSs?  With mine, I always need to move them to a location inside of a drawer or cabinet to write links successfully.  They will trigger existing links correctly and I can almost always read their status correctly in situ, but for some reason writing updates to them doesn't work unless I attenuate the RF level to them somehow.  Others have reported this, too.

-Tom