Bug - Alexa -> ISY Portal misses handshake and retriggers programs.

[larryllix]

@bmercier

I have a program that turns on/off many lights in my gathering room. It is composed of several Insteon scenes and several NRs that trigger routines in my RPi to turn off several banks of different style WiFi lamps and strips. Some lines require Wait 1-2 seconds between some lines to allow I/O time to function (especially NR that do not get variable substitution upon invocation)

Here is what I see happening.

Alexa! turn off/on gathering room lights!

...(long pause) Insteon lights turn off/on = first few lines of ISY program

Alexa replies "I don't know what went wrong"

...(10-20 second pause) WiFi bulbs and strips start turning off/on

Alexa replies "OK"

This (and from other malfunctions) appears that some handshake is not reporting correctly between the Alexa cloud and the ISY Portal cloud when the first vocal command is passed to ISY Portal, but the command to run the ISY program is already passed successfully and in progress.

Then Alexa command response timeout expires and Alexa reports "I don't what went wrong" or some other failure vocal report.

Alexa tries again. ISY Portal again triggers the ISY program, stopping progress and starting the program again. Handshake functions or Alexa cloud gives up after two or more retries.

Again the Insteon lights are turned off/on (but no change is observed, as first program lines have run previously). Now the program lines complete and ISY program is completed, turning off/on WiFi lights via NRs.

Is this making some sense? This has been a long term problem as far as I can tell. This problem may be between the ISY Portal and ISY, instead. I have no way of telling.

Edited July 4, 2021 by larryllix

[MrBill]

@larryllix What happens if Alexa runs program A that does nothing but Run Program B, and Program B is your program above?

[larryllix]

2 hours ago, MrBill said:

@larryllix What happens if Alexa runs program A that does nothing but Run Program B, and Program B is your program above?

This is only an infrequent happening and running one program from another does not stop multiple triggers, if that is what you are implying. I thought about trying to flip trigger flagging variables but many programs do this problem. That is assuming ISY Portal will set a State variable from a vocal???

[MrBill]

1 hour ago, larryllix said:

running one program from another does not stop multiple triggers, if that is what you are implying.

My thought was that the program is taking to long to finish running, which for some reason Alexa knows.  If that's the case, Alexa would see completion of Program A, the only program she knows anything about, meanwhile program B continues toward completion.

[larryllix]

49 minutes ago, MrBill said:

My thought was that the program is taking to long to finish running, which for some reason Alexa knows.  If that's the case, Alexa would see completion of Program A, the only program she knows anything about, meanwhile program B continues toward completion.

Nice! Yeah I had thoughts of that also. Perhaps ISY Portal does not handshake as a sign to the command processor that it is not done successfully yet? Of course this could be a handshake from ISY to ISY Portal but somebody is retriggering the program.

Your idea could prove the handshaking speed, but not likely the culprit. Trouble is this may never prove it is happening due to being infrequent.

hmmmm...maybe a hit counter? but then how would I know what the previous count was at? Reset each midnight? Send a text message with the count after a 60 second wait time and then reset at the end of a few suspect programs? Maybe push the time lag concept to a malperformance time?

Edited July 4, 2021 by larryllix

[bmercier]

On 7/3/2021 at 10:10 PM, larryllix said:

@bmercier

I have a program that turns on/off many lights in my gathering room. It is composed of several Insteon scenes and several NRs that trigger routines in my RPi to turn off several banks of different style WiFi lamps and strips. Some lines require Wait 1-2 seconds between some lines to allow I/O time to function (especially NR that do not get variable substitution upon invocation)

Here is what I see happening.

Alexa! turn off/on gathering room lights!

...(long pause) Insteon lights turn off/on = first few lines of ISY program

Alexa replies "I don't know what went wrong"

...(10-20 second pause) WiFi bulbs and strips start turning off/on

Alexa replies "OK"

This (and from other malfunctions) appears that some handshake is not reporting correctly between the Alexa cloud and the ISY Portal cloud when the first vocal command is passed to ISY Portal, but the command to run the ISY program is already passed successfully and in progress.

Then Alexa command response timeout expires and Alexa reports "I don't what went wrong" or some other failure vocal report.

Alexa tries again. ISY Portal again triggers the ISY program, stopping progress and starting the program again. Handshake functions or Alexa cloud gives up after two or more retries.

Again the Insteon lights are turned off/on (but no change is observed, as first program lines have run previously). Now the program lines complete and ISY program is completed, turning off/on WiFi lights via NRs.

Is this making some sense? This has been a long term problem as far as I can tell. This problem may be between the ISY Portal and ISY, instead. I have no way of telling.

I suspect the duration of the program too. If this is not complete withing a few seconds, it will timeout and Alexa will give an error message.

FYI, there are no retry mecanism.

Benoit

[larryllix]

3 hours ago, bmercier said:

I suspect the duration of the program too. If this is not complete withing a few seconds, it will timeout and Alexa will give an error message.

FYI, there are no retry mecanism.

Benoit

Thanks Benoit.

Is there any chance of this multiple program trigger being fixed in the near future?  Immediate(not wait for program completion)  handshake back or ignore the second (third, fourth?) duplicate trigger of programs?

If not I will need to find some work around with ISY, likely state variable program event triggers.

[bmercier]

52 minutes ago, larryllix said:

Thanks Benoit.

Is there any chance of this multiple program trigger being fixed in the near future?  Immediate(not wait for program completion)  handshake back or ignore the second (third, fourth?) duplicate trigger of programs?

If not I will need to find some work around with ISY, likely state variable program event triggers.

There are no plans to do that. Completion of a program is under normal circumstances quick, and it's what confirms that the action worked.

If the program takes too much time, I think it should be triggered by a state variable.

Benoit

[larryllix]

1 hour ago, bmercier said:

There are no plans to do that. Completion of a program is under normal circumstances quick, and it's what confirms that the action worked.

If the program takes too much time, I think it should be triggered by a state variable.

Benoit

This means every program using a Wait timer in it may double trigger from most vocals. This may be a long time hidden  problem for so many here using ISY Portal, and experiencing irregular vocal command failures.

I will look at some work-arounds to compensate usage of programs with ISY Portal.

[bmercier]

7 hours ago, larryllix said:

This means every program using a Wait timer in it may double trigger from most vocals. This may be a long time hidden  problem for so many here using ISY Portal, and experiencing irregular vocal command failures.

I will look at some work-arounds to compensate usage of programs with ISY Portal.

I don't see why it would double trigger. Alexa will trigger it only once.

Benoit

[larryllix]

I don't see why it would double trigger. Alexa will trigger it only once.
Benoit

It happened again last night but the program it happens with is not consistent.
I will attempt to trap a few programs with counters to ensure they have been double triggered first.

Sent from my SM-G781W using Tapatalk

[larryllix]

@bmercier@MrBill  Just an update. I may have found an answer for this.

Here is the program I am testing with. So far it always has responded with a 4 count , which would be a normally expect result. I will leave it in place for a while yet, to test at a time when and if this ever happens again.
 

PortalTestProgram - [ID 0037][Parent 0001]

If
        
        // ISY Portal retriggerr tester
 
 
Then
        $PortalTestcounter += 1
        Wait  2 seconds
        $PortalTestcounter += 1
        Wait  2 seconds
        $PortalTestcounter += 1
        Wait  2 seconds
        $PortalTestcounter += 1
        Wait  2 seconds
        Send Notification to 'eMail Larry' content 'PortalTriggerProgramTestReport'
        Wait  30 seconds
        $PortalTestcounter  = 0
 
Else
   - No Actions - (To add one, press 'Action')
 

 

I have a Portal TV unit on top of my TV. It supports Alexa things also. Previously I had to turn the Alexa feature off because
- it hears better than the other Alexa boxes
- it doesn't play nice, arbitrating properly, who will answer, and gives itself preferential treatment
- it answers through a micro speaker with a terrible squeaky voice sound.
- it doesn't support all the Alexa functions

After checking the setup, I found the Alexa features still disabled. However it was offering help instructions when talking my other Alexa speakers. A toggle of the Alexa option and it has seemed to shut up again. I believe this may have given my Alexa via ISY Portal the double triggers that have been double starting my programs.