Splitting work over 2 ISY's

[johnnyt]

I'm considering splitting my lighting automation (all insteon) from my HVAC automation (zwave with a couple insteon keypads) and I'd like feedback on the questions and the process I'm outlining below. Obviously I'd rather not have to remove every device/program from first ISY and rebuild everything from scratch on the second one.

Target end state: use existing ISY 1/PLM 1 for HVAC and (new) ISY 2/PLM 2 without zwave for lighting

Q1: will my insteon network be able to handle two PLM's and will each device repeat any/all insteon signals? 

Q2: can I restore an ISY backup from an ISY with a Zwave dongle onto an ISY without a zwave dongle? 

Assuming yes to both, am hoping the following would work:

1. Backup ISY 1

2. Get (new) ISY 2 up to same firmware level but using "no PLM" version

3. Restore ISY 1 backup onto ISY 2 without PLM 2 plugged in

4. Remove all HVAC related automation from ISY 2, leaving it with only lighting related stuff

• Q3: will not having a zwave dongle cause all kinds of grief here, or might it actually help by highlighting what programs have zwave devices (now missing)?

5. Remove all lighting related devices and programs from ISY 1 with PLM 1 plugged in, deleting device links in lighting related devices and leaving ISY 1/PLM1 with only HVAC related stuff

6. Power off ISY 2 / plug in PLM 2 / power on ISY 2

7. Restore PLM 2

8. Grab a beverage and admire how everything now works better than before

 

Am I missing something?

 

 

[MrBill]

Quote

Q1: will my insteon network be able to handle two PLM's and will each device repeat any/all insteon signals? 

You'll have 2 completely separate independent Insteon networks.  Also unless you already own PLM2 you're going to have trouble finding one to purchase.  Smarthome is out of stock and told someone via email the product is being discontinued.

A better question to ask is why are you wanting to do this?  What roadblocks are you encountering?

UDI did say in the same thread that they are working on supporting USB for PLM on ISY on Polisy (not the 994)

[johnnyt]

58 minutes ago, MrBill said:

You'll have 2 completely separate independent Insteon networks.  Also unless you already own PLM2 you're going to have trouble finding one to purchase.  Smarthome is out of stock and told someone via email the product is being discontinued.

A better question to ask is why are you wanting to do this?  What roadblocks are you encountering?

UDI did say in the same thread that they are working on supporting USB for PLM on ISY on Polisy (not the 994)

Wow. So is PLM moving to USB only or is Smarthome only supporting insteon through the hub, leaving ISY and others needing independent PLM out to dry?

This definitely could change my plans.

I have a couple of reasons for wanting to separate things out. The main one is that, generally speaking, I've overloaded my ISY. I am approaching 1000 programs (I recently learned there's a limit of 1024). It's often busy, with my AC getting socket fail messages regularly, among other things. Sometimes zwave commands soak up all the CPU and delay lighting programs such as an insteon motion sensor triggering an insteon light when someone enters a room. 

With respect to completely different insteon networks, how does it work? Would I need a second set of repeaters? How would I link the second repeater to the 2nd PLM? I don't remember those being linked like a regular device. This may be moot as I digest the PLM issue but curious anyway. FWIW, at least in the short term I do have a spare PLM I could use. With this revelation, however, I probably need to keep that spare around until I understand the outlook better.

 

[lilyoyo1]

For the 1000th time, smarthome is not abandoning anyone. We are currently In a situation worldwide where it's hard for many companies to get the silicon chips needed to run their devices (partly why cars lots are low to empty when it comes to new cars). Insteon has decided to focus on specific core devices at this time vs making their full product line and having nothing to sell. 

If you're going to need a Plm right now, then it wouldn't be wise to split your system as you will be left without one for a while. Either until the new PLM is released or they start making more of the old. I don't have any information on dates so I suspect it'll be a while. 

[johnnyt]

Quote

For the 1000th time, smarthome is not abandoning anyone. We are currently In a situation worldwide where it's hard for many companies to get the silicon chips needed to run their devices (partly why cars lots are low to empty when it comes to new cars). Insteon has decided to focus on specific core devices at this time vs making their full product line and having nothing to sell. 

If you're going to need a Plm right now, then it wouldn't be wise to split your system as you will be left without one for a while. Either until the new PLM is released or they start making more of the old. I don't have any information on dates so I suspect it'll be a while. 

 

sorry @lilyoyo1that I haven't seen any of your 1000 posts but the messaging in the few places I've just been to this morning is confusion. It's one thing (understandable right now) to say things are back ordered. it's quite another to say something is discontinued. What little I am seeing right now reads more on the side of "discontinued". Case in point, I coincidently I just returned a 1 yr old PLM for warranty replacement this week (fortunately I had two older working ones) and my vendor Aartech.ca just now advised me that:

Quote

Unfortunately this unit is currently discontinued with our store and we do not have an alternative listed

I notice it doesn't say back ordered or delayed. Are they simply misinterpreting what smarthome told them? Unless maybe they're dropping it, or that smarthome will no longer be allowing resellers to sell it even when production resumes?

By the way, forgive my ignorance in this front too, but are you from smarthome and speaking for smarthome? I'd be more than happy to settle on your explanation over others that may be potentially misunderstanding what's happening.

Thanks

 

[lilyoyo1]

11 minutes ago, johnnyt said:

 

I have a couple of reasons for wanting to separate things out. The main one is that, generally speaking, I've overloaded my ISY. I am approaching 1000 programs (I recently learned there's a limit of 1024). It's often busy, with my AC getting socket fail messages regularly, among other things. Sometimes zwave commands soak up all the CPU and delay lighting programs such as an insteon motion sensor triggering an insteon light when someone enters a room. 

How many devices do you have in your system? Even with 200 devices that 5 programs for each and every one. I would recommend looking at your programs and cleaning them up. Many could potentially be redundant, condensed (2 programs made into 1), or more efficient configuring such as the use of scenes vs programs. The reason I say focus on making your system better is because you'll actually have a worse experience with 2 Isy's if you don't know what you're doing. 

With respect to completely different insteon networks, how does it work? Would I need a second set of repeaters? How would I link the second repeater to the 2nd PLM? I don't remember those being linked like a regular device. This may be moot as I digest the PLM issue but curious anyway. FWIW, at least in the short term I do have a spare PLM I could use. With this revelation, however, I probably need to keep that spare around until I understand the outlook better.

All insteon devices repeat the insteon signal. This would be your biggest downfall. Because of this, if both Isy's we're processing commands at the same time (or devices talking in general), you'll end up with collisions and delays. If you think you're errors are bad now, it will be worse. If the same devices are part of both systems, things could be worse with those specifically since neither Isy would know about the other. If you're well versed with the Isy and insteon, you could minimize things somewhat but depending on the size of your system, you'll be doing alot of babysitting to keep it going.

 

 

[lilyoyo1]

13 minutes ago, johnnyt said:

 

sorry @lilyoyo1that I haven't seen any of your 1000 posts but the messaging in the few places I've just been to this morning is confusion. It's one thing (understandable right now) to say things are back ordered. it's quite another to say something is discontinued. What little I am seeing right now reads more on the side of "discontinued". Case in point, I coincidently I just returned a 1 yr old PLM for warranty replacement this week (fortunately I had two older working ones) and my vendor Aartech.ca just now advised me that:

I notice it doesn't say back ordered or delayed. Are they simply misinterpreting what smarthome told them? Unless maybe they're dropping it, or that smarthome will no longer be allowing resellers to sell it even when production resumes?

By the way, forgive my ignorance in this front too, but are you from smarthome and speaking for smarthome? I'd be more than happy to settle on your explanation over others that may be potentially misunderstanding what's happening.

Thanks

 

You said it's disco'd in their store. Meaning, they are no longer going to be carrying it. They are no longer making anymore plms for the time being but they are not disco'd. There will also be a new version released along with new products but i do not have a date for those at this time. I've attached a list of products they will continue to make and those that are currently on hold until further notice

[MrBill]

1 hour ago, lilyoyo1 said:

They are no longer making anymore plms for the time being but they are not disco'd. There will also be a new version released along with new products but i do not have a date for those at this time.

We keep having this weird conversation, that I think you make more confusing.  Last week I pointed out how ridiculous it sounds:

On 7/4/2021 at 8:58 AM, MrBill said:

Oh I forgot, "discontinued" and "definitely discontinued" are two different things ?

I guess they should add a footnote to the above email: PS: Discontinued doesn't mean definitely discontinued it just means discontinued.  

 

The problem is smarthome reps are emailing one thing, and you think another to be true and you post vociferously saying it's not discontinued, and you include a screenshot that says they aren't making PLMs right now.  Persoanlly, its only my opinion, but  I suspect the 2413s really has been killed.... literally no hardware introduced in the last 10 years uses that style of serial interface.  I doubt the 2413u has been killed, and I was certainly relieved to see @Michel Kohanim state that UDI is working on supporting the USB PLM.

What would really be nice is if your contact at smarthome would feed you the same information that Customer Support Reps are emailing to customers.  Regardless of whose message changes.   Smarthome is not consistently messaging and for some reason you think that you're the only one that seems to understand what's really happening.  You also throw a fit when someone wants to believe the email that a smarthome rep emailed them.  You seem to be the lone wolf tho, nobody else seems to have access (this forum or social media in general) that says things are different than what Smarthome CSR's are saying.

[johnnyt]

1 hour ago, lilyoyo1 said:

I have a couple of reasons for wanting to separate things out. The main one is that, generally speaking, I've overloaded my ISY. I am approaching 1000 programs (I recently learned there's a limit of 1024). It's often busy, with my AC getting socket fail messages regularly, among other things. Sometimes zwave commands soak up all the CPU and delay lighting programs such as an insteon motion sensor triggering an insteon light when someone enters a room. 

How many devices do you have in your system? Even with 200 devices that 5 programs for each and every one. I would recommend looking at your programs and cleaning them up. Many could potentially be redundant, condensed (2 programs made into 1), or more efficient configuring such as the use of scenes vs programs. The reason I say focus on making your system better is because you'll actually have a worse experience with 2 Isy's if you don't know what you're doing. 

With respect to completely different insteon networks, how does it work? Would I need a second set of repeaters? How would I link the second repeater to the 2nd PLM? I don't remember those being linked like a regular device. This may be moot as I digest the PLM issue but curious anyway. FWIW, at least in the short term I do have a spare PLM I could use. With this revelation, however, I probably need to keep that spare around until I understand the outlook better.

All insteon devices repeat the insteon signal. This would be your biggest downfall. Because of this, if both Isy's we're processing commands at the same time (or devices talking in general), you'll end up with collisions and delays. If you think you're errors are bad now, it will be worse. If the same devices are part of both systems, things could be worse with those specifically since neither Isy would know about the other. If you're well versed with the Isy and insteon, you could minimize things somewhat but depending on the size of your system, you'll be doing alot of babysitting to keep it going.

 

I've done some program cleaning up and will certainly continue to look for opportunities but, after spending weeks/months doing countless things to finally get things to the point where I wasn't also exceeding the ISY event queue (mostly at startup, which was leaving system inconsistent and causing program misbehavior), I want to get back to spending time adding to my automation rather than trying to code around technical limitations, which means that program cleanup would only buy me time, not solve my issue (a more powerful ISY).

To provide a bit of context, I guesstimate that 70% of my programs are related to HVAC and react in multiple ways to multiple conditions and multiple sensors. For example I have about 40 programs running just my HRV (one device for high and one device for low) based on time of year, time of day, temp inside, temp outside, humidity, air air quality sensors (CO2, VOCs, Radon). That's 20 programs per device right there. Probably that many programs also running furnace fan (two devices: stat and dry contact for fan high) based on similar set of factors. I completely redid the HRV series of programs looking for efficiencies, including fewer programs and more "waits" to allow time for things to run (HVAC is not as time sensitive as a motion sensor to turn a light on). While I'm happy to program new HRV usage conditions, I'm tired of spending time just looking to do the same thing more efficiently, which has returned little value for the money. In addition, carving off the HVAC would also allow me to leave that but remove all the lighting if I sell the house (with time to figure that all out before we're ready to sell)

On the HVAC front I would only have 2-3 keypadlincs. That would be the only insteon on my 2nd network, and none of those would interact with lights. If I could find similar keypad offering in zwave I would get some but I can't find anything suitable. They're only to enable/disable HVAC events, and to act as reminders to change filters and reset those reminders. That's 16-24 infrequently used insteon devices and I could probably add some redundant actions to account for potential collisions. Yes, I could have email reminders to reduce that down by a keypad but the convenience of being able to press a button to reset a reminder vs going into ISY to reset it along with the variables that track usage is worth quite a bit to me (and helps with the WAF).

My biggest concern with this second network was making sure the insteon signal reached the devices / ISY because of distance to ISY. Is that a valid concern, and given what I just explained, should I really still be worried about other issues?

Thanks.

 

[Michel Kohanim]

@lilyoyo1,

More and more customers are contacting us and letting us know that SmartHome had told them that the PLM is DISCONTINUED because they were not selling much. i.e. a business decision and not an act of nature. 

Hopefully your sources are more trustworthy than SmartHome support.

With kind regards,

Michel

 

 

[lilyoyo1]

7 minutes ago, Michel Kohanim said:

@lilyoyo1,

More and more customers are contacting us and letting us know that SmartHome had told them that the PLM is DISCONTINUED because they were not selling much. i.e. a business decision and not an act of nature. 

Hopefully your sources are more trustworthy than SmartHome support.

With kind regards,

Michel

 

 

Ever since they sub contacted their support it's gone downhill tremendously. I feel bad for anyone that has to talk to them. 

[johnnyt]

I learned from Aartech that Smarthome will be providing a PLM to replace my still warrantied defective one. I also found one on Ebay yesterday from a reseller that converts USB version to serial. I went back this morning to post link here but it was no longer available. When I found it, it said there were 10 left (102 sold, with 100% positive feedback)

Just to bring this thread back to what I'm asking about, below is the context I provided earlier in response to "How many devices do you have in your system? Even with 200 devices that 5 programs for each and every one. I would recommend looking at your programs and cleaning them up..."

...and further down/attached is a screenshot of my ISY Inventory.

Bottom line, if my secondary insteon network only has 3 infrequently used keypadlincs (24 nodes) with programming that factors in risk of collisions, how likely am I to have a lot of problems?

 

On 7/8/2021 at 1:56 PM, johnnyt said:

To provide a bit of context, I guesstimate that 70% of my programs are related to HVAC and react in multiple ways to multiple conditions and multiple sensors. For example I have about 40 programs running just my HRV (one device for high and one device for low) based on time of year, time of day, temp inside, temp outside, humidity, air air quality sensors (CO2, VOCs, Radon). That's 20 programs per device right there. Probably that many programs also running furnace fan (two devices: stat and dry contact for fan high) based on similar set of factors. I completely redid the HRV series of programs looking for efficiencies, including fewer programs and more "waits" to allow time for things to run (HVAC is not as time sensitive as a motion sensor to turn a light on). While I'm happy to program new HRV usage conditions, I'm tired of spending time just looking to do the same thing more efficiently, which has returned little value for the money. In addition, carving off the HVAC would also allow me to leave that but remove all the lighting if I sell the house (with time to figure that all out before we're ready to sell)

On the HVAC front I would only have 2-3 keypadlincs. That would be the only insteon on my 2nd network, and none of those would interact with lights. If I could find similar keypad offering in zwave I would get some but I can't find anything suitable. They're only to enable/disable HVAC events, and to act as reminders to change filters and reset those reminders. That's 16-24 infrequently used insteon devices and I could probably add some redundant actions to account for potential collisions. Yes, I could have email reminders to reduce that down by a keypad but the convenience of being able to press a button to reset a reminder vs going into ISY to reset it along with the variables that track usage is worth quite a bit to me (and helps with the WAF).

My biggest concern with this second network was making sure the insteon signal reached the devices / ISY because of distance to ISY. Is that a valid concern, and given what I just explained, should I really still be worried about other issues?

Thanks.

 

 

 

[lilyoyo1]

2 hours ago, johnnyt said:

I learned from Aartech that Smarthome will be providing a PLM to replace my still warrantied defective one. I also found one on Ebay yesterday from a reseller that converts USB version to serial. I went back this morning to post link here but it was no longer available. When I found it, it said there were 10 left (102 sold, with 100% positive feedback)

Just to bring this thread back to what I'm asking about, below is the context I provided earlier in response to "How many devices do you have in your system? Even with 200 devices that 5 programs for each and every one. I would recommend looking at your programs and cleaning them up..."

...and further down/attached is a screenshot of my ISY Inventory.

Bottom line, if my secondary insteon network only has 3 infrequently used keypadlincs (24 nodes) with programming that factors in risk of collisions, how likely am I to have a lot of problems?

 

 

 

Theoretically you could have none or you could have a bunch. It all depends on how often your programs are triggering in regards to insteon. If the devices you're using with the second controller are triggered infrequently you will be ok. 

The more familiar you are with your systems the easier things are to manage and compare for should you have problems

If your devices are constantly triggered somehow, then likelihood of a collision goes up. Since you say it's only a couple of devices, I doubt you'll have much issues. i say go for it. There's only 1 way to find out

[johnnyt]

Ok so am thinking probably manageable second PLM scenario

Now what about the steps I propose to follow to get it done (and the outstanding question):

 

Quote

 

Target end state: use existing ISY 1/PLM 1 for HVAC and (new) ISY 2/PLM 2 without zwave for lighting

Q1: will my insteon network be able to handle two PLM's and will each device repeat any/all insteon signals? 

Q2: can I restore an ISY backup from an ISY with a Zwave dongle onto an ISY without a zwave dongle? 

 

1. Backup ISY 1

2. Get (new) ISY 2 up to same firmware level but using "no PLM" version

3. Restore ISY 1 backup onto ISY 2 without PLM 2 plugged in

4. Remove all HVAC related automation from ISY 2, leaving it with only lighting related stuff

• Q3: will not having a zwave dongle cause all kinds of grief here, or might it actually help by highlighting what programs have zwave devices (now missing)?

5. Remove all lighting related devices and programs from ISY 1 with PLM 1 plugged in, deleting device links in lighting related devices and leaving ISY 1/PLM1 with only HVAC related stuff

6. Power off ISY 2 / plug in PLM 2 / power on ISY 2

7. Restore PLM 2

8. Grab a beverage and admire how everything now works better than before