For those of you with an Elk and an ISY, a poll.

[WayneW]

For those of you using Elk rules, can you comment if you are using:

• Elk rules to control ISY scenes
  Elk rules to control individual devices
  Elk rules to control multiple devices (ie multiple "then" lines)
  Elk rules with the feature to turn the light off in X minutes

[elvisimprsntr]

The problems you may be experiencing with inability to control lights may stem from Insteon network issues and not necessarily the Elk control of those lights/scenes. By sure luck I had my Elk and ISY system up and operational without any problems. Then I moved the ISY and PLM to a different outlet and started having problems as you describe, which were more prevalent when attempting to control those same lights/scenes via the Elk. I made the mistake of putting a couple of dimmer plug in modules on extension cords for my kitchen cabinet lighting to hide the dimmer modules above my cabinet. I knew this was not recommended, but it seemed to work at least initially. The other thing I did was move my access points to different outlets in the same room, but on a different circuit. The APs act as a sort of repeater, which if you have on the same circuit as your PLM defeat the purpose and may cause network collision issues, or so I have read. Even if you don't have an RF Insteon device, the APs are a good idea if you have devices on separate circuits in your home. Once I tweaked the location of my PLM and APs, and eliminate the extension cords, I have not have any lighting control reliability problems. You also may want to check the wire nuts for any recessed Insteon switches/outlets you may be using to make sure they are all connected per the drawings. I took great care to make sure the connections were solid and correct. From an Elk programming standpoint, I don't control individual lights. I only control scenes, which contain multiple lights. I checked the "Disable All On/Off" box on my ISY configuration page. You might also play with the "Opt" selection in the Elk lighting configuration to see if that makes a difference. One other thing I do in my Elk is if I am controlling multiple scenes from within a single program, e.g. turn all my house lights in if there an alarm, I don't use the "All Devices On", I command each individual scene on with a 1 second pause in between. This gives the ISY time to command the multiple lights within each scene and allow for message retry if necessary.

 

In my case I don't have the LAN connection in my garage, thus I am using a pair of encrypted Netgear Ethernet power bridges. I am amazed that between the Insteon and the Ethernet communication over my power that I don't have problems. Believe it or not, I have an Insteon motion sensor in a particular hallway, which instead of programming my ISY to make a the motion sensor a controller for a scene, I actually monitor the motion signal via my Elk then command the hallway scene. I did this for two reasons; 1) So I didn't have to pull the motion sensor off the wall, unscrew the cover, and put it in programming mode every time I wanted to change the delay time before turning the lights back off. 2) it also allowed the Elk scene status to reflect the actual status of the lights. I am amazed it actually works. I use the Jayson Callaway's eKeypad Pro and ISY iPhone apps to access both the Elk and ISY. I recommend them highly.

 

I am sure there are some who may say some of these steps are not necessary, but I arrived at it when attempting to understand some of the original issues I was having. Now that it all seems to work, I'm not going to mess with it.

 

Bottom line, don't give up to early. I know it's a pain, but once you tweak your PLM/AP placement, it will work reliability. Patience my friend.

 

Elvis

[brad77]

For what's worth, I use the Elk to control/monitor my lighting and to open/close my garage door. I've set up button F4 to open/close the garage and to blink when my garage door has been left open.

 

I ran into what I thought were communication issues between the Elk and ISY recently. I found that although the Elk was able to control certain devices, it was erroneously reporting their status as if it wasn't "hearing" the status change. I discovered that this was because I was using the Elk to control the scenes associated with virtual 3-way switches. Scenes don't report status, so the Elk would never adjust it accordingly.

 

I opted to have the Elk control the primary switches in the scene rather the scene itself, and the status was reported correctly. I then used ISY programs to keep the other switches in the scene in sync. There's a lag when the program runs, but at least all of my switches are synchronized.

 

Elvis makes some good points as well. You may want to test to make sure that your devices and scenes are working consistently when triggered by your ISY (scene tests in the admin console are a good tool). You may have noise on the line or signal sucking electronics that are interfering with the PLM's ability to communicate. I had some problems myself before I did some troubleshooting and installed a number of powerline filters on my computers, TV's, washer/dryer, furnace, etc. Since then, reliability has gone up significantly.

[elvisimprsntr]

For what's worth, I use the Elk to control/monitor my lighting and to open/close my garage door. I've set up button F4 to open/close the garage and to blink when my garage door has been left open.

 

I do the same thing for my garage door. I added a magnetic contract to my garage header and hooked it up to an Elk input zone. I also added a ip camera to my garage that has GPIO interface to report motion to my Elk and to allow me to trigger my camera to start recording to my FTP server and send SMS or emails.

 

My flush mount keypads only have 4 function keys, but Jayson Callway's eKeypad M1 and Pro iPhone apps support 6 function keys. There is a trick you can perform to allow one to configure F5 and F6 as virtual function keys. 1. Add one more keypad to your Elk than you have physical keypads. 2. Configure the virtual keypad as desired. 3. Replace the entries for physical keypads with the newly created virtual keypad. 4. All 6 function keys are pulled into the physical keypad config but 2 are grayed out. 5. Presto! You now have 6 function keys you can access via Jayson's app,