Controlling Scene from Mobilinc HD, RemoteLinc, and Alexa

[Kentinada]

I have a scene called LR Lighting that has 4 different lights in my living room that should turn on or off by this scene.  2 devices are dimmer switches and 2 are just on/off switches.  I have the on my Mobilinc HD Dashboard view and tied to a key on my RemoteLinc keypad.  If I use either of those devices, all the lights go on or off as expected. I also have this scene enabled to Alexa through the ISY portal.  When I tell Alexa to turn on the scene only 2 of the lights come on.  Same 2 will go off.  One of them is a dimmer and one is an on/off so it's not the device type.  Why is Alexa not getting the entire scene on or off?  What do I look for?

Thanks!

[lilyoyo1]

Did you update the scene when you made it or just the controllers in the scene? My suspicion is that the scene itself hasn't been updated

[MrBill]

To add to what @lilyoyo1 mentioned.  
 

click the scene name in the tree, are the devices configured correctly there?  
 

each scene must be configured at the root level, and each red controller link.   

[Kentinada]

@lilyoyo1 and @MrBill a couple questions

I'm not sure what you meant when you asked if the scene had been updated and click on the scene where? In the Admin console?  I thought I knew my way around this stuff since I've had my ISY (on my 2nd one) for some time. I only have 1 controller device in the scene - my RemoteLinc.  Anyway, maybe a screen shot could help.

1st screen shot shows the scene and the devices in it.  The next shot show the Responders section.  Does this help?

[MrBill]

3 hours ago, Kentinada said:

I only have 1 controller device in the scene - my RemoteLinc.

There are actually two controllers in that scene.  The root level that's highlighted "LR Lighting" is the controller settings that are used when the ISY itself is the controller.  "RL UP - 2" is also controller because its name is Red.   The scene can be programmed to behave differently based on which controller was used.

Also NOTE, this isn't the problem in this case, but that little gray 1011 icon means there are things in queue that need to be written out to the device.  The fact that it's gray means that you also have wireless writes disabled which is fine for short term while getting things ready, but you really shouldn't leave unwritten instructions hanging around, they will come back to bite....  To resolve put the device in linking mode, and release the wireless write hold by clicking that icon.

[Kentinada]

@MrBill Thanks.  I knew about the changes for the RL2 button. I made a change yesterday to try to fix it but in order for the updates to write to my RemoteLinc, I have to put it all the way at the other end of my house which is as far away from the ISY as you can get.  I was just lazy yesterday and didn't do it. 

Any other ideas on the Alexa control working differently?

[Kentinada]

Here's another piece to the puzzle.  When I tell Alexa to turn on the scene, the light that comes on ramps up and ramps down when I tell her to turn it off.  When I click the RL2 button, it just does a Fast On or Fast Off. 

[MrBill]

24 minutes ago, Kentinada said:

Here's another piece to the puzzle.  When I tell Alexa to turn on the scene, the light that comes on ramps up and ramps down when I tell her to turn it off.  When I click the RL2 button, it just does a Fast On or Fast Off. 

Sounds like the two controllers are programmed differently.  Take 2 screen shots, one with the Root Level "RL Lighting" highlighted showing the right hand window, then take highlights or click on "RL UP - 2" and showing the right hand window, and post both.

[gzahar]

When you turn root "LR Lighting" scene on/off from Admin Console, do all the lights work or just the 2?

What command are you giving Alexa?  Do you have any other scenes or devices with similar names?

Select one of the 2 lights that do go on/off and look to see if they are a member of another scene that Alexa could be operating.

[Kentinada]

1st screen shot is LR LIghting Scene. 2nd is RL UP - 2 controller. The definitions look the same to me.

The 3rd screen shot is from my.isy.io portal showing the spoken mapping for Alexa.  Saying "Living Room" should run scene LR LIghting but as I started this thread, it does not act the same as turning the scene on or off from the Remotelinc, Mobilinc, or the Admin console. Not sure what to look at next.

 

[MrBill]

@Kentinada Your scene's are in fact configured correctly.  (sorry for pushing the point, but 98% of the time posters don't understand the concept that scenes can be programed based on the controller used.) 

The next step that I would try, is right clicking each device that is included in the scene and select "Restore Device"  (I would do these one at a time, i.e. not queuing them up with the "disable automatic writes" button.)  This will resend the links stored in each device to the device.  

If the problem persists after that you likely have a standard Insteon noise/signal sucker issue.

[Kentinada]

@MrBill no apologies necessary. I actually learned I could program the scene name in one way and another controller device in the scene to do something different.  In my case, they're the same but that was good to learn.

I did what you said and restored each device.  No joy.  I even took the 2 dimmer switches out and replaced them with simple on/off switches.  One of the dimmers used to come on.  Now the replacement on/off won't even come on via Alexa.  i'm down to just 1 device of 4 working via Alexa when all 4 work perfectly via RemoteLinc or Mobilinc.  I'm trying to set this up to make it easier for my wife but sure not getting very far. 

[MrBill]

@KentinadaThe troubling thing about your problem is that Alexa and mobilinc are both using the ISY as the scene controller.  As someone else above asked what happens when you use the ISY scene control buttons?   The next steps for this problem are to open the event viewer and set it to level 3, then control each device and analyze the log.  You can post those here for comment too.  I'm not very good at event viewer logs and will let others answer at that point.

 

There's a steep learning curve for the system integrator but so far my wife's favorite "non-light switch" controller has been Home Assistant with the app on her phone, she prefers that over Alexa.  The UDI ISY-994  HA integration works perfectly.  The learning curve comes from designing dashboards, it's actually pretty easy anymore to create simple dashboards.  Mine are probably a notch up at the intermediate level.

[Kentinada]

@MrBill if you mean the buttons shown at the bottom of the attached screen shot, they work fine.  Are these the buttons you mean?

 

Edited August 22, 2021 by Kentinada

[Kentinada]

Here's another possible data point.  I just created a 1 line program that set the LR Lighting scene to On.  I added this program through the ISY Portal interface to Alexa. I gave it a spoken word of "testing". I told Alexa to turn on testing and all 4 lights came on. 

[MrBill]

Those are exactly the scene control buttons I meant.

If Alexa still isn't controlling the original scene correctly, I would delete that from the portal, make sure the scene is gone via the Alexa app, then add it back.....  that said, it looks exactly correct from your screenshot a few messages up and it doesn't make sense why deleting and adding back the original voice control would make it better, since the ISY is the scene controller in either case.

 

[Kentinada]

I added another program to turn the scene off and gave it the spoken command of "living room off".  It also works but it's confusing because you have to say "Alexa Living Room Off On".  Ugh.

[Kentinada]

@MrBill OK I'm getting closer.  For grins, I deleted the scene LR Lighting from Alexa and re-added it.  This time I gave it the spoken command of "blueberry".  Now when I tell Alexa to turn blueberry on, it works!  So does the off command.  There is some sort of problem/conflict with the phrase Living Room.  Not sure how to figure out what it is. 

[MrBill]

19 minutes ago, Kentinada said:

@MrBill OK I'm getting closer.  For grins, I deleted the scene LR Lighting from Alexa and re-added it.  This time I gave it the spoken command of "blueberry".  Now when I tell Alexa to turn blueberry on, it works!  So does the off command.  There is some sort of problem/conflict with the phrase Living Room.  Not sure how to figure out what it is. 

Actually I've had a problem with naming too, especially "living room".  If I use "living room" in almost anything it doesn't work, but instead of what you are seeing I get "sorry, living room doesn't support that"  I have no idea what she thinks "living room" supports, I've been through device names dozens of times trying to figure it out... as a result we use a lot of what I'd call silly names for Alexa spokens in that room, like Turn on Alan Shore for the fireplace... Turn on Denny Crane for the ceiling fans... That said both my wife and I hate speaking to Alexa and neither of us use Alexa all too often for home control.  We tried to like using her, but she talks back too much and too many things have to be repeated.   We do use Alexa a lot in other respects... playing music "everywhere" and kitchen timers are the top 2 usages.

[Kentinada]

@MrBill so I ended up calling it "great room" in the spoken command and it works fine.  Best compromise I could come up with.  At least it works.  Thanks for sticking with me on this one.