msfujitsu Posted December 24, 2021 Posted December 24, 2021 I had an earlier version of the isy994-pro that didnt have z-wave functionality. Earlier this year (june 28) I purchased a new ISY that also had z-wave integration. I had purchased additional insteon devices to "complete" the smart home installation in this house prior to putting it on the market. Today, all of a sudden, nothing worked via Alexa, or the UD app on the iphone, or even via the console on my pc. Years ago, I had a PLM die and found someone via this forum in Thousand Oaks to repair the PLM for me back in 2016. I had a spare that I had intended to send to the guy in Thousand Oaks to have him do a preventative re-cap on it, but never got around to mailing it... I checked the "repaired" PLM, and the green led was on and blinking here and there. I had noticed some lights flickering in the house earlier in the day and figured something was up with Georgia Power, when later I found out something had gone haywire. I pulled off the "repaired" PLM and replaced it with the unused one. I did a restore plm in the isy, and it didnt take too long to finish what it was doing, but i noticed i had a number of "ballbats" (!) next to a number of devices. The restore device function did nothing, I had rebooted the ISY and same thing... Finally I decided to kill the power in the entire house at the panel. Everything then showed up in the isy without ballbats, Alexa commands were working again, as well as via the console. I decided to make sure the repaired plm was indeed bad (and at this point it is indeterminate), so I reconnected it, did a restore plm, and it didnt take too long for it to finish. Stuff wasnt working again. The led on the plm was green. Put the "unused" plm back into the system and did another restore. This time, it seems like its taking forever, almost like it is restoring in an endless loop. Afraid to kill the power to the system or reboot the ISY for fear of bricking it. This almost seems like an ISY failure (which is under a year old).
MrBill Posted December 24, 2021 Posted December 24, 2021 (edited) I can't tell by your steps... but the proper proceedure to change a PLM is to unplug both the ISY and the PLM. Then swap the PLM, plug it in and wait 30 seconds, the green light should be on steady. THEN plug in the ISY. If your are changing a PLM without re-starting the ISY then the ISY will never realize the PLM has been changed... during the startup procedure is the ONLY time the ISY interrogates the PLM for it's device address. Therefor if you hotswap a PLM then do restore PLM it THINKS its restoring the old PLM, not the new. When a PLM is actually swapped and the AA.BB.CC address changes then "restore PLM" will take a long time... because the PLM address change and needs to be written to every single link in every device in the house. Edited December 24, 2021 by MrBill 1
msfujitsu Posted December 24, 2021 Author Posted December 24, 2021 thank you MrBill for your reply... I am going to try this again.
msfujitsu Posted December 25, 2021 Author Posted December 25, 2021 ok after getting the "unused" plm working, then starting the process over for the "repaired" plm, both are working now. I really wonder if there was something going on from Georgia Power because before everything crapped out, some of the lights were flickering on and off in the house. I imagine the "air gap" would have power cycled each insteon device, but pulling the air gap on 81 insteon devices individually was unfeasible. I think killing the power at the circuit panel would have taken care of it, but i had replaced the plm by hot-swapping, and that put a monkey wrench in things. Has anyone ever had something like this happen before? It was almost like i had a brownout before everything went haywire
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