"Cannot Communicate..." message?

[adambuild]

Hi All,

Happy and Healthy New Year to everyone! I am currently getting the error message below for two switches. I've done hard resets for both and have also done "restore device" for both. Any other ideas? Does this mean the switches need replacement? Can they be repaired? 2477D's are currently impossible to find, even eBay has none.

Thanks in advance, Adam

 

[MrBill]

it more than likely means you have electrical noise on the power line, perhaps only on that circuit if this is limited to 2 switches.  

First question to ask is did you plug in anything new on that circuit or change any LED bulbs?

What happened when you restored device?

There's several wiki articles on the topic

[adambuild]

Hey Mr. Bill, thanks much. So I tried restoring both again and got the results shown below. The boy's bedroom switch has those green/white lines and the foyer switch had no change. Nothing has been changed recently like bulbs, electronics, etc.

 

[MrBill]

that green icon is 1011 which just means the ISY has instructions it hasn't been able to write to the switch.  It will try to write those instructions often... like eveytime the ISY wakes up to write other things to other switches...  If you have the pro version of ISY, turn off these two buttons on the admin console tool bar:   The left one is for wired devices the right is for wireless devices.  this will turn the green icons to grey (deselected) and prevent the ISY from constantly trying to update the device while we try to solve the problem.

My method for finding a noise making device is a little bit intrusive... but I go to the breaker box and leave 3 circuits turned on... the circuit with the ISY, a circuit on the opposite phase that has a dual band device near the PLM, and the circuit with the switch that's not working... in this case Boy's bedroom recessed.  All other circuits get turned off.

Next go to the ISY and right click the device and restore it?  did the ICON go away? can we now turn it on/off from the ISY?  this is good.  so then i go back to the breaker box and turn on about 1/4 of the circuits and back to the ISY to retest... rinse and repeat until the device doesn't work again... when it stops working then we turn some of those breakers back off and keep playing this game until we find the exact breaker that makes the switch no longer work...

Once we have it down to a single circuit... and two paragraps up the bad circuit might just be the one with boy's bedroom recessed.  if it didn't work with all the other circuits off except those three the noise maker is on one of those 3 circuits...

To hunt on a single circuit first go unplug anything thats plugged in on that circuit.  retest... then try turning off all dumb switches (if any) and pulling the airlock tab out on all other insteon switches on that circuit. 

eventually you'll likely get it down to one device that's generating noise.  Either put a noise filter on that or eliminate it.

--- another method

unwire the switch and wire it to a test cord so that you can plug in... .Plug it into the same circuit as the PLM and "restore device" further test the switch to prove to yourself it's working... then re-install it and if it's still doesn't communicate start the hunt for a noise make or signal sucker (see the Wiki articles that I previously linked)

 

 

 

 

I'm not sure what No change for the foyer means.

a note about the buttons :   When these are deslected you can still force the instructions to be written to that device only by right clicking the device and selecting "restore device".

 

[adambuild]

Hey Mr. Bill, thanks so much. I'm gonna use your methods when I have a block of time to focus on this and will report back!

[MrBill]

1 hour ago, adambuild said:

Hey Mr. Bill, thanks so much. I'm gonna use your methods when I have a block of time to focus on this and will report back!

in the meantime if you have pro turn off those two green buttons on the right end of the admin console ribbon.   That green 1011 icon will try to write often, turning off those two buttons will hold those.