Insteon dimmer mysteriously remembers last brightness level?!

[PatPend]

I have four Insteon dimmers in my kitchen.  Each of them is a controller of their respective scene, along with a respective button of two other keypad links.  All four scenes are set up identically.

When I turn on one of the dimmers, it always turns on to the last brightness set at that dimmer.  The other three work as expected i.e. go to full brightness.  So it seems this one dimmer is set to remember the previous on-level while every other one doesn't.  I have no idea why it does this.

Any ideas what's going on and more importantly, how to change the dimmer so it doesn't remember the previous dimming level and instead always turn on at full brightness?

[lilyoyo1]

2 hours ago, PatPend said:

I have four Insteon dimmers in my kitchen.  Each of them is a controller of their respective scene, along with a respective button of two other keypad links.  All four scenes are set up identically.

When I turn on one of the dimmers, it always turns on to the last brightness set at that dimmer.  The other three work as expected i.e. go to full brightness.  So it seems this one dimmer is set to remember the previous on-level while every other one doesn't.  I have no idea why it does this.

Any ideas what's going on and more importantly, how to change the dimmer so it doesn't remember the previous dimming level and instead always turn on at full brightness?

Did you try to factory reset and test the behavior

[hart2hart]

Having a default on level is not mysterious as a dimmers on level can be set. How it got set may be a mystery.

[PatPend]

That's the thing, on the ISY the default on level is 100%.  But it turns on to whatever it was last time.  

I'll try a factory reset.

[larryllix]

That's the thing, on the ISY the default on level is 100%.  But it turns on to whatever it was last time.  
I'll try a factory reset.

ISY likely doesn't know the preset on level from the switch. Try setting it manually from ISY admin console and then test again.

I set many of my lights each evening so when the pee run happens at 3:00 AM I don't get blinded.

Sent from my SM-G781W using Tapatalk

[PatPend]

After a factory reset, dimming worked correctly again (full brightness turn-on).  However when I restored the device from the ISY, the problem returned.  So a glitch or corruption in the ISY data for this device caused the problem.

I ended up a) removing device from the ISY b) factory resetting the device c) re-linking device to the ISY d) re-adding device to all scenes.  Problem solved. 

BTW it turns out this feature is called "Resume Dim" and AFAIK can only be deliberately enabled via local programming mode.

[larryllix]

3 minutes ago, PatPend said:

After a factory reset, dimming worked correctly again (full brightness turn-on).  However when I restored the device from the ISY, the problem returned.  So a glitch or corruption in the ISY data for this device caused the problem.

I ended up a) removing device from the ISY b) factory resetting the device c) re-linking device to the ISY d) re-adding device to all scenes.  Problem solved. 

BTW it turns out this feature is called "Resume Dim" and AFAIK can only be deliberately enabled via local programming mode.

It seems to operating exactly the way Insteon devices are designed. SwitchLincs remember the last On level programmed into them.  You likely just needed to write the desired on level into the device. This can be done in programs, manually from the admin console or manually at the switch paddle. Mine get changed twice per day via ISY programs.

[lilyoyo1]

33 minutes ago, PatPend said:

After a factory reset, dimming worked correctly again (full brightness turn-on).  However when I restored the device from the ISY, the problem returned.  So a glitch or corruption in the ISY data for this device caused the problem.

I ended up a) removing device from the ISY b) factory resetting the device c) re-linking device to the ISY d) re-adding device to all scenes.  Problem solved. 

BTW it turns out this feature is called "Resume Dim" and AFAIK can only be deliberately enabled via local programming mode.

It's less about the feature (people know it's there) and more about how it happened and to fix. With kpls, you can manually disable/enable it. Just strange it came about in a standard dimmer for no reason. Especially since the Isy doesn't support enabling it (not a feature I ever use so I've never tried the kpls manual steps myself so i don't know if it would work).

[PatPend]

2 minutes ago, larryllix said:

It seems to operating exactly the way Insteon devices are designed. SwitchLincs remember the last On level programmed into them.  You likely just needed to write the desired on level into the device. This can be done in programs, manually from the admin console or manually at the switch paddle. Mine get changed twice per day via ISY programs.

My bedrooms and bathroom on levels change twice a day too, this is something else.  Evidently a distinction exists between programmed on level, and last on level.  When the device is set to Resume Dim, the programmed on level is ignored and the last on level is used.  The desired (programmed) on level in this case was always 100%.  When I turned the light on it would initially go to 100% (as expected).  Then, if I manually dimmed the device to, say, 33%, then manually turned it off by tapping the bottom of the paddle, when I manually turned it on by tapping the top of the paddle, it would go to 33%.  No other dimmer in my house worked like this.  Nor did the programmed on-level change on the device in question.  The only conclusion is the Resume Dim feature somehow got enabled on this particular device. 

The funny thing is that there's no support on the ISY to manipulate Resume Dim.  Maybe it's something the Insteon Hub supports but I don't have one of those.  So how it got enabled on this one dimmer  is a mystery to me.  Maybe it was a glitch in the ISY, or in the dimmer, or maybe Smarthome sent me a repacked 2477D that had the feature enabled, or maybe after one too many beers I managed to inadvertently monkey through the precise sequence of set button presses to enable this feature.  

[larryllix]

Strange. I have never heard of "Resume Dim" in Insteon devices. I have also never seen it mentioned in the Insteon device manuals or remote control gadgets.

At least your factory reset fixed it for now. It appears your ISY programming was setting your On level somehow that you had forgotten.

I tried to paddle set the On level on one of my switchlincs and I cannot make it happen, as I thought it did formerly. Maybe Insteon did change their design. Most of my SwitchLincs have been removed for moving out later, so I cannot test the rest of the versions.

[MrBill]

53 minutes ago, PatPend said:

The funny thing is that there's no support on the ISY to manipulate Resume Dim. 

There's several features in *some* insteon devices that aren't implemented by the ISY... another is the ability to detach the load on 6/8 button keypads.   The problem is at some point in the game Insteon changed it's mind and went from trying to be an open platform, to one that wanted to be secretive.... Many devices UDI had to reverse engineer to support them at all.   In some cases they may not have known the feature existed, or they may have choosen to ignore it because they didn't have enough data to be sure their implementation would always work.  

[Brian H]

2 hours ago, MrBill said:

There's several features in *some* insteon devices that aren't implemented by the ISY... another is the ability to detach the load on 6/8 button keypads.   The problem is at some point in the game Insteon changed it's mind and went from trying to be an open platform, to one that wanted to be secretive.... Many devices UDI had to reverse engineer to support them at all.   In some cases they may not have known the feature existed, or they may have choosen to ignore it because they didn't have enough data to be sure their implementation would always work.  

I have also seen features mentioned in the Developers Group before it was suddenly removed. That didn't work correctly or implemented not to what was published.

Siren and Alert modules where two of them, UDI had to do its best to implement as Smartlabs was totally silent on them.