HA -> ISY994 - Communication Issues

[Venicenerd]

I created a Home Assistant Scene with 6 Insteon devices. When I execute the scene only a few of the devices turn on. I initially thought that I may be dealing with an Insteon queue overflow congestion problem, however, genius @MrBill posted the following in another thread:

Quote

So the problem that you identified may not be where HA integrates with ISY... it may just be the insteon queue overflows... in other words HA may be properly controlling the devices but the powerline signals are lost in an overcrowded queue.    To test for this, turn on the devices off in the ISY and execute your HA automation.  At then end besides check the physical lights to see which went on and off also check the device node in the ISY and see if the ISY thinks it's off or on.  If they ISY shows they all got turned on, but only some actually came on... then this issue has nothing to do with HA, its just the insteon protocol which is slow and only has minor safeguards against collisions and overflows.

So I followed his advice and did a test.

 

OBSERVATION (VIEW SCREEN RECORDING HERE):

• Every time I execute the scene a different set of devices responds. Sometimes 5, sometimes 4, sometimes only 2.
• The ISY only shows the same 5, 4, or 2 lights as being turned on.
• The physical lights always match what is shown in the ISY interface.

This leads me to believe that I am dealing with a communication issue between my Home Assistant Instance and the ISY994. At least that's how I understood @MrBill's comment.

 

QUESTIONS:

1) Would you guys agree that this is a HA -> ISY communication issue rather than an Insteon queue overflow issue?

2) If so how can I troubleshoot a communication issue between HA and the ISY?

 

SETUP:

• ISY994i
• Firmware v.5.3.4
• Home Assistant 2022.11.1 / OS 9.3 on a Raspberry Pi 3B+
• Universal Devices ISY994 HA integration

This is the test scene I created:

Edited November 4, 2022 by Venicenerd

[MrBill]

The problem is how scene's work.  A HA scene needs to send 1 on, 2 on, 3 on, 4 on, 5 on, 6 on to the ISY which then in turn sends 1 on, 2 on, 3 on, 4 on, 5 on, 6 on over the ISY network.  Doesn't matter where the congestion is there is congestion both places (although HA to ISY probably handles it better than Flooding the Insteon network with successive commands for each device).

When you create an ISY scene AND turn the ISY scene on from HA (the ISY scene should appear as switch.name_of_isy_scene) when you turn that scene on the commincation is HA to ISY, Scene On, ISY then broadcasts Scene On to the Insteon network and each switch is listening and hears Scene ON and eithers says I'm part of that scene and turns on or I'm not part of that scene and ignores the scene transmission.   So using the ISY scene as the controller you have eliminated much traffic both between HA and ISY and between ISY and devices.

The Answer is to turn on ISY scene's via Home Assistant and not use HA scene's for all things Insteon.

It's better not to deal with complex ISY Scene's on the HA side as a Switch tho, yes by default they are in the switch domain.  Instead Create a button entity that sends Scene On or Scene Off because scene state really doesn't make sense.  Simple ISY scene's that are just a single load, with multiple controllers, yes you can just turn the scene on/off.  For the more complex scene that's in your video tho... have a BUTTON that turns it ON and a BUTTON that turns the scene off, then display the status of the individual members of the scene.

 

Edited November 4, 2022 by MrBill