Out of my League with an ISY994i

[smokegrub]

i have two ISYs. The vacation home ISY has worked perfectly until my ISP changed from Suddenlink to Optimum. After they did this I began attempts to do an ISY backup in preparation to upgrade from 4.9.0. When I tried to backup it would get to about 70% and it would fail with the message could not retrieve File .Conf/109 PRP. Now, I am at the vacation home and the ISY will not backup—same results. I can see both ISYs in the Portal but the vacation home ISY will not backup..

When I open with the Launcher the Vacation home ISY displays but the ISY at the other residence does not!

To top things off, my wife and I just got Covid and at age 78 I am not at my former skill level.

I have rebooted the ISY and I have unplugged and replugged the PLM.

The PLM has a sold green light. The ISY has a single solid blue light on the far left.

I can control the vacation home devices though the Portal and MobiLinc.

I don’t see the vacation ISY’s IP in the router (Apple Extreme). At least I don’t recognize one. It appears the ISY is identified by its MAC Address in setup. How can I determine its IP so I can see if its address is in the router? If its not there, how do I get it there? My gut feeling is that the ISY is not in the router. Sorry for the serious paucity of technical skills. Any help will be appreciated.All my devices are Insteon. I am running Ventura on a MacBook Pro. I am ready to upgrade the ISY technology if that is my problem.

[larryllix]

Usually a router has a table of connected devices. There may be a separate one for hardwired devices too or they may be all in one.
In that table typically you would find each device's MAC address and it's IP address in another column.

Sometimes a router "loans out" an IP address for a limited time and if that has expired the device may not appear in the table. You may need to have ISY send /receive/ or reboot to make it's position re-appear in the router device table. Router responses may be really slow also. Sometimes it takes minute for a router to update these table for the user. You are low priority to a router.

Edited May 13, 2023 by larryllix

[tmorse305]

3 hours ago, smokegrub said:

I can control the vacation home devices though the Portal and MobiLinc.

If you can control devices from the Portal and Mobilinc then your ISY definitely has an IP address.  I wonder if you might have a failing SD card.

[matapan]

I believe if you run the Airport Utility on your Macbook Pro, you can see your router and see all of its clients attached to it. You can look for the MAC address of your ISY to find its IP address and try manually adding it to the Launcher using the Add option.

[oberkc]

Last I checked, the ISY IP address could be identified via admin console: Help>About.  Also, since you mentioned the launcher, the current version of the launcher shows the IP address.  I do not recall which launcher works with your ISY software version, however.

[smokegrub]

I forgot to add, the backup breaks at 70% each time.

[oskrypuch]

With the consistency of the error, sure sounds like a bad/failing SD card.

The other really weird issue I've seen, is if you have any open UDP ports. It doesn't need to have anything to do with your ISY itself.

Open UDP ports (vice TCP) will allow a lot of junk to flood your network. It likely won't get anywhere, but the extra traffic can overwhelm the NIC on the ISY. Unlikely that you'd get such consistency in that error, but worth a shot.

* Orest

[MrBill]

@smokegrub  open a ticket re the backup failure.  I would imagine they will delete the bad file, but I'm not sure if it's one that needs to be replaced.

I don't think I know whats wrong with auto-detection, i think that's the symptoms you're describing. if you can get the IP address then you can manually add it.       Come to think about it, you might try deleting your .state files... a corrupt temp file could cause that...

[smokegrub]

I appreciate the feedback. mIt has caused me to continue to reflect on my situation. I have several older backups of the problematic ISY that have not changed in a long time. So they should help with any transition. So, my ISYs are old, and I am not capable of assessing or doing maintenance. So, I think I will upgrade both ISYs to EISYs. I can envision a couple of node servers being helpful. I hope I can count on you and UDI to help me with the setup. Any thoughts?

[oberkc]

22 hours ago, smokegrub said:

Any thoughts?

If you are interested in node servers to integrate addition device types into your system, upgrading to the EISY is probably worthwhile.  I am also a bit of a fan of upgrading on your own schedule, rather than waiting for a failure of the old ISY and suddenly having an "emergency" situation.

On the other hand, the polyglot/node servers and ISY (or is it IoX?) is a bit more complicated and finicky from my experience.  If you fear that the ISY has gotten beyond your abilities or interest, the EISY will not make things any easier.

Edited May 15, 2023 by oberkc

[smokegrub]

One of the concerns I have is that UDI has apparently indicated no support for the ISY going forward. Is that true? Is that not sufficient reason to make the change? I have no trouble coding programs, adding devices, etc. It is networking issues and hardware maintenance issues such as replacing a memory chip that exceeds my skills. Historically. UDI has been outstanding in helping with such issues.

[MrBill]

1 hour ago, smokegrub said:

One of the concerns I have is that UDI has apparently indicated no support for the ISY going forward. Is that true? Is that not sufficient reason to make the change? I have no trouble coding programs, adding devices, etc. It is networking issues and hardware maintenance issues such as replacing a memory chip that exceeds my skills. Historically. UDI has been outstanding in helping with such issues.

No Support of ISY after Jun1 of next year (disclaimer: date from memory, I didn't double check while typing.

1 hour ago, smokegrub said:

It is networking issues and hardware maintenance issues such as replacing a memory chip that exceeds my skills.

eisy will probably be easier for you than 994 was... networking wise it seems to be much better IMO. 

[Michel Kohanim]

@smokegrub,

If you have access to your 994:

1. Use putty to telnet to 994

2. RF /CONF/109.PROP

3. Retry the backup

With kind regards,
Michel

[Geddy]

2 hours ago, smokegrub said:

UDI has apparently indicated no support for the ISY going forward. Is that true?

You can read the UDI announcement about ending support for the ISY994 on their site:

https://www.universal-devices.com/byebye994/

 

[Brian H]

I have had no ISY994i problems.

Except power supplies going bad. Since the ISY994i has a fairly big voltage range. It was easy to get it back in complete working condition.

If  you are wanting to use the new I3 modules. The ISY994i will not support them as no new firmware is going to happen. The eisy and Polisy have later firmware that will support I3.

[DennisC]

21 hours ago, smokegrub said:

One of the concerns I have is that UDI has apparently indicated no support for the ISY going forward. Is that true? 

Free support will end on June 1, 2023 with paid support ending June 2024. Starting June 1st there is also a fee to transfer to a different ISY994.

21 hours ago, smokegrub said:

Is that not sufficient reason to make the change?

Only you can answer that question,  but remember, there will be no future development or added device. 

[smokegrub]

Weird, but I decided to try a backup and it worked! Next step. how do I upgrade from 4.9 firmware to the most recenn\t version? My desire is to be able to use UD Mobile. 

[Techman]

@smokegrub

Here's the link and instructions for the update. This assumes that you do not have Z-wave installed. Be sure to carefully read the release notes. After this update you'll be able to easily migrate to the eisy.

5.3.4 (ISY994) - Last release for ISY994 - Current Release Announcements - Universal Devices Forum (universal-devices.com)

 

[MrBill]

41 minutes ago, smokegrub said:

Weird, but I decided to try a backup and it worked! Next step. how do I upgrade from 4.9 firmware to the most recenn\t version? My desire is to be able to use UD Mobile. 

In addition to the upgrade instructions, I suggest that users make a text copy of programs.  Single Click then Right Click "My Programs" (or whatever the root folder of the program tree is named if it's not "My Programs"), Choose "Copy  Folder to Clipboard" at the bottom of the popup menu. 

Next open any simple text editor (that doesn't add any formatting) Windows Notepad is a perfect choice.  Click into that window and then type Ctrl-V to paste all your programs into the Notepad window. then File > Save As give it a name.txt and save it... now if you need to see what a program looked like before the upgrade you can.

After the upgrade is complete, you'll log into the admin console using admin/admin for credentials, you'll need to change that back to whatever you were using.

First stop in the admin console when you get back in after the upgrade is Help > About to check the Firmware and UI version numbers match.  If they don't match then stop and fix it, because if they don't match the next step will give false information.

Next go to the Programs Tab > Summary sub-tab and look for YELLOW, if you see any yellow the associated program is broken and needs to be manually fixed.  Most likely it used "Adjust Scene" which has more settings and ways it can be linked in V5 that values can't be assumed or defaulted, so programs with "Adjust Scene" will need to be manually repaired....  (Remember the .txt copy of your programs we made above? this is where it will come in handy.)

[smokegrub]

I am away from my primary residence. Will be returning home in a week and will study the info you graciously provided. Then, when I return to the vacation  home in about 3 weeks I will see if I can get the update done.