Program writes to Insteon switches intermittent

[PB11]

Greetings

Twice a day based on someone being home, I adjust the brightness of the led backlight.

I do this because I'm a poor sleeper and these little insteon led's are like lazers at 3am.

I find that 4 or 5 of my swithces are often missed and so are 100% brightness through the night.

I have added a 5 second delay between each device write, but still these 5 are "sometimes" missed

Is there something i can add other then a second write to ensure all turn off?

 

Edited October 8, 2023 by PB11
clarity

[IndyMike]

Hi PB11,

Are you getting any communication errors in your Logs or in the Admin Console?  If not, it's possible that 5 seconds isn't enough.

Unlike scene commands, the backlight command is a "direct" command meaning that it requires a response from the Switch.  If the switch does not respond, the PLM will retry the command.  The command itself is also rather involved.  Under good conditions it takes roughly 2 seconds to complete.  If there are retries involved (PLM retries are invisible to the ISY) things will be delayed further.

Try kicking your waits out to 10 - 15 seconds to see if things improve. 

A second approach would be to improve communication to the devices.  This would have the affect of speeding up communication since retries would not be required.  It would require the normal filtering of signal absorbers/noise generators and/or the addition of repeaters.  Improving communication is never a bad idea.

Timing for my backlight change with "good" communication:

Sun 10/08/2023 07:34:20 AM : [All         ] Writing 1 bytes to devices
Sun 10/08/2023 07:34:20 AM : [INST-TX-I2CS] 02 62 41 1E 09 1F 2F 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 D0
Sun 10/08/2023 07:34:20 AM : [INST-ACK    ] 02 62 41.1E.09 1F 2F 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 D0 06        (00)
Sun 10/08/2023 07:34:21 AM : [INST-SRX    ] 02 50 41.1E.09 53.BC.3A 2F 2F 00           (00)
Sun 10/08/2023 07:34:21 AM : [Std-Direct Ack] 41.1E.09-->ISY/PLM Group=0, Max Hops=3, Hops Left=3
Sun 10/08/2023 07:34:21 AM : [INST-ERX    ] 02 51 41 1E 09 53 BC 3A 15 2F 00 00 01 0F FF 20 A2 00 53 BC 3A FF 1F 01 98
Sun 10/08/2023 07:34:21 AM : [Ext-Direct  ] 41.1E.09-->ISY/PLM Group=0, Max Hops=1, Hops Left=1
Sun 10/08/2023 07:34:21 AM : [41 1E 9 1   ] Memory : Write dbAddr=0x0264 [7F] cmd1=0x2E cmd2=0x00
Sun 10/08/2023 07:34:21 AM : [INST-TX-I2CS] 02 62 41 1E 09 1F 2E 00 00 07 7F 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 4C
Sun 10/08/2023 07:34:21 AM : [INST-ACK    ] 02 62 41.1E.09 1F 2E 00 00 07 7F 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 4C 06        (00)
Sun 10/08/2023 07:34:22 AM : [INST-SRX    ] 02 50 41.1E.09 53.BC.3A 2F 2E 00           (00)
Sun 10/08/2023 07:34:22 AM : [Std-Direct Ack] 41.1E.09-->ISY/PLM Group=0, Max Hops=3, Hops Left=3
Sun 10/08/2023 07:34:22 AM : [All         ] Writing 0 bytes to devices