ISY Scene Action and Link Type

[gadgetfreak]

I have been using scenes for years. Two scenes I use are Away1 and Away2. For simplicity, they include ALL of my devices. In Away1, half are programmed to go on and the other half go off. In Away2, the other half go on and the other half go off. This makes it look like I am living in the house when I am away.

They are controlled by programs and a state variable. When the variable is set to Away=1, the programs can run. A program may be something like: "At 6 AM, 10 AM, 2 PM run Away1". Another program would be "At 8 AM, 12 PM, 4 PM run Away2".

In all the past years, the scene would show the action for each device. On, off, 100%, 50%, etc. Now, I am all of a sudden seeing that ever action says "Default" and there is a new column called Link Type which also says default.

I have searched the forums for explanations and my head is spinning. First of all, why did they change to this new setting to begin with? Everything was working fine. Secondly, how do I confirm what default means for each device? I am looking to make some changes but I don't know what to do.

Thanks in advance.

[Geddy]

@gadgetfreak Unclear exactly where you're looking for this difference. Can you provide some screen shots? 

Also, what Firmware are you running? You posted in the ISY994 forum so assuming your device is indeed ISY994.

Have you updated firmware lately? If you "recently" updated from 4.x to 5.x there were huge changes in how scenes are handled in 5.x that might change whatever screen you're looking at for action = "default". 

What happens to the action line if you turn the scene on/off manually?

[gadgetfreak]

I am running 5.3.4 on an ISY994i. Yes, I assume there were tons of differences in how scenes are handled when I upgraded I just don't understand what they mean now. Attached is a screenshot of part of my scene. I guess in a previous firmware version, each action would say On or Off so that I would know how I programmed each device in the scene.

Now, it just says Default. It did that automatically as I never made any changes to the scene. So how do I know that I have this scene programmed to turn ON the attic fan and turn OFF the attic light when I run the scene (as an example)?

And do I even need to be concerned about the link type? I have never even seen that before.

 

Thanks.

[Geddy]

@gadgetfreak sorry...can't help much more on this. I'm not running an ISY994 anymore and didn't get carried away in scenes so can't much relate to how the eisy is handling them to how they were in the 994 time. 

Perhaps others that had more scene knowledge can assist. 

In the eisy the "Link Type" is showing Insteon for the few devices I have in a scene. My guess is this is because eisy can run Insteon, Z-Wave, Zigbee, and node servers so it might have different entries than the ISY994 did. 

To see how a scene is setup you need to look at the controller(s) of the scene and the action might show different settings.

[gadgetfreak]

But I don't think I have a controller for the scene. I just have a program that runs the scene based on a time of day.

[gadgetfreak]

I am also thinking that something may have just gotten messed up during a firmware upgrade but I don't know for sure. So, unless someone gives me another option, I may need to go through every single one of my scenes and every single one of the devices in the scene and determine if I wanted it on or off and then reconfigure it. If that is my only option, can someone please tell me if I should use the Insteon or the Command option? Thx.

[Techman]

If you're referring to the individual devices in a scene, use the Insteon option.

[gadgetfreak]

Thanks. So I guess this is the last time I will ask before I begin the laborious process of re-setting EVERY device in EVERY scene - does anyone know why they reverted to Default and how to easily fix it? Thx in advance.

[Geddy]

1 hour ago, gadgetfreak said:

does anyone know why they reverted to Default and how to easily fix it?

My question above wasn't answered - when did you update the firmware? That's probably when this happened. If you didn't notice it and you did it a long time ago I suspect it changed then and you just didn't notice it. 

"easy fix?" Doubtful. I wonder if it wasn't a problem until something else changed meaning you haven't found the real reason for this.

During my time with the ISY994 things didn't just randomly happen. Usually it was user induced changes that created other issues. Sure, devices fail and cause problems, but that's not going to cause this type of change. 

You could get lost in the weeds for trying to test this so depends how large your system is and how deep you want to dig.

Make a backup of your current system. Perform a restore just to be sure it's a good backup! Copy all programs to a plain text (.txt) document [right click on the root program folder, select "Copy to Clipboard" then paste into a plain text editor (Windows use Notepad)]. This way you have a "copy" of all your programs as they are CURRENTLY.

If you have an old backup (maybe pre-firmware update) you could possibly downgrade the firmware and try to restore that backup to see if it goes back to what you are remembering. 

If that isn't what you expected then reload the current firmware and restore a current backup and move on from here.

But that's rather drastic and might not work or could cause you a lot of other issues.

Other options would be to create a random new scene (perhaps with devices not in other scenes) to see how they appear to you after setting up. 

Another option would be to remove existing devices from scenes, remove from the ISY994 then re-add and put into a new scene to see how that appears. 

Just a lot of individual trial and error at that point.

Ultimately, the forums is the only place you'll get (free) support for the ISY994 as that's been discontinued by UDI and no longer supported (Paid support is available until June 1, 2024). 

[gadgetfreak]

I appreciate it. You are correct, it likely happened after a firmware upgrade, and I didn’t check all my programs and scenes after the upgrade - they were all working, so there wasn't a need. I don't remember when I upgraded the firmware.

I agree, there are a lot of options to address this but at the end of the day, it seems that I have a bunch of rebuilding to do. Even if I were to upgrade to the next-gen system, I would want everything to be set up properly in ISY (if I were to do a migration).

Oh well. Thanks for all the help.