lhranch Posted January 16 Posted January 16 (edited) I upgraded to the eisy a month or so ago after many years running the ISY, and for the past week or so, it's not been acting properly. I can talk to it with the Admin Console, but simple commands to turn devices on or off (as well as the timed programmatic commands to turn them on and off) are having no effect. The Admin Console reflects the fact that nothing is happening (that is, it doesn't claim the command succeeded when it failed, it correctly shows no change in state). When I launch the Console, it tells me it can't communicate with any of my outdoor devices -- not unheard of, because we've had unusual rain in the past week and that often fritzes our outdoor signal paths -- but only the outdoor devices, so this indicates to me that my PLM has not gone south. Any advice as to how to troubleshoot this issue? Edited January 16 by lhranch Corrected period of upgrade
Brian H Posted January 16 Posted January 16 New 2413U USB PLM. 2413S Serial PLM with the adapter cable. Possibly from the ISY994i setup. If it is the reused 2413S PLM. How old is it and can you see the revision number on the back sticker?
lhranch Posted January 17 Author Posted January 17 My in-service PLM is serial, purchased 2017-05-12. Label: 2413S, V2.2, 1629. My previous PLM went dead, and it took so long to get this one as a replacement that I ordered up a spare as well -- label: 2413S, Revision 2.4, 4716. It has never been used. I didn't swap it in to test because my understanding is that a significant portion of the home's configuration exists inside the PLM and I would have to go through the trouble of loading it when my problem didn't necessarily seem PLM-related. What do you advise?
IndyMike Posted January 17 Posted January 17 (edited) On 1/16/2024 at 3:17 AM, lhranch said: When I launch the Console, it tells me it can't communicate with any of my outdoor devices -- not unheard of, because we've had unusual rain in the past week and that often fritzes our outdoor signal paths -- but only the outdoor devices, so this indicates to me that my PLM has not gone south. Any advice as to how to troubleshoot this issue? Are you sure that your outdoor devices didn't trip GFCI breakers? Rain events are good for that. Edited January 17 by IndyMike spelling
lhranch Posted January 17 Author Posted January 17 (edited) 2 hours ago, IndyMike said: Are you sure that your outdoor devices didn't trip GFIC breakers? Rain events are good for that. Well in fact, I status my outdoor devices three times a day, specifically to detect popped GFCIs (there are devices on the grounds that have limited backup batteries and I need to know when they've lost power). I even have a micro module in one location that controls nothing, just so I can status that circuit to detect when it pops. But my mention of the outdoor modules was merely to explain why I didn't think my PLM had failed. When Admin Console specifically calls out the outdoor modules as inaccessible upon launching, that implies that it had no problems accessing the indoor modules, or else I would have gotten error messages about them, too. And yet it won't control anything, indoors or outdoors. And it also reports bogus on/off status for most of them. Meanwhile, the physical switches and pushbuttons continue to work the lights properly, both indoors and out. Edited January 17 by lhranch
IndyMike Posted January 17 Posted January 17 9 hours ago, lhranch said: But my mention of the outdoor modules was merely to explain why I didn't think my PLM had failed. When Admin Console specifically calls out the outdoor modules as inaccessible upon launching, that implies that it had no problems accessing the indoor modules, or else I would have gotten error messages about them, too. And yet it won't control anything, indoors or outdoors. And it also reports bogus on/off status for most of them. Meanwhile, the physical switches and pushbuttons continue to work the lights properly, both indoors and out. You may have different mechanisms at play here - The Admin console calling out the outdoor modules as "Failed" is probably a result of your 3:00 AM system query. The Query uses device direct communication. The PLM will retry communication and the ISY will retry the command up to 3 times. Your indoor devices may be controlled by scenes. Scenes are group commands that do not have any followup (no confirmation) and therefor no retries. The ISY assumes the command was executed correctly. In summary, your outdoor devices may be completely offline with the indoor devices suffering from poor communication. Can you post an Event Viewer query (Level3) on both an outdoor device as well as indoor. That may give us a clue about what is going on. If you have Accesspoints or Signalincs you could run a "3-tap" test between them and the PLM. This will hopefully verify that they are still communicating.
lhranch Posted January 25 Author Posted January 25 (edited) @IndyMike: I researched what a "3-tap test" was and tried it. Nothing "beeped" except the PLM clicking, but all the indoor devices that were capable did blink red or green. (I have some switches that are so old that the only LED they have is the dimness indicator.) Couldn't inspect the outdoor devices because it's too soggy to run out there today, but at least I determined there is SOME communication out of the PLM. When I opened the Admin Console today, I didn't get any complaints about any un-reachable outdoor (or indoor) devices, and none showed up in the LH column. Just a data point. I pulled up the event viewer to level 3 (again, not very familiar with it) and cleared it. Then I ran commands directly on indoor and outdoor devices. My first action was to set a plug-in dimmer to ON, and got this weird error: I never saw it again -- from then on, any device I attempted to control gave me no response to the first command, then to every subsequent command. Meanwhile, the event viewer was 100% mum except for a periodic poll about "[ Time]". 1. Is the PLM the most probable culprit? 2. I do have a spare one I could easily swap in, where are the steps I need to get it loaded with my current config? 3. Is this the sort of failure that Insteon's "repair PLM" service addresses, or it is more worthwhile to can the serial PLM (which I've perpetuated since the time we all had to run the system from a PC) and go USB? Edited January 26 by lhranch
lhranch Posted January 26 Author Posted January 26 When I re-read this, I just had my attention drawn to the word "portal" in the first weird error message. I went back to the configuration screen and saw this: I'm not sure what "portal online" indicates. I have never configured or used ANY portal services (that I know of). I wouldn't even have a portal account if I didn't need one to post to this forum. Did I accidentally click something that tethered me to the portal, and perhaps that's why nothing works anymore? Or is this just something that every eisy displays? I don't see any obvious way to turn "portal integration" off.
IndyMike Posted January 26 Posted January 26 (edited) @lhranch, At this point you have confirmed that the PLM can communicate with at least some devices on both phases of your electrical system (red vs green flashing). Unfortunately 0 entries in the event viewer when you switch a device on/off, sounds like a EISY problem. A typical command/response sequence looks like the following Line 1: ISY command to the PLM Line 2: PLM Acknowledge to the ISY Line 3: Device response to the command (I sent an OFF) Line 4: ISY summary of response Since you are not seeing anything, it appears the EISY isn't sending anything. Unfortunately, I am not well versed on the EISY itself. I would normally tell people to power cycle or reset their ISY994. I am hesitant to give guidance on the EISY as I don't have first hand experience. The wiki guide for the EISY is here: https://wiki.universal-devices.com/Eisy:User_Guide. The configuration screen has system check boxes for various things. Make sure that INSTEON support is checked. There are others on the forum who are very well versed on the EISY. If all else fails, you can submit a ticket to the UDI team. They are very good. Edited January 26 by IndyMike 2
lhranch Posted January 27 Author Posted January 27 I may have misunderstood your testing instructions, and also unintentionally weasel worded my description of what I did. When I was seeing no log contents, I was not physically pushing buttons on Insteon devices – I was issuing on and off commands to indoor and outdoor devices using the admin console. Does that change your assessment? Do you want me to physically press buttons on devices while collecting the log?
IndyMike Posted January 27 Posted January 27 @lhranch, I understood you perfectly. If you hit the ON/OFF for devices on the ADMIN console your should have seen communications in the event viewer similar to what I showed above. You showed nothing, so I am calling this an EISY issue. Please check to make sure that the "Insteon Support" checkbox is set in the configuration menu as shown. Click save, and then reboot. If the checkbox is already set, Hit reboot to see if that corrects the issue (safer than a power cycle).
lhranch Posted January 27 Author Posted January 27 Verified that Insteon support was checked, rebooted (not the first time for this problem), re-entered the admin console, pulled up level 3 events (there were some existing lines for housekeeping after the reboot) and sent commands to my closest device. Same results as before, except that the first error message had more details in it: As I mentioned, the eisy was operating very satisfactorily for three or four weeks before puking in this fashion. Guess I'll research how to "submit a ticket to the UDI team." I'm pretty certain this thing still had to be under warranty.
DennisC Posted January 27 Posted January 27 In the event something didn't install correctly the first time, I would suggest doing an upgrade packages, reboot when told to, followed by a power cycling.
lhranch Posted January 27 Author Posted January 27 Good suggestion. Unfortunately, nothing changed. Same behavior, same error messages. I have a ticket in now.
Geddy Posted January 27 Posted January 27 1 hour ago, lhranch said: I have a ticket in now Please be sure to update here what support finds and when/if fixed what was done to fix this so we know and it might help others if they should run into this type of issue in the future. Hopefully it's a simple fix and you're up and running again soon.
Solution lhranch Posted January 29 Author Solution Posted January 29 Problem turned out to be the PLM. UD clued me in to the existence of the "Diagnostics / PLM Info/Status" function, which reported zeroes. Replaced the PLM with my new-in-box unit, which also showed zeroes at first... but shortly woke up and began throwing links around. I ran the Restore PLM function and all seems to be fine now. I would assume the cable subsystem on the old PLM failed, as its connection to the other Insteon devices was still good (as shown by the triple tap test). US also clued me in that Reboot and Restart are two different buttons, and that I needed to be using Reboot after a software upgrade, which I wasn't. Thanks for your help, everybody!
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