Switches - No Response

[slimypizza]

I have an interesting problem that has just begun.  Many Insteon switches (eg, 2477S) are not responding.  Manually pushing the switch does not turn on/off the load.  The LED may flicker but the on/off state does not change.  However, Alexa and Home Assistant have no problem working.  I have rebooted my EISY 5.9.1 several times.  No change in the issue.  Thinking I might have a PLM problem I have ordered a new 2413U which I’m waiting on but if the PLM is at fault wouldn’t Alexa and Home Assistant have the same problem?  Where else should I look?

[Guy Lavoie]

Not sure I understand. You seem to be saying that manually controlling the switch ("Manually pushing the switch") itself isn't working (at the physical switch, not in Admin Console), but that they work from Alexa and Home Assistant. Unless a bunch of microswitches have all failed at the same time, that sounds impossible.

As you say, if Alexa and Home Assistant are controlling them through the eisy, then it wouldn't be a PLM issue.

[Brian H]

Try  power cycling one of the switches. You can pull out the Set button to turn off the switch power then push it in to its normal position. Do NOT go past the normal position or you may factory reset it.

You may also go into the Administrative Console and see how many links are in it and the PLM. That may give you a clue. Restoring one of the problem switches and testing may also show something.

[slimypizza]

Guy – Sounded impossible to me as well but yes, pushing the physical switch does not work on many switches but Alexa and Home Assistant work fine.  I also noticed today that a programmed timer (for a bathroom fan switch) did not work.  It was supposed to turn off after a few minutes and worked fine in the past but today it kept going for over an hour until I saw it through HA and turned it off.

Brian – I’ll try power cycling a few switches and see if that makes a difference.

Note: I first began seeing this behavior after installing new 2477S switches in a bedroom.  I named them Bedroom 2 Light and Bedroom 2 Fan.  I already had switches in other rooms named Bedroom Light/Fan and Bedroom 1 Light/Fan.  Would the similarities in names cause confusion in the EISY and problems that would extend to the whole network?  I did remove the new switches, checked wiring for poor connections, and reinstalled.  I also flipped the circuit breaker for Bedroom 2 which would have removed any noise or interference caused by those switches if that was a problem but neither troubleshooting effort changed the outcome.  I still don’t see how physically pushing the switch paddle could result in no on/off status change. 

[Guy Lavoie]

How many switches are you unable to turn on manually? Did they all begin to have this problem at the same time? 

[paulbates]

A possibility is that the "On" level of the switches somehow got set to zero. This could be symptomatic of a dying PLM.

Do you have an older backup from before the problem popped up? Restoring a recent backup may put the problem back.

It's possible that the switches' on level is zero but Alexa and other methods are sending a different on-level, if that makes sense

[Guy Lavoie]

2 hours ago, paulbates said:

A possibility is that the "On" level of the switches somehow got set to zero. This could be symptomatic of a dying PLM.

It's possible that the switches' on level is zero but Alexa and other methods are sending a different on-level, if that makes sense

Sounds like quite a stretch. But then again, the actual problem observed is hard to believe too! It has to be something totally freaky.

[paulbates]

52 minutes ago, Guy Lavoie said:

Sounds like quite a stretch. But then again, the actual problem observed is hard to believe too! It has to be something totally freaky.

Slightly different circumstances, but I've had Insteon switches get set to a zero on level and it behaves exactly like this

[apostolakisl]

When you manually walk up to the switch and click it.  Do the led's on the switch rise up to the top indicating it should be on?  

Are you sure the load is connected to that switch and not another switch that you have in a scene with it?

Certainly Insteon switches can fail and simply don't send power to the load.  But if the load turns on when using Alexa, the switch is obviously not failed in that way.  Some switches have failed where the tact switch no longer connects and thus when you push the button the computer in the switch doesn't know you pushed it.  But that is a problem with much older switches and to my knowledge none of the dual band switches.

[apostolakisl]

3 minutes ago, paulbates said:

Slightly different circumstances, but I've had Insteon switches get set to a zero on level and it behaves exactly like this

I'm pretty sure on a 2477s, that if the led goes to the top, the load is on.  Also, you would hear the relay inside click if it turns on.  If both of those things happen, then I suspect the load is connected to a different switch.

 

[slimypizza]

Although it seems random, about half of my switches seem to be unresponsive (and the LED light does not go to the top) but if I activate them through HA, they may become responsive again for a while. I admit this is very strange. Sometimes when I turn the switch on via HA, the switch may not be able to turn off.  Some programs with timers (eg, landscape lights, fans, porch lights) may or may not work and the devices have to be turned on/off with HA. These programs worked perfectly in the past and have not been altered.

A couple of things I am going to try:

1. I should have thought of this before: Turn off my EISY and see if the 2477S switches work.  They should operate as a standard switch.
2. I have my old ISY994i and PLM.  I will substitute it into the network temporarily in place of my EISY and see how it performs.

Question:   I have older backups from previous OS versions from my old ISY994 (I’m running 5.9.1 now on the EISY).  Can older backups from previous OS’s (eg, 5.8.x) be used on my current system?

Thanks for all your help.

[paulbates]

Have you had a major power event like a lightening strike or brown outs? 

I did a quick read... did you follow @Brian H's suggestion to pull the tab on the bottom of the switches, wait 10 seconds, push back in?

[slimypizza]

No power event at all and I did pull the tab on the bottom of a few switches, wait, and push back in.  Unfortunately, no change.  Thanks.  I'm very open to further suggestions.  Thanks all.

Can I use older backups from previous OS versions in an updated system?

[paulbates]

9 minutes ago, slimypizza said:

No power event at all and I did pull the tab on the bottom of a few switches, wait, and push back in.  Unfortunately, no change.  Thanks.  I'm very open to further suggestions.  Thanks all.

Can I use older backups from previous OS versions in an updated system?

The approach by members here has been to isolate problems. If the Insteon switch itself isn't functioning as a switch at the switch, I don't see how changing the ISY SW version will help.

Again, I didn't reread everything but the final isolation test would be to unplug the suspected plm, pull the tabs and retry.

 

[slimypizza]

There are too many switches affected to think they individually all failed at once.  Also, I mentioned some programs are not performing as they should.  I suspect the EISY at this point and not necessarily the PLM (since HA and Alexa appear to work).  Perhaps there is a programming or config glitch I can’t get rid of unless I start from scratch or go to a previous backup.  As I outlined above I will disconnect my EISY from the network and see how the switches behave.  After that I may need to go to a previous backup but I only have backups from older SW versions.  As I said earlier, this problem was first noticed after installing two new 2477S switches.  My only backup prior to the new switch installation was the one created when I advanced to 5.9.1.

Again – Can I use older backups from previous OS versions in an updated system?

Thanks all.

[Geddy]

2 hours ago, slimypizza said:

Again – Can I use older backups from previous OS versions in an updated system?

I've never attempted such a restore process. Might be time for a support ticket with UDI to see if there is any troubleshooting they can see.

Very strange that the switches work with other controllers since they all go through the eisy/PLM to operate the switch. 

When a physical switch doesn't operate when manually controlled it usually means the switch is bad or wiring to the switch is bad. If you were to remove the eisy all switches should still at least function when manually operated.

I would test a few switches by factory resetting them, removing them from the wall and setting up a local test loop to see if they do function correctly on their own. Agreed that it would be unlikely so many switches fail at once, but further unusual that if they were controlled by the PLM/eisy then you have them exposed to Echo via the UD Portal and HA via the ISY integration that those 3rd party controllers are operating the switch when they basically pass code back through the eisy to PLM to switch. 

If you've setup some direct connections to HomeAssistant then that makes sense why the eisy isn't controlling them, but no sense why they wouldn't operate manually.

 

[apostolakisl]

I would start with one of your mis-behaving switches.  Factory reset it and then restore it from ISY.  Pull the tab out, leave it out for 10 seconds, then in one motion, push the tab in, all the way in, and hold it there for a good bit.  The device will start to beep, don't let go, keep holding it in until the beep stops.  That should factory reset it.  Then go to ISY and restore it.  I find it easier to use a butter knife to push the tab in and hold it with for the 10 or 15 seconds it takes to factory reset.

[slimypizza]

Thank you all for your suggestions.  I believe its all sorted out now.  Strange as it was, things seem to be working again.  I ended up verifying the switches worked if my EISY was powered down.  All switches responded as expected.  Then I reset and restored every switch since the malfunctions seemed to be random.  That took a bit of time.  Then I resaved every program on my EISY.  Extensive testing now indicates the system is working without issue once again.  Don’t know how this started but glad it’s over and appreciative of all the help.  I’ve got a medium sized automation network and can now resume my project to expand.

[jaysmc]

I've recently had the same problem with my system. All the Insteon switches suddenly stopped responding manually, but still work remotely. Actually, some of them do eventually respond manually after they've been tapped several times, but that's not always the case. I've replaced the PLM with no effect. In my case, I had already decided to start replacing my Insteon gear with Z-wave, but this incident has speeded up that process.

[Guy Lavoie]

1 hour ago, slimypizza said:

Thank you all for your suggestions.  I believe its all sorted out now.  Strange as it was, things seem to be working again.  I ended up verifying the switches worked if my EISY was powered down.  All switches responded as expected.  Then I reset and restored every switch since the malfunctions seemed to be random.  That took a bit of time.  Then I resaved every program on my EISY.  Extensive testing now indicates the system is working without issue once again.  Don’t know how this started but glad it’s over and appreciative of all the help.  I’ve got a medium sized automation network and can now resume my project to expand.

That's really odd, and interesting. It's as if even manual operation of the switch somehow requires Insteon communications to be used, or something like that. So are you saying that just powering down the eisy would let all the switches work ok manually?

[slimypizza]

5 minutes ago, Guy Lavoie said:

That's really odd, and interesting. It's as if even manual operation of the switch somehow requires Insteon communications to be used, or something like that. So are you saying that just powering down the eisy would let all the switches work ok manually?

Yes, exactly.  Once the EISY was powered down the switches were snappy and functional unlike their behavior with the EISY on. 

[Guy Lavoie]

Well that's one for our collective wisdom... and a good first thing to try if this ever happens to someone else.

[Geddy]

@slimypizza glad things are returning to normal. I wonder if you might have had a surge from some of the storms we had push through ATL recently. Not sure  what side of town you're on, but we did have some recently that carried a lot of lightening. So random, but glad that resetting them and restoring them in the eisy seems to be bringing things back to normal. 

@Guy Lavoie agreed - this is one for the memory bank for future troubleshooting and hopeful tips for good outcome.

[apostolakisl]

I can't imagine what the mechanism could have been for Eisy to inhibit local manual operation of a switch.  It was my understanding the local control of a switch was independent of any Insteon communication.  Perhaps some flood of data between eisy and the switch upon pressing the button that swamped the switch cpu.  It would have been curious to have watched the traffic on eisy.

[IndyMike]

As luck would have it, I did something very similar to myself some time back.  

I was playing with ISY Scenes on Home Assistant.  I had set up a program to trigger on a ISY scene (my basement) and immediately turn the scene off.  Unlike the ISY, Home Assistant views an ISY scene as "ON" if any member of the scene is on.  

The HA program would turn off my entire basement (13 lights) if any light were activated.  For this to function both the ISY and HA had to be operating.

After playing with the program, I disabled it on HA.  Fast forward a year or two, and I inadvertently re-enabled the program.

Took me quite awhile to figure out what was going on.  The event viewer would show my basement scene being triggered off.  I figured I had a rogue ISY program being triggered.  Disabled all programs, deleted all programs, and it refused to go away. 

Then I remembered Home Assistant - Homer Slap.