Replaced PLM, it will not talk to devices>>SOLVED!

[RF_Burns]

My programs stopped working.  I pulled up the ISY admin console and found the ISY could not talk to any devices.  The ISY was talking to the PLM however (Checked status).

We are going away for a month starting this weekend, so I purchased a new PLM and backed up the ISY.  Installed the new PLM following the instructions here:

https://wiki.universal-devices.com/index.php?title=ISY-99i/ISY-26_INSTEON:File_Menu#Replace_Modem_(PLM)

When I logged back into the Admin Console, the ISY tried reading the Devices and on each one it did an update before (or after) posting an Error that it could not communicate with the device.  So when it was done, and all devices showed a communication error, I did a Restore Devices.  This only displayed a couple of devices before quitting the routine.

The ISY still cannot talk to any devices.

Unlike a previous user with a similar problem back in May, I did not change computers... same laptop I have been using with the ISY for years.  I can still see all my devices and thankfully they can still talk to each other directly.

I'm using firmware 4.8.0 which has been working great for a 5 years, so didn't upgrade.

I've had Insteon and ISY for about 20 years and I was in electronics for 40 years, so I'm not a newbie.  But Chemo has left me with some brain fog so small technical details elude me.

Anyone who can point me in the right direction would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Bruce

[paulbates]

A possibility is that the PLM was so far gone that when you backed up, you backed an empty and/or corrupted PLM data table.... and that's what was restored.

Do you have a good backup from before the problems started? Restore that and then restore the PLM, retest

[RF_Burns]

Thanks for that suggestion.  I have one from last September that I just tried.  It got to the 13% point and then failed with the error:

Could not open file

/conf/network.cfg

Failed resetting the PLM

-200000/-30

hmm

 

[paulbates]

The new plm may have gotten 'confused' by the initial bad restore. I would try: 

• Factory reset the PM: Unplug the plm from the wall, press and hold the set button while plugging it back in the wall, keep holding it until it beeps
• Unplug the ISY, wait about 10 seconds, plug back in, give it a couple minutes to fire up
• Try to restore the backup and then restore plm

Edited June 18 by paulbates

[RF_Burns]

Ok, so I reset the PLM and restored from the second from last backup in case it was corrupt.  I didn't get the "could not open file" error this time, but still after Restore of ISY and Restore PLM, I still have no communication with any devices.

One thing I get after rebooting and logging into the ISY, while trying to read each device the ISY tries to write to it which shows ERR 1 on the progress bar.  This takes about 20 minutes to go through all the devices which also shows the error window "can't communicate with device".  None of the instructions mentions this is going to happen.

[DennisC]

Try plugging the PLM in to a different power circuit in case there is something on that circuit causing interference.

[paulbates]

I would also pick a device that's in a scene with several other devices, right click and pick "restore device"

[RF_Burns]

16 hours ago, DennisC said:

Try plugging the PLM in to a different power circuit in case there is something on that circuit causing interference.

The PLM is in the electrical closet with about 6ft of wire to the breaker panel.  There are also 3 Insteon 2477 dimmers with about 6ft of wire from the breaker panel to them, so no more than 12ft of wiring from the PLM to these dimmers and they do not communicate with the PLM.  Another reason I don't believe its noise causing interference is all the devices are programmed to communicate directly and everything that way works. If it was interference, then the devices could not communicate with each other.

 

[RF_Burns]

10 hours ago, paulbates said:

I would also pick a device that's in a scene with several other devices, right click and pick "restore device"

I've tried restoring a single device and all my devices are in scenes, but no luck.

At this point, one day away from leaving on my trip I purchased a couple of timer switches so at least my outside lights will come on at dusk and off in the morning.

I have bigger issues now.  I took the motorhome out for a longer test run and I have some backfiring issues!!  I need to concentrate on that problem now !

Such is life!

 

[DennisC]

11 minutes ago, RF_Burns said:

The PLM is in the electrical closet with about 6ft of wire to the breaker panel.  There are also 3 Insteon 2477 dimmers with about 6ft of wire from the breaker panel to them, so no more than 12ft of wiring from the PLM to these dimmers and they do not communicate with the PLM.  Another reason I don't believe its noise causing interference is all the devices are programmed to communicate directly and everything that way works. If it was interference, then the devices could not communicate with each other.

 

This definitely sounds like a nose issue especially given the location you have described. It has nothing to do with communicating directly.

Use an extension cord from PLM to another outlet outside the electric room.

Also, make sure you have the cable from PLM to ISY connected correctly. If you have another cable, try replacing the cable with the correct type cable.

[Guy Lavoie]

How about a simple test for the PLM: try manually linking a spare switch or module to the PLM, just using the link buttons on each device. Just to see if they can talk to each other, without the isy being involved.

[RF_Burns]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for all your help to this point, but I have run out of time.

When we get back from our trip I'll revisit this issue.

Bruce

[paulbates]

Just now, RF_Burns said:

Hi Guys,

Thanks for all your help to this point, but I have run out of time.

When we get back from our trip I'll revisit this issue.

Bruce

I get it... we spend a lot of our time camping around the Great Lakes, in fact we're out now 😉

[larryllix]

7 hours ago, paulbates said:

I get it... we spend a lot of our time camping around the Great Lakes, in fact we're out now 😉

Which Great lake were you in?   

[paulbates]

36 minutes ago, larryllix said:

Which Great lake were you in?   

Lake Michigan near Petoskey!

[oberkc]

16 hours ago, paulbates said:

Lake Michigan near Petoskey!

I get up there a couple of times each year.  Unfortunately, I am stupid and do things backwards.  I go south in the summer and north in the winter.  We like the good snow at Boyne Highlands.

[RF_Burns]

So we are back from our one month trip to Newfoundland.  Got some Screech and kissed the cod!

Interestingly while we were away, I got an Insteon water detector alarm emailed to me.  So that came through by Insteon RF connection since that is it's only method of communication the water detector has. So the Insteon modem is talking to the ISY .

I took a 8 button switch that is in a desktop case and plugged it into the same outlet as the ISY modem and they do not talk to each other. So I took that 8 button switch out to my shop, so it must talk through 150ft of #6/3 cable back to the main breaker box, then out to the switch it is linked with and I can control the switch... so I'm sure it is out of RF range and must talk through the wireline.

Anyone know of a way to check for noise on the power line?  Maybe some place I can probe with my scope on the modem or a switch module?

 

Thanks.

[DennisC]

You can start here:

https://wiki.universal-devices.com/INSTEON_Signal_/_Noise_Troubleshooting

https://wiki.universal-devices.com/INSTEON:_Troubleshooting_Communications_Errors

 

[RF_Burns]

So, today I killed all the power to my house except one outlet to run the PLM and one keypad in a desktop housing.  I ran the ISY and my internet modem from a portable inverter power unit to eliminate their switching power supplies from interfering.  So the only thing operating in my whole house was the PLM and the single keypad and I could not talk to that keypad.

Interestingly I could push button B,C,D,E,F,G, or H and the ISY would register that it was ON or OFF, but not the main button A (Main) "Cannot communicate".  I'm guessing the rest of the buttons it is communicating by RF?

At this point I am about to give up.  I replaced the PLM, and tried a number of backups.  It will not link in a new keypad, so maybe this new PLM is also a dud.

[Techman]

By turning off the breakers you disrupted the Insteon powerline signals. Keep in mind that other Insteon powered devices also act as repeaters.

The problem doesn't sound like it's with the PLM. Being that some of the buttons worked correctly on the KPL leads me to believe that you have some invalid links in either the ISY or the KPL.

If you have the ISY994 then the issue could be with your SD Card. They have a tendency to fail. What you can try is to remove power from the ISY, then remove the SD Card and clean its contacts with a soft eraser, replace it and power up.

[RF_Burns]

Hi Techman,

The keypad was plugged into the same outlet as the PLM, so the maximum distance the power-line signal needed to travel from the PLM to the keypad was about 6 feet.  It should not require the repeater function of other Insteon devices to travel that far.  There is only that single outlet on that breaker.

As an electronics Tech for 50 years and 40 years as the owner of an commercial two-way radio dealership (Motorola radio dealer), I was hoping there was some test function or test point (or device) to test for noise or even the presence of power-line signals to facilitate troubleshooting.

I did put several keypad devices into linking mode to check the LED flashing rate indicating noise. However they flashed at a constant 1Hz or so rate indicating no noise.

As mentioned before, all the Insteon devices talk directly to each other just fine.  Only the ISY programmed functions (Sunset lights On, Sunrise lights OFF etc) do not work.

I cannot see the front of my ISY994, so I forgot about the SD card.  This system has been very reliable since we moved to this house 12 years ago. I'll try cleaning the SD card contacts.   If the SD card has failed, is there a procedure to install a replacement card?

 

[Techman]

Here's the link to replacing the card. They do have a tendancy to fail over time. The contacts on the card  can also oxidize so you should first try cleaning them with a soft eraser.

ISY-99i/ISY-26 INSTEON:Replacing/Formatting an SD Card - Universal Devices, Inc. Wiki

Many years ago X10 made a poweline signal monitor which also showed noise on the powerline. 

Here's a couple of options:

Monterey Instruments X10 Powerline Signal Analyzer - FREE SHIPPING | eBay

XTBM / XTBM-Pro X10 Signal Meters - JV Digital Engineering

[RF_Burns]

As an electronics Tech, I like to troubleshoot so I can see and understand the issue and solution.  With that in mind, I had an Insteon Developers manual from 2009 that I found on line years ago.  In there I found the schematic for an early model PLM which I happened to have in my junk drawer.  From the schematic, Q2 collector drives the Rx Input of the custom Insteon micro-controller chip. 

I defeated the Output driver transistor Q3 by grounding the base lead so transmitted packets would not interfere with Rx packets that I was trying to detect.  I then soldered a wire to Q2 collector and a second wire to ground, then hooked my oscilloscope to these wires.  Wow, the amount of power line noise was overwhelming in my shop.  In my house it was fairly clean and Devices were working in the house.

I started turning everything OFF one at a time in my shop and still had noise.  Then I went in the utility room and remembered the in-floor heating controller.  When I opened the controller box to pull it's power, I saw the Dog's confinement transmitter wall wart there too.  I put the dawg in his kennel and removed his collar so I could power the system down.  Then pulled the wall wart for it and the noise was gone!!  Plugged it back in again and the noise returned.  This equipment is on the same circuit breaker as the Insteon devices in the shop, so I didn't shut that breaker down because I would have no way to know if communications returned when  I was just using the devices for troubleshooting.

My make-shift PLM noise detector showed me exactly what the problem was!

FYI, I had gone back to the original PLM and managed to get it working again.  And found that when I ran an extension cord from the house and plugged an Insteon Access point into it, I could control the shop devices provided the access point was about 20 feet from the shop.  I had then tried to install the new PLM, but still kept getting the Config File Not Found error.  Something about the new PLM doesn't agree with the ISY.

But I am just happy to have everything working again!

 

[Brian H]

Thank you for doing the tests and reporting the findings. I did something similar on a 2412S  power line only PLM. The noise making device is not too uncommon. I started with X10 and we saw similar things there too.

The Config File missing has been reported here. The new PLM is probably fine but there is an error in one of the configuration file entries.

Maybe helpful to you at sometime. The Access Points where made using two different base boards. Any of the V1 where on the Powerlinc board and worked well. The V2 that also worked well but where built using the same base board as in the 2413 PLM and subject to the same capacitor failures. I had to rebuild both of my V2 Access Points with better replacement capacitors.

[Guy Lavoie]

I have an Elk ESM1 signal meter from my X10 days, and it has been handy for seeing Insteon powerline transmissions, and noise. Not perfect, but if the noise is bad enough, it can give you a quick hint.