For several years, stopped actively playing with my home-automation system and laws of increasing entropy have hit to where switches are working only based upon internal links and eisy/PLM controller wasn't doing much of anything. The eisy can query and control devices but most programs were not working etc.

Realized today that all of the Insteon devices do not have the PLM in their link tables, so the eisy is not getting status updates when switches/dimmers are toggled. Not sure when this happened but probably had some issue when either migrating from 994i ISY to eisy or when a PLM died some number of years ago. (Maybe I executed a "Delete PLM" instead of "Restore PLM" when swapping out dead PLM).

Since the eisy/IoT tables also don't have PLM listed in the device links, restore devices/compare links doesn't resolve the issue. Haven't dug into PLM links table yet to see if/what it's missing. I verified could remove/delete individual device and then get the PLM link back into table, but REALLY don't want to do this for every device - especially keypads with many scence/programs. I have probably ~100 Insteon devices (every light switch in the house, ceiling fans, lamps, sensors, etc) so manual rebuild would be extremely painful. I also have no idea when this problem was introduced so don't have known/good backup to restore to.

Is there a way to fix the eisy/device link tables to add back in PLM link without haven't to manually remove/add back each device?

Edited Thursday at 04:47 PM5 days by bdyster
typo

If you replaced your PLM and never did a PLM restore, then there won't be many shortcuts. If your old PLM is still defined in IoX then you might try a replace procedure. This restores the links in the new PLM's link table, and then updates every device with the PLM's new device id. However battery powered devices then need to be restored individually, by putting them in linking mode manually.

Depending upon the PLM link table, most likely need to bite the bullet and do manual system rebuild. So would it be recommended to delete PLM/manual reset of PLM - to start with clean slate wrt PLM/device links before manually remove/add each device?
Ideally would like to keep scenes/programs framework in place and avoid complete clean-slate rebuild from scratch.

Possible that you didn't power cycle your ISY after replacing the PLM. The ISY reads the PLM address on powerup/reset. If you replaced the PLM and ran a restore modem (PLM) without the powercycle, the ISY would still have the OLD PLM address - it wrote OLD information to your devices.

The Delete Modem command is normally used to remove the PLM address from all of your Insteon devices. Since your current PLM address is not in the device(s) link table(s), I'm not at all sure what the command would do.

Instead, proceed as you would if replacing the modem normall:

• Backup your ISY - just because...

• Power cycle the ISY to make sure is has your current PLM address (or verify using the show plm info tool).

• Perform the "Restore Modem (PLM)" function. The ISY will write changes to your PLM and all of your attached Devices. Your link tables should update with the current PLM address. Remember to put your battery devices into linking mode.

• Assuming things work and you verify that your current PLM address is written to the devices - backup your ISY again. Give it a novel name to indicate this backup has the NEW PLM.

Edited Thursday at 09:28 PM5 days by IndyMike

I'm guessing I mistakenly used "Delete PLM" before "Restore PLM" when trying to swap out PLM. The PLM died back in 2022 back when Insteon was on death row and only option was to re-cap old PLM off eBay. I actually found an old backup for my ISY from 2021 and am fortunately doesn't seem too out of date (as mentioned haven't done much with home-automation in last several years other than replacing ~6 devices which died and needed replacement - most of my devices are > 10yrs old).

Restored setting from 2021 backup and updated for swapped out devices. Was able to successfully get thru "Restore PLM" to update most of the devices and now have PLM in their IoX link table. Painfully going thru > 100 devices to verify Device links table vs. IoX table and "Restore Device" on those that are not matching. This still seems to be saving a lot more effort than deleting all devices and reading them. I wish there was advance way to edit IoX tables in eisy.....

Next will be testing the scenes and then finally programs - then hope to have system back up and robust. Actually speaks to how impressive the whole Insteon/eisy system is that was able to have it unmanaged for years and the lights kept working.....

Also I'm learning to keep more frequent backups.

5 minutes ago, bdyster said:

Actually speaks to how impressive the whole Insteon/eisy system is that was able to have it unmanaged for years and the lights kept working.....

Also I'm learning to keep more frequent backups.

Yes, the direct device to device links are great for independence, and response speed.

As for backups, well you know...

12 minutes ago, bdyster said:

I'm guessing I mistakenly used "Delete PLM" before "Restore PLM" when trying to swap out PLM. The PLM died back in 2022 back when Insteon was on death row and only option was to re-cap old PLM off eBay. I actually found an old backup for my ISY from 2021 and am fortunately doesn't seem too out of date (as mentioned haven't done much with home-automation in last several years other than replacing ~6 devices which died and needed replacement - most of my devices are > 10yrs old).

Restored setting from 2021 backup and updated for swapped out devices. Was able to successfully get thru "Restore PLM" to update most of the devices and now have PLM in their IoX link table. Painfully going thru > 100 devices to verify Device links table vs. IoX table and "Restore Device" on those that are not matching. This still seems to be saving a lot more effort than deleting all devices and reading them. I wish there was advance way to edit IoX tables in eisy.....

Next will be testing the scenes and then finally programs - then hope to have system back up and robust. Actually speaks to how impressive the whole Insteon/eisy system is that was able to have it unmanaged for years and the lights kept working.....

Also I'm learning to keep more frequent backups.

Glad to hear you are narrowing in on things.

One thing to note - since your devices had the "old" PLM links in their tables, they would have been trying to communicate (and timing out) on a device that was not available.

Now that you have eliminated the old links, your system should be far more responsive.

This is why you should ALWAYS delete devices that you are removing from the system (I.E failed). If you leave "orphaned" links in devices they will try to communicate (retries, etc) with a device that no longer exists. It can really bog down a system.

1 hour ago, IndyMike said:

This is why you should ALWAYS delete devices that you are removing from the system (I.E failed). If you leave "orphaned" links in devices they will try to communicate (retries, etc) with a device that no longer exists. It can really bog down a system.

Really good point. I think most of my devices didn't have too many orphaned links as it really seems I likely mistakenly did a "Delete PLM" before swapping PLM and correctly did Replace Device when swapping out dead switches. Most devices didn't have links to old PLM/dead address except for some wireless devices (open/close sensors, etc). FWIW "Delete PLM" seems REALLY dangerous.

However after restore from backup and "Restore PLM", it seems like many devices that have > 5 links still have mismatches, so manually going thru and compare every device and then "Restore Device" if mismatch is very tedious process and has been background task throughout the entire day....

Edited Saturday at 04:13 AM3 days by bdyster

From your description it sounds like you did indeed use the "Delete Modem" command.

Since your current PLM was not listed as a group 0 controller, newer devices should have responded with a NAK for anything other than a simple on/off (many won't respond to an on/off either). Unless all of your devices are older (pre- 2012), I'm not sure how your system functioned.

Aside from that, it sounds like the ISY now has the correct information to allow it to correctly restore your devices/scenes. It may be painful, but not nearly as painful as rebuilding all the scenes/programs.

12 hours ago, IndyMike said:

If you leave "orphaned" links in devices they will try to communicate (retries, etc) with a device that no longer exists. It can really bog down a system.

My thinking too, and you would have seen orange blinking on a wall switch that can't communicate with the PLM it's expecting to respond.

Never saw any orange/red blinking on switches - definitely would have noticed that and not let the system be unmanaged for multiple years. (old PLM died back in fall of 2022).

Age of devices varies - bulk of devices were purchased ~2013/2014 when moved into current house and swapped out every switch, fan controller, etc in the house. Few devices were migrated over from previous house and have had to replace ~10-15 devices over the years (all of my IO linc died and never tried re-capping them). Would say that the average age of any Insteon device in my house is > 12yrs old so cannot complain on longevity and robustness of Insteon.

RESOLVED! System seems up and running! Believe all devices now have the current PLM in their link tables and completed a smoke-test of system. Ended up reverting to backup from pre-PLM switch out (dated from from Jan 2021!), Restore PLM, Restore Devices, then manually check device table vs IoX table on 100+ devices. Then walked around house with laptop and tested every switch to make sure eisy could both see events and control devices. Amazingly, still had to Restore Device on ~5 devices again as I still wasn't getting signals back to eisy. Quick run thru scenes and programs and nearly everything seems like to be working. Need to get the motion detectors and water sensors put back in place and work on Weather/other plugins. But believe 95%+ of functionality is there.

Ironic thing is what finally got me to break down a dive into issue: my teenage daughter always leaving the bathroom fan running overnight -- previously had numerous programs for timers to auto turn-off lights and fans in most of the closets/bathrooms/etc and really wanted those programs back!