A few days ago, I was checking my EISY's setup in Admin Console. (V6.0.5) I had a scene called "All Lights" that I set up years ago. I decided to update it by adding more light switches and lamp modules. I right-clicked a number of items and selected "Add to Scene" and selected All Lights. After saving the changes I tested the Scene by turning it on and off. All the lights around me were activated as expected. So far so good.

Then awhile later I went to my kitchen and turned on one of the three wall switches. No response. I tried a second switch, and it was nonfunctional as well. The third switch (master switch connected to the load) worked OK. I had to re-link the two slave switches to the main switch again (in both directions).

Later I went to my bedroom and turned on the light switch. A pole lamp on an appliance module formerly linked to the wall switch no longer worked. I had to link it to the switch again.

When I told Alexa to turn off the lights, the pole lamp didn't react. I had to go to the "Bedroom Lights" scene in Admin Console and remove and then re-add that module to the scene again.

My memory is faint, but I believe this is not the first time something like this has happened to me (I've been using EISY and Insteon for 25 years). It's very rare, but then I don't make changes to my Admin Console very often.

I haven't checked all my other devices to see if anything else was messed up, yet.

Why did the simple act of adding devices to a scene corrupt so many links, both in the devices themselves and in the EISY? Rather frustrating.

Edited yesterday at 09:40 PM1 day by IndyUDIuser

Maybe it's because you added several devices in one shot?

IDK. This is first time I've added so many things to a scene. But how is the EISY wiping out existing links within and between the modules? Makes no sense.

Oh, and now when I start up Admin Console I get a pop-up box titled "New Insteon Devices" and shows me the address for an 2635-222 On/Off Module. Sure enough it is the pole lamp's module. Every time I open Admin Console this dialog appear, and all I can do is close it.

This module has been in use for years and worked perfectly until the changes described earlier.

This is reminiscent of problems on several devices I was having before I upgraded to v6.0.5. Now it's happening again. Ugh.

I'll reboot EISY and see if this goes away.

Reboot got rid of the "New Insteon Devices" false dialog.

The I saw your Reddit post. I’ll repeat my Reddit answer here:

(in both directions).

That tell me you were manually linking, but ISY thinks it’s managing the links.

Mixing manual links and having an eisy doesn’t really work. Eisy writes its link with an all off and purposely deletes what it thinks are just trash bytes in the link space. Create a scene for those devices and make all 3 of them controllers. Eisy will link them in both directions but that won’t leave you with the words you linked in both directions.

TL;DR eisy did what you asked it to, can’t combine manual links with eisy links, or you’ll redo the manual links everytime eisy writes the switches links.

1 hour ago, MrBill said:

The I saw your Reddit post. I’ll repeat my Reddit answer here:

That tell me you were manually linking, but ISY thinks it’s managing the links.

Mixing manual links and having an eisy doesn’t really work. Eisy writes its link with an all off and purposely deletes what it thinks are just trash bytes in the link space. Create a scene for those devices and make all 3 of them controllers. Eisy will link them in both directions but that won’t leave you with the words you linked in both directions.

TL;DR eisy did what you asked it to, can’t combine manual links with eisy links, or you’ll redo the manual links everytime eisy writes the switches links.

Well in theory you can do both. The option to keep existing links (when adding a new device) is thre for that reason. I did do that for a while, adding devices which were already linked to an early version of the Insteon hub (2412) and the devices could be controlled by both the hub and the eisy. It takes an ironclad discipline to maintain properly, but it's possible.

The fact that he mentions the messages about new modules being added seems to say that for whatever reason, the eisy was treating the devices as newly added. That's different from adding existing devices to a scene. Could be a bug, a user error, etc. But I think I'd just be careful and add devices one at a time to a scene.

When I discovered the pole lamp was no longer responding to the bedroom wall switch, the first think I did was try to link the wall switch to the appliance module. The linking beeped successfully, but the lamp still did not turn on/off with the wall switch.

So next I did a factory reset on the appliance module and then manually linked it to the wall switch. Just like I've done for years. This got the wall switch working correctly again with the pole lamp. Then I had to remove it from Admin Console and re-link it to Admin Console in order to fix the broken Bedroom Lights scene so Alexa would turn the lamp off again.

Anyways, everything is back to working the way it has for many years.

Going back to the beginning of my post, why would simply adding a device (or devices) to an existing scene (All Lights) in EISY cause existing links in the devices to be wiped out? I just used "Add to scene". It never said anything about wiping out existing links between devices. Annoying to say the least.

And the "New modules" dialog box thing is a bug that I've been having since v6.0.0. I have to reboot EISY to clear it out. I'm currently on v6.0.5.

Oh, and here's another nit to pick... When I click Start Linking in console, the Linking In Progress dialog box appears, as well as a small timer dialog box. NEITHER ONE can be cancelled (if I change my mind for instance). The red X in the corner doesn't close either box (which UI standards usually require). But that flaw has been around for years, so never mind. LOL

Thank you all of you for your comments. I'll try to remember this as yet another foible in Insteon programming (which often seems like a Jenga game).

@IndyUDIuser im not really sure why you’re trying to use both methods, eisy links and manual. Let eisy do what eisy does best.. manage your Insteon devices.

2 hours ago, MrBill said:

@IndyUDIuser im not really sure why you’re trying to use both methods, eisy links and manual. Let eisy do what eisy does best.. manage your Insteon devices.

I think he simply wants to keep his established direct, device to device setup working as it does, without needing to recreate all the original scenes in the isy994i.